captain-david-jacobson

‘Still following the old archaic rules and guesswork …’

This testimonial message was received, recently: Does it resonate with you, too? 

 

‘Thank you for enabling me to learn about the round out and flare through your application and also your presentation video.
I am a 60-year-old student pilot from the United States. My prior failures of being able to control my approach and landing were, other than my age and learning ability, attributed to lack of proper execution of “pitch for airspeed and power for altitude” in slow flight ( back of the power curve). It consisted of 10 flying hours of frustration and grief.
I came across your App through a weblink on a blog post and put it to practice yesterday without telling my instructor sitting next to me. For the first time, I did not panic nor frantically move my controls and was also able to maintain alignment with center line. Granted, out of 7 landings I could make it to 5 (prior stats were usually 1 or max 2). None of the landings were bumpy and were really smooth. Imagine if I repeated that for 10 hours, what would have been the improvement overall.
Thank you so much for the treatise. I wish you were able to provide more on the subject of flying. We are still following the old archaic rules and guesswork on our official training manuals.
Warm regards …
It is always very gratifying to receive such a warm response and personal experiences, such as this, continue to prove the Jacobson Flare as the world’s foremost and only universal, quantifiable, consistent and unassailable approach and landing training technique. Many student pilots, of all ages and all learning abilities have been so treated, as as this pilot has – and many scrubbed or, at the least, disheartened. That’s so sad and so unnecessary.
With the Trouble-shooting guide in the App, this pilot will be able to self-analyse his own performance and make any necessary corrections to achieve his own 10/10 landing performance rating. I know he can do it and now, he does, too. His joy and his pride were quite evident from his message and I can tell you that it the same pride and joy as I experienced as a flight instructor and airline training captain on light aircraft and DC-9-30 and B737-300/-400/-800s, across the cockpit, from 1987- 2017, when one of my students (GA or airline) would make that same discovery.
You, too, can make that same discovery.

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 pdf , 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 ESSENTIAL 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 Jacobson Flare ESSENTIAL 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.

Towering structures need a proper framework

When landing a light airplane, at an approach ground speed of, say 80 kts, a 2nm approach from 600ft will occupy just 90 seconds;  a jet transport on a 3nm approach from 900ft, at an approach ground speed of, say 150 kts, will occupy just 72 seconds, with the flare itself, adding a further 5-6 seconds in each case.

 

That’s not a long time, each time, to attempt to ‘get the hang of it’ simply through guesswork and repetition. Judgment cannot be taught and takes its own time to develop, for each individual pilot.

 

Conventionally, we just keep attempting to correct our own corrections, as we stumble towards the landing. This takes only 5-6 seconds and the landing cannot be adequately mastered in 5-6 sec repetitive ‘grabs’, during a series of circuits, spread over many sessions – in variable conditions, each time – until competency is judged to be safe enough to permit landing operations as pilot-in-command. This sequence of events applies not only to student pilots approaching their first solo: It applies also to experienced pilots undergoing airplane type conversions. It can continue through an entire career. Yet it needn’t.

 

In so many other applications in the wonderful world of aviation, frameworks exist to make a procedure easier, consistent and safer. There are guidelines painted on taxyways and tarmacs, to assure clearance from other aircraft and obstacles; there are nose-in lighting guidance systems to aid docking at a terminal ‘gate’ or airbridge. There are formal checklists and informal ‘mnemonics’, such as PAT (‘power, attitude, trim’ to support the correct sequence to transition from straight and level flight into a climb); and APT (‘attitude, power, trim’, to transition back to straight and level flight).

Captain David Jacobson 1985 The Jacobson Flare Story

 

The 1943 RAF 617 Sqn ‘Dambusters’ used simple triangulation twice, in the one operation: Use of belly-mounted spotlights and a very simple bomb sight enabled their ‘skipping bomb’ to be released at precisely 60 ft/18 m above water (at night) and at the correct distance back from each of the dam walls of 2 reservoirs in the Ruhr valley, in Western Germany.

It is this very framework that led to my inspiration – as an 18-yo student pilot at YMMB Moorabbin, VIC, Australia – to apply this simple triangulation in resolving the above-mentioned limitations of conventional landing training.

 

And, thanks to this framework, the Jacobson Flare towers above all other landing training methods.

 

 

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 pdf , 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 ESSENTIAL 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 Jacobson Flare ESSENTIAL 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.

The concept is the same … The execution is perfectly different.

Someone once said, “The basic idea in landing is to aim at the earth … and just miss!

Now, that is not quite as silly as it sounds: although it does require some qualification.

All pilots understand the concept of landing an airplane. It’s the understanding of all of the elements involved in producing the consistent execution that was missing – until 1987.

So, what are the missing elements? Let’s list a few:

  • There is a confusion on how to fly a consistent final approach profile, depending whether or not variable power/thrust is available. If it’s not, then pitch (with the elevators) to control airspeed – there’s no choice. But: If it is variable – (about 99.999% of the time) – then pitch to hold your aim point and use power/thrust to control airspeed.
  • Then, there is the gross misunderstanding of the final approach path gradient – it’s actually a very ‘flat’ 1:20. This means that  any error made in the ‘educated perception’ of flare height, i.e., guesswork, is compounded one way or another along the runway, by 20 times that vertical error. (If you don’t believe this, then check the profile diagram in any textbook or manual on landings: You’ll find the angle depicted as 25-30º, rather than the correct 3º.)
  • A mis-assumption that the flare can only be initiated by the above-mentioned ‘guesswork’. In fact, there is an alternative universal and quantifiable solution to hand.
  • A misunderstanding, fed by generations, that ‘feel’, developing judgment, repetition and, ultimately experience (and recent experience), are the sole arbiters involved in ‘getting the hang’ of landing an airplane. They are NOT.
  • Finally, the nonsensical advice to ‘Forget all you applied to your last airplane … this one’s different’. Sure, the responsiveness and feel of different types does vary – but that’s ignoring, totally, the common factor to all landings: the pilot’s eye path to the correct aim point – for the airplane type. Once that path is defined, other great things can happen and that previous experience is, of course, valuable.

 

May I ask?

  • Are you content flying circuit after circuit, waiting ‘til you get the hang of landing? You may wait forever – and many promising student pilots have been discouraged, or failed, or have hurt their airplanes and, sometimes, themselves.
  • Can you explain to your mother HOW you land your airplane (without the nonsensical cliches, that we’ve all heard)?
  • Do you enjoy laughing at your landings, more than your flight instructor does?

 

If  any (or all) of your responses were NO, then here are 5 more questions to consider:

  1. What aim point do your use for each airplane you fly?
  2. How do you control both the final approach flight path angle and the airspeed? What controls what?
  3. How do you assess when to commence the flare manoeuvre?
  4. How much do you flare? And
  5. How do you assess how fast to flare, i.e., the flare rate?

 

The answers to these questions are explained, comprehensively, in the Jacobson Flare App. To the best of our knowledge – over the last 60 years – yes, 60, not one of them, let alone all 5, have ever been quantified and developed into a universal, consistent approach and landing training technique and published anywhere else.

 

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 pdf , 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 ESSENTIAL 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 Jacobson Flare ESSENTIAL 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.

Jacobson Flare Android apps revoked

The Jacobson Flare regrets: Android apps revoked from Google Play

There is no easy way to say this

Regretfully, the Android editions of the Jacobson Flare App and Jacobson Flare NEWS App have been revoked and decommissioned. Henceforth, they are no longer be available for new purchases from Google Play.

In the beginning

In the first place, when the Jacobson Flare for iOS was launched in June 2014, an Android edition was simply not an option for us. The iPad was already leading the field in  aviation applications.

From a range of class-leading apps like the Jacobson Flare, the iPad evolved to become integrated, universally, on flight decks. Electronic flight bags (EFBs) and flight deck libraries are now standard.

Over the years we had a modest number of requests for an Android edition and this became possible around 2020-21. The Jacobson Flare came to rely on the integrity and flexibility of the PressPad Magz and News platforms. Their professionalism and pro-active communication skills have been a joy to behold and the results speak for themselves.

Consequently, we produced and shall continue to produce the Jacobson Flare App V2.0 for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, on Apple iOS and later OS devices.

We launched the Jacobson Flare App for Android V1.0 in 2020. However, this edition has not met its promised expectations. Ultimately, it is no longer self-sustaining or viable and, reluctantly, has been revoked. There was no alternative.

For Existing Android Subscribers

As was previously stated, the iOS editions will, of course, remain available.

However, existing Android subscribers of the complete Jacobson Flare App should still be able to access their downloaded content. Remember, though, you need the internet to access the 6 JF videos and the 5 JF calculators.

Furthermore, the Jacobson News App articles may always be viewed at www.jacobsonflare.com/blogs . (That’s where they were sourced.)

We shall help you resolve any issues, please do contact us at www.jacobsonflare.com/contacts.

 

Wishing you many safe landings

 

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 pdf , 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 ESSENTIAL 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 Jacobson Flare ESSENTIAL 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.

 

How to land a plane.. Our favourite FAQs #4 Let’s settle some misconceptions, right now.

Let’s settle some misconceptions

Some unenlightened people believe David developed a mathematically based theory that he’s attempted to prove in practice. They could not be more mistaken! Here, he responds to that idea:

The truth is actually the converse: For 20 years, I observed and studied landings. Then I explained those observations, using unassailable, yet simple mathematical principles. The maths are necessary to validate the technique, and to produce a couple of simple formulas to make ‘The Jacobson Flare’ predictable and useable on our ‘next’ airplane. I haven’t invented anything; I’ve just made a couple of connections.”

 

No parlour trick

“The Jacobson Flare is not a parlour trick. It doesn’t involve a deck of cards or a pact with the devil. 

It’s my considered opinion that pilots who learn to apply Jacobson’s techniques can make consistently good landings, provided they know how to configure their aircraft and fly a stable approach at the appropriate airspeed.’ 

‘I’m excited to have a cool, new tool in my teaching toolbox. I can’t shake this feeling of a kid in a candy store.” 

– John Ewing, Flight Instructor, California, USA

“If this was any good, it would have been developed by someone, years ago!” is a lame and unenlightened alternate response. “But we’ve always done it THIS way”, is another. If similar attitudes had prevailed through the rest of aviation, we would not have progressed beyond spruce, wire and fabric structures, unreliable power plants and navigating by DR; we would not have weather radar, GPS, GPWS or TCAS.

The truth is it was developed over 30 years ago by Captain David Jacobson, a career flight instructor and airline pilot. Since the original Jacobson Flare Paper, ‘Where to Flare‘ was published in 1987, the multifarious responses by pilots have been insightful, to say the least.

Many pilots have been open-minded, self-aware and honest enough to realise that conventional landing training methods have been inadequate, at the very least. The most common and insightful observation, by a great many pilots celebrating that ‘Eureka’ moment when they execute another consistently sound landing by applying the Jacobson Flare, is: “This probably what we’ve all been trying to achieve, without realising!”

These more enlightened pilots understand that the best that generations of flight instructors and flight training organisations have been able to manage is to attempt to describe what they, themselves, do and this loose collection of opinions has been passed down, as fact. This explains why every flight instructor has a different explanation, none of which really explain ‘how‘ to land an airplane. Trial and error is not good enough, when the rest of aviation has grown from the days of World War One.

At best, all conventional landing methods have revolved around opinions, myths and legends that have well and truly passed their use-by dates. They lean heavily on judgment, perception, false information, experience, repetition and an educated guess of vertical height above the landing surface – none of which can be taught. They are inconsistent and unreliable. Competence comes at some indeterminate time, for each individual pilot and is fallible in differing circumstances. From the dawn of aviation until 1987 there was no definitive, universal landing technique and, even more puzzling, little recognition of the need for one.

“We’ve always done it this way!”

The Law of  Primacy in the discipline of education, refers to the way that many people tend to believe implicitly what they are first taught, creating unshakeable views about any given subject. This very much includes any attempt to discuss a different viewpoint on landing training, which the majority of pilots regard as an ‘art‘.

It has been noted by the author, often during the past 35 years, that when a pilot is presented with an alternative to conventional ideas on landing training, defence mechanisms kick in and any new idea can be regarded as a personal challenge to their ego. Instead of listening, or reading, or watching and then considering, many pilots tend to become quite defensive, immediately throwing up as many reasons as they can think of, as to why the Jacobson Flare “cannot work“. They will argue – from a position of total ignorance in relation to the principles and advantages of the Jacobson Flare – about the wide number of variables that certainly do affect the outcome of all landings (all of which and more are, in fact, embraced and diminished by the sound principles behind this innovative technique. They are not to know yet that is does work and has always worked, ever since the sound mathematical principles used to explain David’s 1965 inspiration were applied.

So, what’s so different about the Jacobson Flare?

Essentially, the Jacobson Flare uses a logical, geometric visual ‘framework’ to guide the pilot through the entire manoeuvre. Since the development of The Jacobson Flare from 1985, pilots are presented with a fully-defined visual eye path, specified by the airplane type – making the landing safe, sure, simple and universal.

Accounting for all – even self-compensating for many – of the variable parameters that distract the attention of pilots away from the 5 essential elements of all landings:Where to aim; How to aim; When to flare; How much to flare; and How fast to flare, the Jacobson Flare explains landings as never before.

Simply put: Consistently sound landings – in the right place – are obtained through ‘flying’ a constant-angle final approach to a suitable initial aim point, commencing the flare at an equally-suitable pre-determined visual fix and then executing a 4-second flare through to a new, secondary aim point. That’s it. The framework confirms to the pilot exactly what is happening, at every stage dispelling the myths that ‘trial and error‘, ‘developing a mental picture‘ and ‘feel‘ are the only ways to master the landing.

Flown initially at a constant angle, the eye path translates to the classic exponential flare curve that generations of pilots have attempted to execute by judgment alone. The flare is initiated from a visual fix, derived from the cockpit lower visual cut-off angle and the flight path angle, offering a precise and visible model for both student and instructor.

The airplane type/size determines the exact positions of aim points 1 and 2 and the flare initiation point and, on a normal powered approach, is flown using a PATH descent – using the elevators to aim the pilots eye and power/thrust to control airspeed. The technique is equally applicable and adaptable to both light and heavy airplanes, from sailplanes to A380s.

(For those pilots taught that airspeed is controlled with the elevators and rate of descent is controlled with the throttle, the use of elevators to control airspeed, on final approach is more correctly applied to the Non-Normal cases when power/thrust is fixed – or failed – such as in a forced landing. For further explanation, please see FAQ #5, in the FAQs tab.)

The flare fix determines a longitudinal flare point on the runway centreline (based on the correct conventional flare height) while gradually reducing power/thrust back to idle). The concept of using a longitudinal flare point rather than flare height has two great advantages:

  1.  The flare point is visible and therefore easily identified and able to be repeated, consistently; and
  2.  Any longitudinal error made in mis-identifying the longitudinal flare point DIMINISHES 20 times, compared with the fact that any error in mis-identifying a conventional vertical flare ‘height’ COMPOUNDS 20 times. This is due to the fact that the standard approach path angle is – approximately a 1:20 gradient. Overlooked by the entire flight training industry for 100 years, this angle is routinely misrepresented in text books and manuals as approximately 25-30º and this has masked its significance.  Triangles have 3 sides and only 2 were ever utilised. The third (adjacent) side is fully visible as the runway centreline and, on sealed and painted runways, is effectively a calibrated ruler.  The 1:20 tolerance, afforded by utilising a longitudinal flare point, has the great advantage of being so tolerant of error that the technique can be equally applied on unsealed airstrips of grass or gravel, where an estimation of runway segment distance is required.

The Jacobson Flare is comprehensive yet practical, simple to master and extremely effective. Since 1985, it has been adopted in 65 nations by thousands of civil and military pilots of various ages, abilities and experience, in airplane types ranging from sailplanes and single-engine light airplanes to large jet transports. The improvement in confidence, competence and progress of pilots – at all levels – is not only breathtaking: It’s measurable.

The Jacobson Flare addresses obvious differences between airplanes but embraces their similarities. It delivers a basic system of flight training that may be adapted as necessary to meet specific requirements. Its universal application is long overdue and the App presents the Jacobson Flare clearly and comprehensively as never before.

 

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.