Middle Son has launched a campaign to convince me to take up soaring. He quickly realized that I’m a pushover on the issue. I’d love to do it. In fact, I have a few lessons recorded in my logbook, but that was a long time ago, and each flight lasted precisely 12 minutes, which is how long it took to get towed to a couple thousand feet, release, and in the total absence of any thermal activity, glide back down to a landing.
Serious soaring has been on my to-do list for some time, and I’m happy to hear that my son is interested as well. He’s looking at it as a different form of flying that is pure sport and totally fun. There’s another aspect to learning to soar that I know both of us would appreciate, and that is the heightened skill level it would foster in our powered-airplane piloting. Whether it’s aggressive aileron (spoiler)-rudder coordination, a working knowledge of micrometeorology, or seat-of-the-pants sensitivity to energy management, soaring holds lots of lessons for those of us who fill our tanks with fuel for the engine instead of water for ballast.
In fact, it’s difficult to say which is better in the long run: the fun and challenge of learning to fly a new and completely different kind of craft, or what the experience does to improve your normal flying.
I had typical early flying experiences—training in Piper Cherokees, followed by checkouts and flight time in a variety of simple and complex singles. My first departure from the norm was flying a Piper J–3 Cub. It was great fun to fly, and it revealed to me the same valuable stick-and-rudder insights that it has given thousands of pilots over the decades. The Cub taught me how to fly by feel. It wasn’t necessary to stare at the airspeed and turn and bank indicators to figure out if I was fast or slow, coordinated or not.
The Cub also was my first exposure to the tailwheel and all that it can teach a trike pilot about precise aircraft control in the last phases of the landing sequence.
The next excursion away from the centerline was ultralight flying. With an empty weight of about 250 pounds, no instruments, and no cockpit enclosure, this was a completely different flying experience. Takeoff and landing distances were measured in yards instead of hundreds of feet. Cruise altitude was anything that topped the highest trees in the immediate vicinity. Almost everything about it, including how to fly it, was completely different from anything I had experienced up to that point.
The lack of traditional airplane surroundings, references, and sensations initially was disconcerting, but learning to fly the alien ultralight enhanced my overall flying skills precisely because it was alien. I learned to adapt, to extract specific skills from my repertoire, modify them as needed, and apply them to a feathery-light flying machine.
Next came aerobatic flying. If you haven’t done it, you’ve no doubt read about its beneficial effects on everyday flying. About how it substantially advances a pilot’s ability to precisely maneuver an aircraft about all three axes. About how it bolsters confidence because you realize that it is possible to recover from almost any attitude—and, even more important, maintain control to keep a nonaerobatic airplane from ever ending up in an unusual attitude.
I learned that it is all true. I’ll never forget leaving the aerobatic school on the third day. The curriculum called for a flight in the morning and a second in the afternoon, with each session bracketed by pre- and postflight briefings. The morning flight had gone well. For the first time, I was able to perform a sequence of aerobatic maneuvers. To a practiced eye it probably wasn’t pretty, but to me it was the most exhilarating bit of flying I had done since soloing. Confidence? Anyone watching me walk to my car that afternoon would have detected a swagger in my step that became more pronounced with each lesson.
I once spent five days in a Robinson R22 helicopter being ferried from the factory in Torrance, California, to Orlando, Florida. I got my fair share of cyclic and collective time during the journey, which was one of the most interesting and memorable that I’ve ever had. I may not have learned to hover, but I learned enough about helicopter flying to understand the advantages of fingertip control; a little goes a long way.
I also gained an appreciation of helicopter pilots’ unique ability to pat their heads and rub their tummies at the same time, which is the only way I know to describe the talent of coordinating cyclic, collective, and anti-torque pedals. An airplane pilot would find such precise multitasking useful in situations such as accepting a late clearance to intercept the ILS, while extending the gear and flaps as you call the tower inbound.
If there is a word that describes the overall benefit that different flying experiences bring to everyday flying, it is precision. That’s why I’d like to see my son indulge his interest in new adventures. Gaining a knowledge of what it takes to fly different types of aircraft will have the effect of improving his ability to more precisely control the fixed-gear single he currently flies, and the complex twins and jets that will likely come later. Whether it’s maintaining a target airspeed, using checklists, or understanding systems, he’ll fly the box better if he occasionally flies outside it.
