Yesterday's landing with northerly winds was a nice challenge. Having barely flown this year it was not something I was looking forward to, but having pulled it off it felt great
At least couple of pilots coming in on final hit big sink before the overshoot ramp and couldn't make it over it, effectively doing a "fly on the wall landing" on the south face of it, one pilot barely made it over and I noticed the sink and had to carefully manage my dive to make it onto the grass.
Am I correct in saying that with winds from the north there's rotor past the overshoot and you have to come in a bit higher to compensate for this and the sink it causes? Doesn't this make things more difficult given the fact that you're landing downhill and want to land before the north side of the runway where the numbers are?
Two things stood out to me after seeing the landings Sunday. The worst was setting up approaches too far to the south and making clearing the overshoot ramp a crap shoot. Why? There's so much room to go out there with the penalty being only a longer walk. The penalty for coming up short is much more severe.
The other problem is ignoring what the flag is telling you.
I asked Joe G if he wanted to make any comments here because it looks like a little refresher course is called for, so maybe he'll chime in.
I was thinking about where to stage, and my impression is that over the wash, just east of the overshoot ramp would be a good area, or perhaps a bit more north, so stage over the wash east of the peanut gallery. Too far north and if you come in too low and have to turn early you're on the steeper portion of the LZ heading downhill. Thoughts?
Also is the big windsock missing? Is it going to be replaced?
The big problem on Sunday was that the wind was predominantly West with a moderate North component to it. Normally, when it blows down it's more North than anything else. Thi9s was not the case on Sunday when I landed and watched afterward. The normal approach is to set up, up wind of the LZ but that's not possible when upwind would place you over the parking lot and past the cones.
Greblo properly teaches pilots to land in a 90 degree crosswind and not try and force a dead upwind landing. That being said, the correct place to set up would have been over the Sylmar Triangle or the transition slope from the H2 to H4 LZs and then have done a right-hand standard pattern using the lip of the overshoot as your landing numbers.
In my case the wind was only 10 degree North of perpendicular across the LZ and I was debating whether to land from the North or the South. I spent so much time debating the issue while doing S-turns that I ran out of altitude and had no choice but to land from East to West which required lining up with the parking lot as an overshoot. And I needed it too, flying a heavily loaded comp glider.
So to answer your question the correct place varied depending on what the wind was doing while you were setting up. The direction and velocity kept switching. At one point it was blowing in for several minutes like an ordinary day and another it was blowing straight down.
For pilots on floaters it was no big deal because they could doing standing S-turns and just sit in one place as they descended. Those of us who were cursed with comp gliders (and there were plenty!) really needed to be doing standard box approaches. Penetration was never an issue for the heavy wings but overshooting downhill was.
Sunday was a classic example of why good instructors harp on their students to practice non-standard approaches whenever possible. Pilots who are locked into one way of doing things often get hurt when the weather become unpredictable like it did on Sunday.
I'm sorry (sort of) that I missed all the excitement on Sunday, but even so, I've got plenty of opinions about how to land to the north in the Sylmar LZ. Really, the rules aren't that complicated, and they're the same as they are for any landing.
* Know as much as possible before getting to the LZ. If there are pilots below you, watch them land to see what works and what doesn't.
* Get to the LZ high enough to watch the streamers for a bit and make an informed decision.
* If in doubt, land uphill. When landing uphill in a familiar LZ, a few MPH of tailwind or crosswind shouldn't be a problem.
* Pick your landing direction and approach, and commit to it. An imperfect decision is better than no decision. If you fail to make decisions, you're more passenger than pilot and anything could happen. Who knows; you might find yourself crossing the LZ sideways and landing in the parking lot!
* Unless there's a really good reason to do otherwise, fly a standard downwind-base-final approach. On a north-wind day at Sylmar, this is just mirror-image of our usual pattern. One stages over the Santiago Estates cliff a little north of our runway (right turns), downwind along the cliff, base leg across the wash and towards the girls' baseball fields, and final over the top of the overshoot hill and down the runway. On north-wind days, I believe there's often a lot of sink just south of the overshoot hill, but it might be a perspective thing as well. Whatever the cause, I consistently find myself landing a little short of my intended spot, as do many others, and it's really rare to see someone go long.
* We don't have the choice at Sylmar, but sometimes one can stage on either side of the runway, and make either a left-hand or right-hand approach. If there's a crosswind component, pick the one that makes your base leg into that crosswind. All the crab angles work out favorably that way; it's worthwhile to sketch them out if this isn't familiar. While we must stage on the Santiago Estates side of the runway at Sylmar, this rule means that a westerly component in the wind is better than an easterly component.
* Fly with wheels. If the landing goes wrong, it hurts less to roll in than to pound in.
