Insights

What every student should know

Friends often ask me how I keep coming up with such stuff. I tell them that I have an extremely fertile mind, because I spent most of my life flying below, in, or above the clouds, including one year flying helicopters for the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam. That gave me a totally different perspective on aviation and life in general. My friends' imaginations are restricted because they spent most their life working in an office (yuck!) or flying only for an airline paycheck.

The initial reaction of the instructors whom I hire is probably one of disbelief. "What planet does this guy come from?" I sing songs, teach them how to talk "pilot," and keep the flight instruments covered.

Waltzing Matilda is a song that sets the tempo for performing coordination rolls -- incorrectly call dutch rolls by some. They demonstrate the airplane's personality -- the relationship between the airplane's rudder, elevator, and aileron control pressures. If those pressures are equal, the airplane's called a pilot's airplane, because it's a pleasure to fly.

While climbing after takeoff, I'll ask the instructor to tell me what he's doing. "Climbing, what do you think I'm doing?" Sorry, pal, but the correct answer is "Taking 'er up." I do the same when doing maneuvers ("wringing 'er out"), during the initial descent ("taking 'er down"), and during the landing approach after flaps and landing gear have been extended ("bringing 'er in").

Falaba, however, is what I say to pilots who fly mechanically and have never mastered the true art of flying. They are totally dependent on the flight instruments, which means they were hoodwinked, robbed, and snookered during initial flight training.

Feel the airplane means just that: acceleration, deceleration, pitching, rolling, yawing, G-load, and flight control pressures -- particularly aileron pressures for airspeed. Your body reacts to airplane movement, of which you must be constantly aware in addition to control pressures. They are direct indications of what the airplane is doing.

To do that, however, you must be very relaxed, so here's a tip for student pilots: If you have anxiety or some other concern about flying, tell your instructor immediately. A good instructor will stop everything and attempt to eliminate that problem. To ignore it creates an everlasting handicap that will severely affect your progress and your ability to learn the art of flying. Such a problem does not mean that you're an oddball. It's a situation that occurs frequently, so don't try to hide it. Speak up and put it behind you.

I remember one student who was truly afraid of flying. She feared that the airplane would literally fall out of the air if she did something wrong. I told her to watch what I was going to demonstrate and remember that we would be safe at all times. When trimmed for slow-cruise flight, I put the airplane into an aggressive climbing turn and then let go of the controls. After several pitch oscillations, the airplane slowly returned to level flight. I then entered an aggressive descending turn in the opposite direction and let go of the controls. With this practical understanding of airplane stability, her anxiety vaporized; she relaxed; and she earned her pilot certificate.

Listen to the airplane means listening to airflow and engine noise. In particular, you must know how the engine sounds when at idle with a windmilling propeller and when just enough power is added so that the engine is turning the propeller -- the proper power setting for a power-on landing approach.

Students who always set a specific rpm on the tachometer are the ones who think that one airplane lands better than another when both airplanes are identical. Tachs are not that accurate at low rpm, but engine noise is -- yes, you can hear engine noise while wearing a headset, even a noise-cancelling headset in most cases.

Become a part of the airplane means to feel as if the wing spars are attached to your shoulder blades. Listen to the airplane, feel the airplane, and smoothly place the wings and throttle where they belong while using outside-the-cockpit visual references. Now you're an aviator, not an airplane driver.

Ralph Butcher, a retired United Airlines captain, is the chief flight instructor at a California flight school. He has been flying since 1959 and has 25,000 hours in fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft. Visit his Web site.