Learning to fly, or thinking of learning? Post your questions, comments and experiences here

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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1884852
T6Harvard wrote:so I can achieve something positive before Christmas :)

The time will come, when you look back and realise that you were achieving lots of positive things all along.
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By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1884853
TopCat wrote:
T6Harvard wrote:so I can achieve something positive before Christmas :)

The time will come, when you look back and realise that you were achieving lots of positive things all along.


:sunny:
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1884866
T6Harvard wrote:
TopCat wrote:
T6Harvard wrote:so I can achieve something positive before Christmas :)

The time will come, when you look back and realise that you were achieving lots of positive things all along.


:sunny:

I think we underestimate the immensity of the process of learning to fly. We didn't spend hundreds of thousands of years, evolving to ride the air in three dimensions. That is a new thing in the history of our species.

Some of us come to it young, when we have little self-awareness. For some that's a huge advantage, for others not. Some of us come to it when we've already lived, and the desire to fly forces its way in through all the barriers erected by life.

Some of us struggle, some of us find it easy. We all have the flying in common. Those of us that have trodden a little further along the path can pick out the important things experienced by others, that we missed entirely at the time.

Nothing of others' experiences takes away from the need for every aspiring pilot to experience the learning process for themselves.

And so it goes. You'll get to the next stage, and the one after that.

But get used to the fact that you'll never arrive. And that that is not a bad thing.
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By lobstaboy
#1884914
TopCat wrote:I understand that it's a shorthand, but I also hate references to 'inertia' as if they explain anything.


It's not short hand!!! It's physics. Newton's laws of motion are explaining inertia. That's what F=MA explains. It's why you need a force to cause an acceleration.
You can't understand how it works without the concept of inertia - that and angle of attack are the two key things that you need to have any real understanding of how an aeroplane flies.
Having said that, your explanation is perfectly fine, but actually to make sense of it you are assuming the reader understands inertia and what it means.

Anyway I'm not going to discuss this further on here - it won't be helpful to anyone grappling with how to fly :) and we don't think about it while we're doing it. But seriously - Langeweische explains it very well.
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By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1884919
Langeweische explains a few things quite differently to the current manuals and I have got a lot of insight from S&R. I am a big fan.
Funny how just a sentence can suddenly provide a light bulb moment.

Thanks to everyone who recommended Stick and Rudder!
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1884944
lobstaboy wrote:
TopCat wrote:I understand that it's a shorthand, but I also hate references to 'inertia' as if they explain anything.

It's not short hand!!! It's physics. Newton's laws of motion are explaining inertia. That's what F=MA explains. It's why you need a force to cause an acceleration.
You can't understand how it works without the concept of inertia

Yes of course :)

I should have been clearer: my point was that referring to inertia on its own doesn't explain anything.

You said this:
lobstaboy wrote:Inertia means it takes a few seconds for the aeroplane to adjust it's airspeed (crucially by losing height more rapidly).

It's true, of course, and I understand why it's true. But unless someone already understands that inertia is
a property of matter by which it continues in its existing state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless that state is changed by an external force.

, saying "because inertia" isn't enough.

I've taught this stuff to kids for decades, and by talking about friction-free movement (spaceships far out in space, or skates on ice), it's quite easy to get them away from the notion that you have to keep pushing something to keep it moving. From there, the concept of unbalanced forces comes fairly naturally, and once they're happy with the fairly intuitive idea that the more mass, the less acceleration for a given force, you're pretty much there, and it's ok to say that "inertia is the word we use to refer to this property of matter".

We're not disagreeing at all about the mechanics, just what's more and less helpful to people learning it.
By tcc1000
#1885021
I've been reading through the last few posts - I just wanted to add a few thoughts following on from having reduced power to idle, but keeping your hand on the throttle. There are a couple of mistakes you can recover from with a longer runway (and a bit of experience).

One is if you bounce off the main wheels. This is caused by rounding out too slowly - not reducing your descent rate so that rather than fly along the runway (or stay on it when you touched) you have too much vertical speed which causes the bounce. Your instructor may have told you to go around in this instance (which is perfectly reasonably advice). But you can recover the landing by immediately adding power to stabilise the aircraft before reducing it again on a 2nd attempt: if your airspeed was right, but vertical speed wasn't (causing the bounce) then the ensuing short climb will lose airspeed and you are likely to sink back to the ground too quickly. The power will both help keep you away from the stall and arrest the 2nd descent (don't push the nose down, but you can counteract the power couple). You can pull the power back again as you near the ground for the 2nd time.
Don't bother trying this on a short runway, just go around. And don't bounce more than once.

A bounce off the nose wheel should (nearly) always result in a go around - it's much harder to control - see the videos on pilot induced oscillation. I've only added the word nearly because there may be rare scenarios where a go around isn't possible for some reason (like engine failure).

The other common mistake (for me at least) was to round out too high. Again you have decaying airspeed and want to avoid the stall, so adding power is a necessity. It may be harder to recover this one - but it depends a lot on exactly how high (and again how much runway length you have).

Some aircraft do prefer a bit of throttle left on during landing, not that I've tried one yet (some Robins, flight design CT). Remember that you pitch for airspeed and use throttle to adjust descent rate. Best example was a demo I had of the Pipistrel Alpha - as soon as you extended the (tiny) airbrakes, it's sink rate shot right up and a lot of throttle was needed to counteract it (well some of it - getting some sink is the point of extending them in the first place!)
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By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1885391
Well what a day for a lesson - snow on the ground, temp below zero. Surely it's a no-go?
Rang the airfield, CFI asked my new Instructor and he said it's flyable, the snow is dry, no slush and he'd brushed the a/c down in readiness.

I got my flight bag sorted, spent 20mins clearing ice and snow off the car, and made the very scenic journey to the airfield.

On arrival I did think the greatest hazard was the ice-covered path to the office!

All looked very lovely but absolutely no sign of the taxiway or runway. Hmmmm. What to do? Luckily CFI was landing back so he kindly put wheel tracks on centreline, or so he said :lol:

The walk round was perishingly cold, esp when checking leading edges for ice :shock:
At least the jump up to tanks was made easier by a small pyramid of snow to stand on for an extra boost.

We pushed her to refuel, taking a run up to get over the aforementioned snow bank :lol:

So, another first....
Used 10° of flap to get off sooner.
Instructor was correct, the snow was dry, take off run was straightforward, climbout speed was easier to attain and hold with the first stage of flap in. First climb I let the nose drop a teeny bit on flap retraction but on subsequent goes the procedure was smooooth.

Got to Base turn and couldn't pick put out the runway! All snowy ground looked the same!! Spotted hangars, worked backwards and eventually got it.

Messed up turn to Final, was too high and too far right. So I did a couple of S turns and got lined up in good time*. A small prompt that I was a bit low just before the fence (too high, too low, come on?!), corrected, pulled the power just where threshold probably was, slight back pressure, saw the runway coming up, raised nose steadily, gently touched down :mrgreen: . Flaps back to 10°, full power, snow no problem, off we went again.
*We had a laugh about the sightseeing tour on my first Approach :roll:

5 more circuits, with much better Approaches. Good advice about target height at a landmark on run in helped hone them.

All decent landings, although one I started the flare too high and had to ease off for a second.
No balloons, no thuds, what a difference!

I think it's fair to say that my new Instructor was pleasantly surprised and I was too :mrgreen:

And I've achieved another ambition, to fly over snow. Landing on snow was a bonus.
Image
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By Jammy888
#1885393
Sounds amazing T6,

I’m glad to see you progressing!

I’ve had time off and I am finally getting ramped up again!

QXC Wednesday. Let’s hope this weather clears up.

Ps. I’m still waiting for my cake :)
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By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1885398
@Jammy888, yes it's been a long road...

I fetched cake in but you have to be quick round there! I'll take some in before Christmas :D

Good luck Wednesday. I think the forecast is OK?
By Jammy888
#1885399
I know that feeling.

COVID and a few other bits and bobs have pushed me back :(

Yes, I heard about it. I was told some was left for me but I believe the mystical pixies helped themselves….

Praying for clear skies! I’ll be keeping a keen eye overnight!
By jcal
#1885518
Wow, I would not have imagined the day would've been a go looking at that picture! But very cool to see it worked out better than good!

Beautiful sights, but I would've been terrified not knowing where the runway is :shock:..
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By T6Harvard
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1885522
I had a blast. Seems a bit surreal atm. Couldn't have imagined I'd be landing at all this time last year, nevermind in the snow :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1885532
The bit that encourages me most of all from your account of this session is this:
Messed up turn to Final, was too high and too far right. So I did a couple of S turns and got lined up in good time*. A small prompt that I was a bit low just before the fence (too high, too low, come on?!), corrected, pulled the power just where threshold probably was, slight back pressure, saw the runway coming up, raised nose steadily, gently touched down

This tells me that you're actually seeing what's going on, and controlling the aeroplane to make it do what you want.

Making it happen intentionally is very different from having it happen accidentally, as a by-product of doing a specified set of things, in a particular order, at particular times.

It's a subtle but important distinction.

Nicely done. :thumright:
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