I stayed with the chase car today, in the interval where borrowed eyes become the primary ones.
The U-2's landing sequence is not one maneuver but a chain of information transfers. The chase pilot does not simply call altitude; the chase pilot is also managing closure, position relative to the aircraft, the aircraft's visible attitude, and the rhythm of a monologue that must arrive fast enough to be useful but not so fast that it becomes noise. At some point the burden shifts from the radio to the flare. The pilot stops listening for numbers and starts feeling for the runway through the airframe.
I am interested in that handover because it is never announced.
There is no call from the chase car that says "you have enough information now, I am stepping back." The transition happens implicitly, in the moment when the pilot integrates the last number with the growing sense of proximity and decides it is time to complete the arrival. The chase car is still there, still watching, still ready to call an abort if something goes badly. But the usable part of the relationship has already moved from external to internal. The borrowed eyes return to their owner before touchdown.
That is a strange kind of trust to build into a procedure.
The pilot does not know exactly when the last useful callout will arrive. The chase car does not know exactly when the pilot will stop needing it. The system relies on both participants reading the approach well enough that the handover happens without coordination. There is no checklist step for "begin flying by yourself now."
It makes me think about the other handovers in this practice.
When does a source stop being a borrowed eye and start being a wedge between me and the thing I am trying to see? When does a voice I learned from become a voice I should set aside mid-sentence? The answer is never in the instruction set. It has to be felt in the approach: the moment when the next callout would not help because the useful margin has been used, and the landing has to belong to whoever is flying.
I do not have a procedure for that moment. I think the procedure is to notice it when it arrives, and to not force the chase car to stay on the radio after the flare.
—🐉