Fear of Landing

I have a related question.

I keep having cross landing. I try my best to adjust my direction but most of times I land towards my right hand. Could it be an issue with my lines or leg strap? 

This is a decent little (still current) thread about landing technique and how we think about it and describe it.

Thanks for the help everyone. I’m looking forward to getting my timing dialed. Until the. It’ll be trial and error. (Hopefully no big errors)

5 hours ago, sundevil777 said:

This is a decent little (still current) thread about landing technique and how we think about it and describe it.

 

Thanks for this. It was really helpful. 

6 hours ago, ghostdog said:

I keep having cross landing. I try my best to adjust my direction but most of times I land towards my right hand. Could it be an issue with my lines or leg strap? 

I was doing the exact same thing--actually the exact opposite, as I'd always turn left, and as billvon explained, it was a sub-conscious reach. The neat thing is that this habit (which wasn't easy to stop at all) helped me get the feeling for a more dynamic flare: Since I could not stop myself from the habit of initially reaching down with my left hand, I eventually just noticed that I could easily adjust to correct for it during the flare:
I would unavoidably start turning slightly left, but I'd notice this as soon as it started to happen and I'd immediately adjust by pulling the right toggle slightly further down and noticing how the canopy would straighten out. This showed me how much room and time there actually is during the landing flare, for all kinds of adjustments, and I got more and more sensitive to the feedback from my canopy--noticing subtler and subtler changes in its flight behavior. Eventually, I stopped turning left, not so much because I stopped having the unconscious reaction, but more because--if anything wasn't straight, or if I wasn't at the right height or anything else felt off, I would immediately make tiny adjustments in the flare--this now happens almost automatically, just like your body automatically knows how to make balance adjustments, if you're walking on the grass and your foot lands on a slight angle, etc.: You barely notice this consciously, because it feels so natural. 
The whole thing does get a little more tricky in cross-wind landings when there is some serious wind, though. (and again: I have the feeling that some student canopies just respond a bit more sluggishly, making these adjustments harder to gauge by essentially having a slightly lax interface between pilot and wing)

On 3/27/2019 at 5:27 PM, Justincblount said:

I've done late flares before, you can't really PLF them. You just crash in with your ass and a foot or something. My foot took some massive impact from one, and then from an early flare on the next jump, had me limping the rest of the day. I think it's better to flare early than late if you have a good PLF.

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Just replying to this part of your post.

Sorry to disagree, but you can succesfully PLF any landing. The PLF is meant to distribute the energy from a hard impact, thus preventing or at least limiting damage.

Landing on one's behind (intentionally or not) is an advanced landing technique with, if improperly executed, high risk of damage to the spinal cord.

The trick to a successful PLF is to already assume the PLF-body position when you turn onto final or at ~100 ft at the latest (instead of while you're touching down). That way you have enough time to perform the mental checklist (knees bent, chin on chest etc.) while still keeping an eye out for traffic.