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Mar. 20, 2008

Brainteasers
Interactive Quiz #131:
Reflections On Short Final

When you're on final, aiming for the numbers, with passengers squawking, "Are we there yet?" there's little time to preplan. So, take a moment -- assuming you're not on final -- to test your approaches to landing.

INSTRUCTIONS: Answer the questions as best you can, then click on the "Score my quiz answers" button to see your score and read the explanations. If you don't like your score the first time around, you can change some of your answers and resubmit. To get the most out of this quiz, we suggest you keep trying until you get a perfect score.

NOTE: When more than one answer is true, only the most complete, correct answer will be scored as correct. The answers are assumed to apply within the United States unless otherwise noted.

1. Wherever you are right now, because you have wings, you possess the ability to fly to someplace that's potentially far worse. OK, that's not exactly a GA promo line, but think about it. You could depart from a dry, paved runway in Florida in your Piper Archer and, after a couple of pit stops, approach your in-law's private grass strip in Frostheave, Iowa, where the snows have begun to melt, leaving behind a gooey field of (not dreams) mud. At last, those hours of simulated, soft-field practice come into play. To make this soft-field approach and touchdown a success, what should you do? (Pick the best choice. This is not a short field, so there's plenty of room to screw up.)
a. Touch down so as to avoid ground effect as quickly as possible.
b. Touch down without power.
c. Retract flaps when 1-2 feet above the runway.
d. Hold the airplane in ground effect as long as possible.
2. Let's ratchet up the pressure. Still in a single-engine airplane, you're now making a short-field approach to landing over an obstacle ... say, a 50-foot prison wall topped with concertina wire. Concerned about the obstacle and the limited available landing distance -- to say nothing of the reception you'll receive once inside the exercise yard -- you become distracted and lose airspeed and begin to sink. In panic, you increase pitch to increase angle of attack, but you continue to sink as drag increases and airspeed further deteriorates. So you add more power until you have full power, but can't climb. Aerodynamically speaking, you're operating in what accident investigators might call the ...
a. Area of inversed command
b. Regime of reversed performance
c. Backseat of the power curve
d. Region of reversed command
e. Twilight Zone
3. The next short-field approach is similar to the one in the previous question, only in this scenario, the pilot (not you) is concerned about getting too slow. To correct for that, the pilot adds a few extra insurance knots to the airspeed that is recommended in the airplane's Pilot Operating Handbook (POH). As the pilot flares in the roundout, observers can expect the airplane to do what? (Pick the best answer.)
a. Sink followed by a hard landing
b. Float
c. Porpoise
d. Hit the mark
4. Now, you're on final to a 10,000-foot, paved runway at a civil airport with an operating control tower inside Class C airspace. You're flying a single-engine, small airplane and following a similar type. The conditions are daytime VFR and the runway is dry, with calm wind. The airplane ahead lands and tower clears you to land while the other airplane is still on your runway. Seems like plenty of room, until the first airplane misses a turnoff and continues to taxi down the runway. As you cross the threshold, the airplane ahead is more than half way down the runway, still taxiing but not yet clear of the runway. The tower controller must tell you to "Go around."
a. True
b. False
5. Let's take away the engine; not just kill it but also remove it from the airframe. You're a glider pilot checking out in a glider you've never flown before. Lacking a feel for the stabilator's response, you pitch a bit too high and then overcorrect by pitching too low. What follows is a series of pitch errors, each nastier than the previous, making things progressively worse. This miserable scenario is called ...
a. Laterally induced instability
b. Pilot-induced oscillation
c. Pilot-induced autokinesis
d. Pitch skidding
6. VASI stands for visual approach slope indicator and PAPI means precision approach path indicator. Both give visual light signals indicating the aircraft's position relative to the proper glide path. You're VFR in a small, single-engine airplane, flying under FAR Part 91, not for hire, into an airport with an operating control tower located inside Class D airspace. It's a Tuesday. You're cleared to land on a runway with a VASI and you shall ...
a. Maintain an altitude on the glide path until a lower altitude is necessary for a safe landing.
b. Maintain an altitude at or below the glide path until a lower altitude is necessary for a safe landing.
c. Maintain an altitude at or above the glide path until a lower altitude is necessary for a safe landing.
d. Maintain an attitude at or above the glide slope until a lower altitude is necessary for a safe landing.
7. ASDE-X sounds like the brand name for a mildew remover product, but it's really a next-gen device that aids tower controllers working ground traffic. If there's one phrase that's even more over-used than "next-gen," it's "As we go forward." So, as we go forward, please decode ASDE. ("X" is just the model designation.)
a. Airport Surface Detection Equipment
b. Airport Surveillance Detection Equipment
c. Airborne Surface Detection Equipment
d. Airtraffic Surface Detective Equipment
8. There's never a controller around when you need one. Or so pilots might think when operating at a busy, non-towered airport. That's why FAR 91.113 -- Right-of-Way rules exist. Who has the right-of-way in the following setup: aircraft on final or an aircraft on the runway? (Neither has an emergency; both are in the same aircraft category and class.)
a. Aircraft on final
b. Aircraft on runway
c. Aircraft on runway if it's operating IFR
d. Aircraft on final if it's operating IFR
9. You're back on final, this time to a non-military airport inside Class D airspace in a newly refurbished Cessna 182RG. (One of the best singles ever made and an overlooked used-airplane bargain). Tower has cleared you to land. The weather is VFR. You begin your pre-landing checklist: gas on the fullest tank ... flaps set ... mixture set ... prop set ... when you become distracted by ground personnel waving and pointing at you as you cross the airport fence. Apparently they too appreciate the sight of a great retractable-gear airplane, so you return the wave while casually wondering about that loud horn sounding inside the cockpit. Your GUMP (gas, undercarriage, mixture, prop/pump) routine was interrupted and CRM has failed. You are the weakest link in the safety chain and are about to make a common arrival error -- a gear-up landing. As a failsafe, though, all tower air-traffic controllers are required to do a "gear check" with binoculars to visually verify that a complex aircraft's landing gear "appears to be down" before saying, "Cleared to land."
a. True
b. True, but only in daytime VFR
c. False
d. False, except for IFR
10. What does CRM mean?
a. Cockpit/crew resource management
b. Cessna retract manual
c. Cleared runway matrix
d. Cancel reason myself

If you enjoyed taking this interactive quiz and would like to see more like it, go to the AVweb Brainteaser page. And if you thought it was unfair, confusing, or a waste of time, we'd like you to tell us that, too. And if you have an idea for a subject that you think would make a good future Brainteaser quiz, be sure to let us know.

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