And if we are all paying attention 100% of the time this normally works :roll:
Glenn
Yeah, and it's that 100% thing that gets you. 99.5% will get you in trouble!
During my tailwheel training, my CFI was a bit bored and frustrated, because other than my very first landing (which was with about a 5-knot crosswind), I was having zero issues. We even talked about it after one of the sessions, with him speculating that my helicopter background had "trained my feet" and it was just a matter of "waking them up again"... He even talked about the fact that he would sign me off right then and there, except for the fact that he really wanted to see me recover from a bad landing before he would be really comfortable turning me loose.
So on our very next flight, he took advantage of the fact that there was a really cool Hatz biplane holding short of the runway as we were landing. He set me up by starting a conversation about that plane, mentioning that he had built a good bit of it before selling to the current owner, who finished it. Then he talked about the Rotec radial engine the guy had tried to use, but removed in favor of a Lycoming because the early Rotecs required a partial tear-down after every 40-50 hours, and what a great job the guy had done on the airplane, and how well it flew... (You have a LOT of time when you're in a 90-mph max cruise airplane, entering the pattern behind a Cirrus who flew a 3-mile final approach...)
Anyway, when it was just about time to flare he said "Hey, that's old 'so-and-so' flying it!" I started to turn my head and look, realized that was STUPID and re-focused on the landing... But that distraction was just enough to get me behind the airplane, and I did the only "bounced" landing I had during training... I got it down and under control after that one bounce, but now the airplane was headed 30º off runway, directly for one of the runway lights...
Well, let's just say that we didn't hit anything, and we didn't run off the runway, but both the landing gear and pilot got a bit of a workout... And I learned that the "sterile cockpit" rule is there for a reason. And my CFI learned that I could recover from a botched landing. LOL
Since then, my powers of concentration have improved dramatically.