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

Moderator: AndyR

By pipvac
#1911713
Good morning all,

I wanted to share this experience as an attempt to mentally process how to improve, and it is something I keep revisiting in my minds eye.

Soft field take-off. My fourth unassisted take-off (practically a pro now right? :wink: ). Everything up from pre-flight to climb-out has gone rather well. No interventions or corrections from my FI, and I am feeling 'relatively' comfortable.

On climb-out, I have things nicely trimmed, speed is good, heading is ok. There's a 10 degree noise abatement turn, which I start. Suddenly, as the wing lifts for the turn, a crosswind gust pushes the wing up much further, and my FI had to quickly correct as I didn't correct enough. I settle back into the climb and continue on to the training area.

I keep looking back and ask myself why I didn't correct this more quickly myself, and what I could've done differently. I didn't get an feedback on it from my FI. I'm chalking it up to lack of experience and slower reaction time than my FI. But open to counsel if anyone has a view.

The rest of the lesson goes ok, as we practice various stall exercises. Very interesting for me, as I have never experienced anything quite like it. Fun too, once I realised my body, brain and inner ear could cope quite comfortably with everything after the first couple of goes. My inner 'responsible adult' probably cast me a look when I caught myself asking "can we give that one more try please?"

The other plus is that all the in between stuff is beginning to feel a little more automatic (eg getting from A to B, heading and altitude management, engine management and speed), such that it has become 'in between stuff' rather than a point of focus. Don't get me wrong, its still VERY early days (10th hour) and much to do. It was nice feeling all the same.

Cheers everyone!
By rdfb
#1911715
I think reaction time is one of those things that needs time to develop, in the very literal sense of "training" your muscle memory. It's a subconscious thing and impossible to learn without lots of time actually doing. So I wouldn't worry about it.

First, you end up consciously learning what to do with the controls to get what effect you want. In the beginning, you see the aircraft banking too much, think that it's banking too much, consider what you need to do to fix it, and then apply the correction using the controls. Hopefully in the right direction, but at this stage, reaction time is slow and learners haven't necessarily internalised the sense of the controls and so might even correct the wrong way.

In the end, the trained pilot will control the bank angle subconsciously. They will be thinking about the bank angle they want rather than the corrections required. Muscle memory will maintain this without active thought. Reaction times are much faster only because active thought is no longer required. They'll have internalised into muscle memory both the sense of the controls and the magnitude of input required to achieve the desired effect. If a gust happens, they'll correct for it subconsciously before having the time to observe what just happened. After the fact, they might observe the unexpected aileron correction that was (past tense) required to help with further decision making.

My point is that you only get there with practice. There's no other way. You also have to make mistakes in both sense and the amount of correction so that you can calibrate your internal sense of how much correction is needed in different situations. Apart from this, the learning is automatic. So I wouldn't worry about it. It's a matter of time. Keep going!

I'm not an instructor, but I have observed this kind of muscle memory learning in a variety of scenarios. It's pretty well known and understood in skydiving, for example, where your entire body is your control and so there's quite a bit more to do before you can learn any sense of control at all.
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By JAFO
#1911716
I am not a fan of the term "muscle memory" as it's got nothing to do with muscles and little to do with what we routinely think of as memory but @rdfb is right, it comes with time.

At least, after 37 years, I'm hoping it will one day :wink:
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By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1911717
Such an occurence is not unusual especially on a fairly windy day, so it's wise to be expecting such. You probably subconciously were looking to roll back to the angle of bank you had before. In many ways a better strategy is to roll the wings level and then resume the turn from a stable attitude.
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By Mz Hedy
#1911718
Well done on reacting at all. Often student pilots freeze when something like that first happens to them. It reads that a) you reacted and b) you reacted in the correct sense. Well done. It's all part of learning.

I once had an unexpected upset at altitude (wake probably) with a close-to-qualification student and I waited for him to correct - nada! I recall saying to him 'are you going to correct for that or do you want me to <grin>' and looked round to see him grasping the coaming. He's now an experienced pilot with lots of incident-free hours in his logbook.

Don't overthink it and you'll be alright.
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By pipvac
#1911736
johnm wrote:Such an occurence is not unusual especially on a fairly windy day, so it's wise to be expecting such. You probably subconciously were looking to roll back to the angle of bank you had before. In many ways a better strategy is to roll the wings level and then resume the turn from a stable attitude.


Yes. Now you mention it, and with the benefit of hindsight, this is likely to be what I was thinking. Also, I was probably over thinking and not reacting as others have said. I was keen not to violate the noise abatement area, and this will have been upmost in my mind at the time.

Your point about getting back to wings level and then resume the action (if still appropriate) makes a great deal of sense to me. Thank you, and to everyone.
By pipvac
#1911743
I asked about it and he didn't give me a direct answer other than he reacted to the over bank of the aircraft due to a wind gust. There were no pearls of wisdom like the ones offered here.
#1911744
pipvac wrote:I was keen not to violate the noise abatement area, and this will have been upmost in my mind at the time.


Aviate, navigate, communicate.
Always fly the aeroplane first. The noise abatement area can wait until you are confidently back in full control and its doing what you want it to do.
Aeroplanes are controlled gently but they need to understand that you're making the decisions.
And what the others have said - in time it's automatic, you don't need to think about control inputs, you just find you've made the correction.
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#1911800
Like the others have said, it will become automatic with time. I used to be quite similar in gusty conditions but then started to over correct before getting it sort of right.
My last lesson had the wind varying by about +/- 30 degrees from straight down the runway and it was a real test of reactions/corrections but I did it. I wouldn't have been able to do it if I hadn't had previous lessons in similar conditions but with the occasional input from the FI. Don't beat yourself up, just try to learn from it. Maybe a flight doing lots of switching from one bank angle to the opposite might get you used the control required, maybe just flights in gusty conditions will, but you will get there.
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By Flyin'Dutch'
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1911812
When we first learn to fly/drive we learn that action A results in outcome B; 1:1. We start off in calm predictable conditions.

What happened during your flight was that action A did not result in outcome because of influence C.

As time goes on you will learn that to achieve outcome B you sometimes need input A but more often it has to be input A plus/minus variable X.

That will become an automatic adjustment without conscious effort.

How much do you turn your steering wheel to go smoothly through a bend in the road?
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By Rob P
#1911827
Over time we also learn not to fight the elements. There is a degree of relaxing and allowing the aircraft and the air to sort themselves out, rather than bringing the aircraft back to wings level instantly.

One of the accepted techniques of spin recovery in some aircraft (not all*) is to simply let go off the controls and allow the aircraft to sort itself out.

Rob P

* do not try this at home.
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#1911831
Maybe your instructor didn’t discuss it further because it was a half a second input he did because you didn’t quite catch a gust, during a 1 hour lesson.

Probably insignificant.

There’s a phantom bit of wind to the east of my home field. There’s no big ground features for miles, no idea what it’s from, when I bump over it I go “oh”, and roll back level, it’s such a non event, then one day I looked at my passenger and they had eyes as big as saucers.
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#1911865
Rob P wrote:Over time we also learn not to fight the elements. There is a degree of relaxing and allowing the aircraft and the air to sort themselves out, rather than bringing the aircraft back to wings level instantly.

One of the accepted techniques of spin recovery in some aircraft (not all*) is to simply let go off the controls and allow the aircraft to sort itself out.

Rob P

* do not try this at home.

Generally the aircraft can fly itself better than we can! In the words of Elon " All user input is error" :D
By pipvac
#1911883
Rob P wrote:One of the accepted techniques of spin recovery in some aircraft (not all*) is to simply let go off the controls and allow the aircraft to sort itself out.


Yes. Add to this a high pitched girlie scream, and a random waving of the hands and you have my current technique nailed! :lol: :thumleft:

Lots of really useful feedback gratefully received. Thank you.
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