A recent thread regarding a Part 107 Practice Test question on traffic patterns at airports got me thinking.
All VFR fixed wing pilots practice flying the pattern. Doing so develops a regimen of not just putting the aircraft where it needs to be consistently (and ultimately safely on the ground), but allows time (intentionally) to perform checklists, in advance of landing.
If you go to a small airport and observe a while, you'll note that not just fixed wing flyers do this; so do helicopters. You rarely see a hell pilot fly to a point directly over where he wants to land at 1000' and then drop straight down. Aside from descending directly through it's rotor wash, visibility is often not the best directly below the aircraft. (Disclosure: Only flown a chopper once or twice, so I'm no expert there).
When I fly my "home turf" or really anywhere I've flown before with the Mavic, I put the camera perhaps 20 degrees down, and fly a glide path that I know to be free of obstacles, all the way to the landing point, keeping the landing spot in the center of the screen, arriving there at perhaps 30' agl, and then land. I find descending while moving forward is smoother than coming straight down, and if using the same glide path, it develops a consistency that benefits stress levels, particularly when flying back to a landing spot in tight quarters.
MavicCF's recent "Carrier Landing in the Woods" aside, does anyone else use similar procedures when landing? Any other procedures learned from piloting manned A/C (fixed wing or rotorcraft) that would be useful to flying UAS's?
All VFR fixed wing pilots practice flying the pattern. Doing so develops a regimen of not just putting the aircraft where it needs to be consistently (and ultimately safely on the ground), but allows time (intentionally) to perform checklists, in advance of landing.
If you go to a small airport and observe a while, you'll note that not just fixed wing flyers do this; so do helicopters. You rarely see a hell pilot fly to a point directly over where he wants to land at 1000' and then drop straight down. Aside from descending directly through it's rotor wash, visibility is often not the best directly below the aircraft. (Disclosure: Only flown a chopper once or twice, so I'm no expert there).
When I fly my "home turf" or really anywhere I've flown before with the Mavic, I put the camera perhaps 20 degrees down, and fly a glide path that I know to be free of obstacles, all the way to the landing point, keeping the landing spot in the center of the screen, arriving there at perhaps 30' agl, and then land. I find descending while moving forward is smoother than coming straight down, and if using the same glide path, it develops a consistency that benefits stress levels, particularly when flying back to a landing spot in tight quarters.
MavicCF's recent "Carrier Landing in the Woods" aside, does anyone else use similar procedures when landing? Any other procedures learned from piloting manned A/C (fixed wing or rotorcraft) that would be useful to flying UAS's?