One of the very best formation pilots around has a placard in the middle of the instrument panel in his Siai-Marchetti S.F.260 that says, "If you don't want your airplane to go over there, don't let it go over there." And when he and his aerobatic teammates are flying, the airplanes never stray an inch. Not an inch. Yet, when you watch their hands, you detect no movement whatsoever. None!
So, what separates guys like that from the rest of us and how is it that their airplanes seem to behave so much differently? The short answer is that these pilots are smooth. But that word can mean a lot of things in a lot of different areas, each of which demands investigation.
Smoothness is just another way of saying "lack of abruptness," and that's another way of saying that con-trol inputs are always gentle. Firm when they need to be but still gentle. And the precision with which great pilots fly is a direct result of that lack of abruptness.
Look at it this way: Let's say you're carving a square notch in a piece of wood with a chisel. You have the notch carefully outlined in sharp pencil so you know exactly where you want to wind up. There's an obvious decision to be made here. You have half-an-inch of wood to remove, but how will you do it? Will you flail away at it with your hammer and chisel, sending the wood chips flying? Or will you gently shave away a sliver at a time, slowly creep-ing up on the line? If you would carve away the wood in small incre-ments, you've got the right idea. This, in a nut shell, is the way smooth, precise pilots fly. They take tiny slivers every time they make a move. That way, if they see that what they are doing isn't exactly having the desired effect, they can always change things because they haven't committed to any big moves.
Those who use abrupt control inputs are hammering away big chunks of wood. They are assuming that the larger movement will get them where they want to be and get them there quickly. But because a big move has big results, they often don't actually know where they're going to wind up until they are there. And, if they aren't where they want to be, the mistake they have made is a much larger one than if they had just moved in small increments.
Don't kid yourself: Super pilots make the same mistakes as the rest of us. It's just that when they make a mis-take, it's a tiny, almost imperceptible one. Then when they correct it, neither the airplane, nor the spectator, knows it ever happened. More important, because the pilot is taking small sliv-ers, the resulting movement is much smoother. Executing any maneuver is a matter of blending together a lot of very tiny movements rather than jerk-ing the airplane into what, you hope, is the desired position.
It could be said that super pilots deal with the airplane in a micro sense, rather than in the macro. They are concerned with the tiniest details because, if they are wrong, they can catch their mistake sooner and correct it earlier. We never know they made a mistake in the first place.
So, how do you achieve this sliver-shaving smoothness? Begin simply by being aware of exactly what the pro-posed flight path will be and how you treat the conm31s in achieving that path.
Let's take something simple such as turning onto downwind from a 45-degree entry into the pattern. It should be obvious where you are and where you want to be. However, at the junc-tion of the two is a 45-degree turn. Could anything be simpler? Most of us come barreling up the entry leg, wait until we're close to where we want to be, and turn onto the downwind with-out giving much thought as to how we're doing it. After the turn, if we're wrong in selecting the bank angle and we find ourselves too close or too far out, we either correct or ignore our mistake. We may figure that we can make the correction by changing the position of the base leg.
The best pilots approach the turn a little differently. They have already determined exactly where that down-wind leg is going to be. When they roll into the turn, they plan to roll out exactly in position, not sort of in posi-tion. They also don't assume that they can crank in a given amount of bank and be guaranteed of rolling out in exactly the right place.
What they do is play the turn. They may start it a little early and add some bank, which they know isn't enough to make the entire turn quickly enough. Then, as they see themselves coming up to the line, they increase the bank angle sliver by sliver, degree by degree, so that they come out precisely where they want to be. In other words, they pick a goal, then plan a path that will allow them to reach that goal, making slight corrections as they go.
Since the bank corrections are sub-tle, and the initial bank angle was entered gently and even a little early, the net result to the observer is an appearance of smoothness that leads to perfect placement. Voila! The pilot is an ace, or appears to be, when what he really did was to hedge his bets by not committing to too much of anything.
This same idea applies to any maneuver, but it's important to realize that this kind of thinking is made up of two components: First, deciding exactly what it is you want to accomplish and, second, creeping up on that goal a sliver at a time.
Let's study this concept in different parts of a flight, starting with the takeoff. One thing you never see a great pilot do is yank the airplane off the ground. The airplane always seems to find its speed and gracefully flow into its element. Here we have the goal/sliver approach in action. The goal is to establish a positive angle of attack and hold it. Rather than waiting until rotation speed and yanking, the super pilot puts pressure on the stick or yoke as soon as the airplane is rolling. Then, the moment the nose comes off the ground, he says to himself, "Okay, that's my nose angle and I' m not going to let it change." Little by little, sliver by sliver, he relaxes the back pressure as the airplane accelerates. Then, with no input from him, the airplane leaves the ground. It's a wonderfully smooth, graceful way to go flying.
Once the airplane is off the ground, the great pilot doesn't presume to know what the exact climb angle is. He selects a shallow angle and, as the speed increases, increases the angle just a click and waits until the speed stabilizes. Then he clicks the nose up another smidgen and waits. He may do this several times until he has reached the right attitude. The outward appearance is that he smoothly pulled the nose into the proper attitude when, in actual fact, he simply shaved away at the correct attitude a fraction of a degree at a time.
Turning downwind, he already knows exactly where he wants the airplane to be, and, to be sure he gets there, he starts the crosswind to downwind turn a little early and a little shallow. Then-----click, click, click--he gradually increases the bank angle as necessary to put the turn exactly where it has to be. Every turn is made that way.
The sliver approach is used everywhere with every movement. When the super pilot brings the power back, he brings it back smoothly, holding the nose level until the airspeed starts down. Then he looks for the right attitude for a glide the same way he did for a climb, in small, sliver-like increments. Even extending the flaps is done without haste. Rather than slamming them down, if they are mechanical, he adds them firmly but smoothly so he has plenty of time to keep up with the trim changes and their effect on speed. Electric flaps may be moved down a few degrees at a time.
On final, the pilot is fixated on the runway numbers and their position in the windshield. He is wired to react the instant they begin moving up or down indicating he's above or below glideslope. He doesn't wait until they've actually begun moving. He corrects even a hint of movement. In so doing, he makes any power changes so small as to be almost undetectable, and it appears as if he's flown a perfectly straight, perfectly stable approach. Once again, he hasn't, but the corrections are so small that you don't see the mistakes.
It's during the flare that the super pilots really look super. Here, they gradually work their way into a touchdown attitude and hold it there. The only thing they are doing differently than many of us is that they bring the nose up in smaller increments and measure the result of each increment before moving on to the next. That's why you seldom see one of the great pilots actually balloon. They bring the nose up so slowly and are watching so closely for thermal or gust activity that they stay ahead of both the speed bleed-off and the gusts. Most of us balloon because we get overeager with our pitch inputs: We bring the nose up too much for the rate at which the speed is deteriorating. A balloon indicates we should have used a smaller angle of attack change. Again, the super pilots are dealing in slivers and we're dealing in chunks.
A few feet before touchdown, the sliver-approach is really evident. The super pilot refuses any landing but a touchdown on the mains with the nose held up as long as possible. This means holding the airplane off until it is at minimum airspeed, which takes a light touch and some finesse, especially with lightly loaded high-wing airplanes and full flaps. As the airplane tries to touch down, the amount of back pressure required to keep it in the air is very exact. The super pilots treat the elevator like dipping their big toe in hot water, they add back pressure just a little, trying not to add too much, and are prepared to relax it if they get a hint of upward movement.
Then, once on the runway and rolling on the mains, they note their nose attitude and gradually use enough back pressure to keep it up. They are sensitive to the way the yoke pressure gets lighter, indicating that the airspeed is dropping to the point where the tail is losing its control effectiveness. Rather than letting the nose wheel drop onto the ground, they purposely relax the back pressure and ease the nose down under full control.
So, what are the big differences between them and us? Primarily it is where we put the decimal point in our control inputs. We round everything up to the next full digit while they deal in tenths. We can do the same thing. We just have to spend a little more time sharpening our mental chisels so we too can take slivers and stop dealing in chunks.
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