Author: David Jacobson

You’ll recover the cost by flying just ONE LESS circuit

You’ll recover the cost by flying just ONE LESS circuit

How many circuits has it cost you, so far, to try and get the ‘hang’ of learning how to land your plane? And how much money?

Typically, in my experience here in Australia, most student pilots solo in about 10-12 hours. However, a disturbing trend seems to have developed here and elsewhere – pilots are taking upwards of 30 hours to solo.

Frankly, this is ridiculous. 30 hours should have a pilot close to a restricted Private licence – (RPPL).

Landing accidents still bring me almost to tears – for most are totally avoidable – by offering better training in the most precise and most neglected subject in the flight training syllabus. The statistics on these  have not improved in the last 50 years.

Since 1985, I have proved that the problem is not that landings are difficult to master; the real reason is that conventional landing training methods, handed down blindly for over 100 years – yes, since WW1 – have always been inadequate, to say the least. This is because these methods rely on myths and legends that should, by now, have been made redundant. Everything else in aviation has been developed and improved, but not the ‘elephant in the room’. The landing is still treated by many as a sick joke.

In today’s traffic patterns, it is difficult to fly more than 6 touch-and-go circuits in an hour. At a typical cost of A$300.00/hour, that represents a cost of A$50.00 per circuit. That’s an expensive way of ‘getting the hang of it’, on just your first airplane – what about your conversions onto other airplanes?

By flying just one LESS circuit, you can invest in a lifetime of happy, safe landings in any airplane you may ever fly. From sailplanes to the A380.

 

Wishing you many safe landings

 

Captain David M Jacobson FRAeS MAP

 

Would you care to experience that unsurpassed sense of accomplishment, derived from executing consistently beautiful landings, more often?

For starters, Download the FREE Jacobson Flare LITE, our no fuss/no frills introduction. Here we demonstrate, step by step, the application of the Jacobson Flare on a typical grass airstrip at Porepunkah, YPOK.

 

We invite you to browse the consistently positive comments on our Testimonials page. Many pilots, of all levels of experience, have downloaded our Apps. Read about their own experiences with the Jacobson Flare technique and the App.

Then download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare app – for iOS. You’re already possibly paying $300+/hour to hire an aeroplane: You’ll recover the cost of the app, in just ONE LESS-NEEDED CIRCUIT. Moreover, you’ll have an invaluable reference tool, throughout your entire life in aviation.

Download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare App for iOS devices now.

 

We invite you, also, to review our new, FREE companion app,

offering a convenient way of staying abreast of our latest blogs.

 

Download the Jacobson Flare NEWS App for iOS devices now.

To all pilots who care about their landings – Take a look?

Wishing you many safe landings

 

Captain David M Jacobson FRAeS MAP

 

Would you care to experience that unsurpassed sense of accomplishment, derived from executing consistently beautiful landings, more often?

For starters, Download the FREE Jacobson Flare LITE, our no fuss/no frills introduction. Here we demonstrate, step by step, the application of the Jacobson Flare on a typical grass airstrip at Porepunkah, YPOK.

 

We invite you to browse the consistently positive comments on our Testimonials page. Many pilots, of all levels of experience, have downloaded our Apps. Read about their own experiences with the Jacobson Flare technique and the App.

Then download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare app – for iOS. You’re already possibly paying $300+/hour to hire an aeroplane: You’ll recover the cost of the app, in just ONE LESS-NEEDED CIRCUIT. Moreover, you’ll have an invaluable reference tool, throughout your entire life in aviation.

Download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare App for iOS devices now.

 

We invite you, also, to review our new, FREE companion app,

offering a convenient way of staying abreast of our latest blogs.

 

Download the Jacobson Flare NEWS App for iOS devices now.

After 100 years, the explanation of HOW to land a plane simply could not be made any harder … so we made it easier

After 100 years, the explanation of HOW to land a plane simply could not be made any harder … so we made it easier

When learning to fly in 1965, at just 17 years old, I couldn’t understand why an intelligent explanation of how to land a plane didn’t seem to exist. Everything else in the training  syllabus was well defined and easily understood … but NOT the landing. It is almost still the case today.

First, my early instructors insisted that I flew the approach using the secondary effects of controls, rather than the primary effects. The net result was a roller coaster path, instead of a straight-line fully stabilised approach and I could never achieve a consistent threshold crossing height.

Second, the decision on when to commence flaring the airplane was made on the basis of guesswork, rather than something more accurate. So, every landing was haphazard and unpredictable. This accounts for the statistics on landing accidents remaining virtually unchanged, for over 50 years.

Fortuitously, as I trained for my CPL, a senior ex-RAF instructor confirmed that, for powered aeroplanes, it was essential to use the primary effects of the flight controls to control a stabilised flight path angle … and I never looked back, even much later on sailplanes (gliders), using the airbrake instead of the throttle, to control IAS. It also turned out to be the standard approach technique employed by the RAAF and all major airlines. Sadly, to this day, many pilots are still taught how to land the hard way. It makes it impossible to fly a consistent and accurate approach path, let alone achieve a good landing.

I knew also that the 1943 RAF 617 Squadron ‘Dambusters’ had applied triangulation techniques very effectively and was certain they could also be applied to fix the landing flare point, instead to relying on an inaccurate (and, as it turned out, compounding of any errors in the) assessment of vertical height. Instead of waiting for each individual pilot to ‘get the hang’ of landing, initially and then on each successive airplane conversion.

It took 20 years of solid airline experience under my belt, before I dared to challenge the conventional wisdom that competency in landings can only be achieved by developing the required judgment and perception through repetition, guesswork and other trial-and-error methods, that are basically unchanged since the end of WW1, in 1918.

The result is the Jacobson Flare, the world’s first and only universal, quantifiable, safest and most SIMPLE approach and landing training technique.

Wishing you many safe landings

 

Captain David M Jacobson FRAeS MAP

 

Would you care to experience that unsurpassed sense of accomplishment, derived from executing consistently beautiful landings, more often?

For starters, Download the FREE Jacobson Flare LITE, our no fuss/no frills introduction. Here we demonstrate, step by step, the application of the Jacobson Flare on a typical grass airstrip at Porepunkah, YPOK.

 

We invite you to browse the consistently positive comments on our Testimonials page. Many pilots, of all levels of experience, have downloaded our Apps. Read about their own experiences with the Jacobson Flare technique and the App.

Then download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare app – for iOS. You’re already possibly paying $300+/hour to hire an aeroplane: You’ll recover the cost of the app, in just ONE LESS-NEEDED CIRCUIT. Moreover, you’ll have an invaluable reference tool, throughout your entire life in aviation.

Download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare App for iOS devices now.

 

We invite you, also, to review our new, FREE companion app,

offering a convenient way of staying abreast of our latest blogs.

 

Download the Jacobson Flare NEWS App for iOS devices now.

What’s it like to land a plane perfectly, EVERY time? Find out for just US$49.99

What’s it like to land a plane perfectly, EVERY time? Find out for just US$49.99

Think about it. How would it be NOT spending excessive hours and a small fortune to go solo? Find out how, for just US$ 49.99.

Many student pilots are disheartened by the excessive time it takes them to master the approach and landing and get to their first solo. 30+ hours is just ridiculous. Conventional ‘wisdom’ still has it that learning how to land a plane “is a matter of judgment and there is no simple way of teaching judgment to those to whom it does not come easily. Proficiency is attained mainly through practice … ” That simply isn’t true.

Yet many experienced pilots and flight instructors still subscribe to this ‘wisdom’; they cannot adequately describe exactly HOW they themselves land: “You just get the hang of it” is a common response – or ‘Stuffed if I know” – or “Close my eyes and hope for the best”. The problem is that most pilots have to get the hang of it over and over again, on each and every subsequent airplane conversion, at some indeterminate time. It’s just ridiculous!

And student pilots suffer only because ‘It’s always been done it this way’. It’s been handed down, unchallenged, since 1918 or so, while everything else in aviation has progressed incredibly!

Well, none of this has been necessary since 1987, when the Jacobson Flare was first published and especially since 2014, when the Jacobson App for iPad was released.

In order to learn how to land a plane consistently well, a pilot must be able to understand and answer the following questions – and flight instructors should be able to explain and demonstrate them to their students, at any level of experience:

1. Where to aim?
2. How to aim?
3. When to flare?
4. How much to flare? And
5. How fast to flare?

No training manuals or text books and few flight instructors can answer even one of these questions, let alone all five.

Without this precise and vital knowledge, the approach and landing manoeuvre remains elusive, inconsistent, expensive (in terms of training time, cost, wear/tear/damage to airplanes, pilot and instructor stress and runway occupancy times) and, most importantly, remains far too high in accident statistics. All because “We’ve always done it this way.”

So, how would it be NOT spending many hours and a small fortune to go solo, or complete that next airplane conversion?

Find out HOW to answer these 5 questions – and many more – for just $US 49.99

 

Wishing you many safe landings

 

Captain David M Jacobson FRAeS MAP

 

Would you care to experience that unsurpassed sense of accomplishment, derived from executing consistently beautiful landings, more often?

For starters, Download the FREE Jacobson Flare LITE, our no fuss/no frills introduction. Here we demonstrate, step by step, the application of the Jacobson Flare on a typical grass airstrip at Porepunkah, YPOK.

 

We invite you to browse the consistently positive comments on our Testimonials page. Many pilots, of all levels of experience, have downloaded our Apps. Read about their own experiences with the Jacobson Flare technique and the App.

Then download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare app – for iOS. You’re already possibly paying $300+/hour to hire an aeroplane: You’ll recover the cost of the app, in just ONE LESS-NEEDED CIRCUIT. Moreover, you’ll have an invaluable reference tool, throughout your entire life in aviation.

Download the COMPLETE Jacobson Flare App for iOS devices now.

 

We invite you, also, to review our new, FREE companion app,

offering a convenient way of staying abreast of our latest blogs.

 

Download the Jacobson Flare NEWS App for iOS devices now.