I am trying to collect as much info as I can on Applied PCT, but as your know
there is more Computer Models and simulations and arguments than applications
put foreword. Anything you have related to applying PCT -- even a short story
that has no basis in fact would be nice to hear :)~
I am trying to collect as much info as I can on Applied PCT, but as your know
there is more Computer Models and simulations and arguments than applications
put foreword. Anything you have related to applying PCT -- even a short
story
that has no basis in fact would be nice to hear :)~
Yours truly a PCT indentured servant,
Mark Lazare
When I was first learning to land, I unconsciously tried to center the runway
in the windscreen, just as I centered the road in the windshield of my car.
This works fine if there is no wind blowing a right angle to the runway. But
in a crosswind, I have to compensate to avoid drifting off the centerline of
the runway. This compensation results in a view of the runway through the
windscreen that looks different from the way it looks on a day when there is
no wind. Instead of appearing centered in the windscreen, the runway now
appears off-center to the right. This appearance can be disturbing because
nothing like it happens in an automobile. In an automobile, the road always
appears to have the same relationship to the front of the car no matter what
the wind or other conditions. The friction of a car s tires on the road
resists the effects of the wind, but an airplane, no matter what its size and
weight, is always embedded in the air and therefore carried along by a steady
wind.
The wind changes from day to day and sometimes from minute to minute. As a
result, I have no single picture of where the runway should appear to be to
rely on the way a single picture of the road when I am driving. Instead I have
several pictures. The intended landing point apparently stationary and growing
larger in the windscreen and the plane tracking over an imaginary extension of
the runway. Perceiving the motion of the airplane along this imaginary line
and closing any gaps as they open is a skill that takes longer to develop than
does the memory of how the road should appear through the windshield of a car.
In the process, I learned how far to hold the nose of the plane into a
crosswind that changes strength as I approach the runway.
This process has become unconscious for me. I make crosswind corrections
without even thinking about them altering my preference for the perceived
position of the runway without conscious attention. I have a perception and a
desired perception my intention. It is only by keeping a gap from opening
between these two that I am able to keep the plane on course as it descends in
a changing crosswind towards the runway.