Do Dutch Rolls Help Pilots Land Airplanes Better?
Landing is the most challenging maneuver most pilots will ever perform. It is no surprise that landing is the most dangerous few moments of any trip. I stumbled on an exercise that shortened the time that I needed to teach landings and dramatically improved my students' landing skills far more than I ever thought possible. It has become known as the 'Slow Dutch Roll.'
A Dutch roll is a rhythmic maneuver that most instructors agree is about as useful as patting your head while rubbing your tummy. In contrast, the Slow Dutch Roll proved to be a very powerful tool
When executing an ordinary Dutch roll, you keep the nose of the airplane pointed at a speck on the horizon while rapidly wagging your wings with your ailerons and holding the nose steady with your rudder pedals.
When you move the stick to the left, the nose wants to swing to the right forcing you to step on the left rudder pedal, but not quite as much as you would in a turn. Then, as the bank increases, you have to step on the other pedal to keep the nose steady. And so the exercise continues. But to what purpose?
My colleagues and I don't like this exercise for two reasons. First, aileron - rudder coordination should be focused on keeping the ball in the center. To put it differently, a good pilot could put a cup of coffee on the instrument panel and go through a series of turns in both directions without sloshing the coffee. He or she would have to coordinate the ailerons and rudder properly to succeed. During a Dutch roll, the coffee would be all over the cockpit. Our second objection is that, in addition to teaching bad habits, there is basically no region of normal flight where the pilot would execute a traditional Dutch roll. We view an ordinary Dutch roll as somewhere between worthless and counterproductive.
Douglas Daniel, long time flight instructor, invites you to visit http://PrivatePilotTrainingOnline.org for more flying articles like this one. You may also fee free to contact Doug by visiting his website
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