Always learning

With her playing the role of air traffic control, the clearance would allow me to descend to within 700 feet of the surface referencing only the flight instruments and the CDI—no outside references allowed. So, I toggled through menus on the GPS, activated the approach, and turned my attention back to the instruments. But something had changed.

The magenta needle had drifted one dot right, my heading 15 degrees left. Naively hoping to correct the error before my instructor noticed, I started a gentle correction to the right.

“Watch your needles,” she said, pointing at my still-errant CDI.

I was fixing it, I wanted to argue. But I wasn’t. If I were fixing it, it would have been fixed. Instead, I’d turned to my original heading, flying parallel to the approach course but not on it. And, since I’d never said my intentions out loud, it wasn’t clear to her if that slow right turn was correction or wandering.

In our debrief after that instrument proficiency check, my CFI urged me to say what I’m doing—out loud. That way she’d know when I was correcting and could observe my thought processes for briefing the approach and configuring the airplane. Plus, the skill of verbalizing my actions would come in handy on future checkrides.

“You’re going to go for your CFI, right?” (CFIs love to give this gentle nudge—of course you are.) Instructors need to explain what they’re doing while they’re doing it, which is a complex skill set involving proficiency in the maneuver itself, an understanding of the steps required, and divided attention between performing the maneuver and coherently describing it.

Each declaration we make is an assertion that we know what’s happening and are taking charge.Even though I’m not (yet) pursuing my flight instructor certificate, these are all good reasons to verbalize my actions during every flight. My callouts when I’m task saturated tend to devolve into disjointed partial sentences or taper out completely; if I can’t clearly articulate what I’m doing, it’s a likely cue I’m not performing that task to the standard I should. Clear communication demands clear thinking, so saying it out loud even when no one is in the right seat helps me clarify for myself precisely what I should be doing.

That clarity helps when it’s tempting to fall into halfhearted corrections, noncommittal drifting, or maybe-no-one-will-notice hedging. Even on track and in level flight, flying isn’t a passive endeavor. Each declaration we make is an assertion that we know what’s happening, have identified the correct action to take, and are taking charge to execute it.

I am working on more consistently talking through my actions, from preflight through shutdown. While checking fuel and oil levels during preflight, reciting the quantity out loud helps me process the number and commit it to memory. On climbout, calling out altitudes approaching level-off keeps me from overshooting, and then running through the cruise checklist out loud gives me the assurance that the flight is on track and under control. My landings are best when I talk through flap and power settings throughout the traffic pattern and verbalize my corrections on the approach.

This is all easier without an audience. But the more I make a habit of talking to myself on routine flights, the easier it will be to do so with an instructor or examiner watching. And, however silly it might feel to treat my passengers to a running commentary of every switch I flip, I think they’ll appreciate the insight into what’s happening on the flight.

And, the next time I drift off course on an instrument approach, I promise to fess up and fix it. FT