touch and go

a touch and go is NOT a military term for a bad carrier landing as others maintain. there is not a standard term for that as many things can cause it. the two most common problems that cause a pilot to be "waved off" or "go around" are landing long and missing all 3 catch (trip) wires OR not lining up the aircraft up on the carrier decks' center-line, risking a streering/braking contolled-flight-into-terrain (cfit) type accident. by the time you are allowed to play with a $20 million dollar piece of the tax-payers money, you should be past doing a "dolphin" which is when you allow the aircraft to regain sufficient airflow over the wings that is does not stall properly and land. this is usually caused by not holding back on the stick or yoke resulting something akin to dolphins jumping out of the water in a repeated fashion. it can also result from an overreaction to an excessively hard landing. some mistake this for a touch and go. the trained observer can spot the difference in a minute by the control (or lack of thereof) of the aircraft in question. a real touch-and-go is a term used to describe the practicing of repeated take offs and landings; hence, TOUCH down or GO around which is the most physically and coordinationally challenging thing a pilot can do. the flying between points is almost boring after awhile. its mostly procedural if you keep an eye outside the aircraft, one on the weather and one on your basic mechanicals. on touchdowns, you basically are configuring the aircraft to produce a controlled stall. steering is done using your feet while holding the yoke close to you preventing the aircraft from regaining lift. once touching down you seek to maintain operational control of the aircraft and exit the active runway quickly so the next guy can land his aircraft safely. on taking off, you basically have to retain the operational control of the aircraft on the ground and cause it to reach a sufficient velocity for flight (rotation) and once you are airborne, exit the pattern as quickly and safely as possible. sometimes this includes reconfiguring he aircraft, bringing up a landing gear for example. on a go-around, you are practicing an emergency manuever that is basically an aborted landing. there are many reasons this might be required. the trick here is to quickly reconfigure the aircraft from a landing to take-off configuration, while maintaining lift and retaining as much of the (kinetic)energy of the aircraft as possible. you want to transition the aircraft from one trying to lose lift to one trying to regain lift as smoothly and quickly as possible. this helps to keep you from dolphining or crashing among other things. the most common mistake made on a go-around is not bringing the flaps up slowly enough or failing to apply full power soon enough to keep your ass out of a bad situation. once this practice becomes routine, you will become an immensely better and safer pilot. when i dont feel current, the first thing i do is practice my touch-and-gos, especially at night or in the daytime in marginal weather above minimums at a GA airport i'm familiar with to help me keep a comfort level doing basically an unnatural thing, ie flying. flying is a great career and the type of person who reads this site might have what it takes to do this, whether as a military aviator or civilian. its a great adventure, seriously..... also used in the news media to express tentativeness of continued living of a newsworthy person due to accident illness or trauma, as just happened to bob woodward, the abc newsperson in iraq and his cameraman. used in bad tv med or crime dramas too. always spoken melodramatically...