Being a flight instructor isn’t easy. Nor is it glamorous. And it’s not likely to make the instructor rich. In the rush to get students over the pilot certificate hurdle, an instructor might inadvertently skip something that may be important to you sometime in your flying career—or important on every flight. So, to help your instructor and make sure you’re getting the entire menu of things that should be learned, here’s a checklist of some of the more important items that should be mentioned almost every time you’re in the air—but often aren’t.
1. P-factor
If your airplane has a propeller, it has p-factor—asymmetric thrust produced by the downward-moving propeller blade, most notable at high angles of attack. Maybe a Cessna 172 doesn’t make your right leg tremble on climbout, but p-factor is there nonetheless. The laws of physics dictate its presence. However, designers have worked their aerodynamic magic so that it’s barely noticeable in modern airplanes. But it’s still there, trying to turn the airplane left on climb. The skid ball’s off-center indication verifies that. If the ball isn’t centered in the climb, the airplane is yawing, and that’s costing horsepower in the form of increased drag.
2. Rudder/aileron timing
The designers also have reduced adverse yaw, which is present during the act of rolling into or out of a bank. In normal flight—meaning situations that don’t require quick, extreme control movements—many modern aircraft can be flown with your feet flat on the floor, although they shouldn’t be. Every time the ailerons demand the airplane roll fast, because they’ve been displaced a lot, you’ll see the ball roll well off center—rudder is needed. The same thing happens at high angles of attack, as when slowing to land. To reduce it to an aeronautical platitude: If the aileron is displaced, rudder should be used. When established in the turn, nothing should be displaced and the ball will be centered. This is basic flight instruction, but it often is forgotten after the initial solos. A good instructor talks about this from day one.
3. Scanning the windshield/panel
Any time you’re off the ground, your eyes should be rhythmically working their way across the windshield and back across the panel. The scan should never stop because the second you fixate on one thing (altitude, nose attitude, runway position, checkpoint, et cetera), the others will drift off. Keep the eyes moving and mentally catalog the information they are gathering in.
4.Nose attitude control
Nose attitude control is an extension of the windshield/panel scan. In this case, the nose attitude is the determining factor in setting the airspeed, while the airspeed indicator itself is used for fine-tuning the nose attitude. This is especially true on final. Set the nose attitude, check the airspeed, adjust the attitude, recheck the airspeed. Do not chase the airspeed with the nose. Ratchet it into position by moving the nose, checking, and repeating as necessary. Some instructors will cover the airspeed indicator during approaches to force the student to concentrate just on the nose.
5. Need for precision
It has been said that flying is an art, which makes it sound as if there’s latitude for creativity, but there really isn’t any numerical latitude. The art is in the style of execution. There’s a reason the numbers in the pilot operating handbook exist. There’s a reason we’re surrounded by altitudes, headings, bank angles, and the like—all of which are defined by numbers. None of those numbers is arbitrary. They are the direct result of engineering and design, and verified via flight test. So, for instance, when someone says approach speed is 74 to 78 knots, that’s their interpretation, not the POH’s. Engineering test flights found the airplane performs various tasks at specific speeds. To be at either side of those speeds makes for a less-efficient airplane. The same thing holds true for just about everything in the airplane. So, yes, flying should be seen as an art, but a very precise art. And, yes, things such as approach speed are affected by load, temperature, what we had for lunch, and everything else, but that doesn’t mean we should get within four knots of a given number and call it good enough. We should try for the exact number, knowing that no matter how hard we try, we’re always going to be off a few knots. This is a mindset, not a skill, and learning it should start the first time you get into the airplane—and continue until the examiner says you’re good to go. It should stay with you the rest of your flying career.
6. The place for slips
The forward slip, as opposed to the sideslip necessary in crosswind landings, has one primary use and that is to control (steepen) the glidepath. As such, it can be the sharpest tool in the pilot’s box that lets him thread a needle on final and fine-tune the touchdown point. Some airplanes slip better than others, but all will allow steepening the glide angle to one degree or another. A properly planned approach won’t need a slip to put the airplane where the pilot wants, but if things are not quite right, the slip can make the difference and should be part of everyday training.
7. Striving for “pretty” landings
There are landings, good landings, and great landings. The difference between them often is the result of different personal attitudes about how a landing should be conducted and how it should look. It is a thing of beauty to see an airplane gracefully touch down on the mains and roll along, nosewheel off the runway for a few seconds, before it is lowered on purpose. An airplane that simply arrives and plops onto the runway displays no effort on the part of the pilot to create a landing of note. That, in turn, forces us to degrade that particular pilot in our arrival rating scale (see “On the Numbers,” February 2015 Flight Training).
8. Stylish takeoffs
Flight training seldom stresses the advantages to be found in graceful maneuvering. This is especially true when it comes to the lowly takeoff (see “Trading Ground for Sky,” January 2015 Flight Training). There is nothing prettier than watching an airplane roll on its mains, nosegear just off the ground, and then it floats into the air when it finds a speed it is happy with. There is nothing quite as ugly as the same airplane rocketing down the runway to be jerked off the runway at a speed that may or may not be right. The nose-slightly-off-the-ground takeoff compensates for everything having to do with density altitude and yields a flying airplane that is guaranteed to have a good rate of climb. An airplane that is yanked off the runway may not be ready to fly, so why take the gamble?
9. Situational awareness
Some folks seem to have a GPS and a bunch of rear-view mirrors built into their head: They always know where they are and what’s happening around them. Others make one 90-degree turn and are instantly lost. And when traffic is called out they don’t know where to look. There is one primary way to create situational awareness within a brain that doesn’t naturally have it: Continually ask yourself where you are and what is around you. When in flight training, the instructor can help by periodically asking where the airport is, or work with you to develop ways to find traffic. The goal is for you to always have a constantly updated map in your head that shows where you’re going, where you’ve been, and where the airplanes are around you. Another method is to think outside-in. Instead of thinking of your position in terms of left and right, think more in terms of where someone would see you on a map—east of the river, west of the airport, and so on. Training your brain to think in these terms will ultimately make figuring out the steps to get you where you need to be much easier.
10. Controlling the wind: Reading the sock versus reality
Too many pilots are afraid of wind. And that can be an instructor’s fault. At the same time, too many pilots let the wind fly their airplane, rather than having complete control of it themselves. This helps breed that fear. In almost all cases, the fear is based on lack of exposure and understanding. People learn to fly in places such as Oklahoma, where high winds are so prevalent that local pilots are only half-joking when they say they use log chains for windsocks. Yet western student pilots don’t avoid winds. They just learn to handle them because they have no choice. At the same time they learn to decode the wind by the way the windsock and flags behave. They quickly learn that some seemingly identical winds possess entirely different traits. Some are easily handled. Some are to be avoided. Steady, but strong wind can be easier to handle than calmer, more unpredictable gusts, for example. This is something that flight instructors should stress with students continuously and should have them out on the rough days as well as the nice ones.
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