After a couple of rather hard landings over the last couple of weeks, it was suggested that given my level of experience I wasn't getting enough landing practice to ensure consistent landings! I was actually quite pleased to get the offer of a couple of hours in the simulator as I was starting to see issues with the way I was landing - some days I had great landings, and others I kind of bashed it into the ground.
Back at CTC, I flew 2 hours in the full motion sim. We looked at different suggested techniques for introducing the flare. The main aim of a large jet landing is not to make it too smooth (that would use up lots of runway while you slowly lowered yourself to the tarmac), rather, it should be noticeable that a landing has been made! We started by not flaring at all, seeing the aircrafts' response, moving up to total greaser landings (really smooth, but getting ever closer to the end of the runway). Then we started to look somewhere in the middle, and refined a basic technique that could be built on given different weather conditions or the nature of the approach.
I came out of the sim well refreshed on the technique ready to ensure I performed some good landing in the coming sectors....
