Landing – Segment Info improved

The “land” segment (created by CloudAhoy’s auto segmentation) is short in time but crucially important for evaluating the quality of the landing, especially in cases of incident investigation.

In our latest release we improved the Segment Info of the “land” segment (working with a customer who was investigation an incident – thank you!).

The Segment Info of the “land” segment is especially valuable if the flight was logged with an EFIS, for example imported from Garmin G1000, because the data includes Pitch and Normal Acceleration data (G) – in addition to the IAS which is always available with CloudAhoy.

A story told in three graphs
The screenshot below is of C172 flight imported from Garmin G1000. By clicking the  icon on the “land” segment, we get three graphs of the landing segment: IAS (top graph), Pitch, and Normal Acceleration (bottom). Note the brown landing segment in the 2D view (bottom right). The graphs tell a story:

 

• The graphs’ crosshair indicates the exact time of touchdown, when the G was at a minimum.
• The magnitude of the G graph at touchdown indicates an acceptable landing: neither a “greaser” nor a hard landing.
• The plane touched down at 5-6° pitch; only the two main wheels touched the ground.
• After the initial touchdown, the pitch gradually decreased to 0° in about 4 seconds. Note the G graph when the pitch reached 0°: it shows the nose wheel touching the ground, and doing it softly.
• Zooming on the 2D view, the pilot touched down and remained on the centerline.

The information is especially valuable for analyzing hard landings and porpoising:

• In hard landings, you will see a sharp spike in the Normal Acceleration (G) graph.
• In porpoising, you will see fluctuations in the pitch attitude, as well as positive and negative spikes in the Normal Acceleration. The minima indicate touchdowns, and the maxima mark the top of the bounce.

If Normal Acceleration and Pitch are not available, we display only the IAS graph.