Improving Your Flying Skills: Three Basics to instantly impress your Flight Instructor

By Jason Miller

Introduction

I always tell pilots, flying an airplane is a bit more like riding a horse than it is like driving a car. And this is one of those ways.

In this video, I'm going to help your CFI out. I'm going to give you three things you can change or add or keep if you already do it and you're flying, that will have your CFI thank you, and who knows, maybe even buy you a beer someday.

Tips for Better Flying

1. Light Grip on the Control Yoke

The first thing is, I want to teach you to not have a death grip on the control yoke, okay? None of this sort of grabbing on like it's an f 16. And the reason is if you have a death grip on the yoke, you will not use your trim properly. Okay? So we always want to fly in trim. We never want to be fighting the airplane. And the way we get that done is by having a light grip on the control. Like you can see now, I'm here in a climb. I'm climbing at 100 knots. I'm basically just using my right foot to control my left turning tendencies. And my hands are kind of doing nothing. So if you find that you're just grabbing on too tight and you want to break that habit, just sort of thread some kind of pen or pencil or anything through your fingers like this, and it will literally force you, if you want to make it really painful, just use one finger underneath. But it will force you to grab the yoke with just a couple fingers just like this.

And if you try to do a death grip, it's going to really hurt because you're pushing against this pen. And it might take 2020, 5 hours of flying around like that, especially if it's your primacy. You know, if it's the first way you learned it, to have that f 16 death grip, it might take 20 or 25 hours. But do it until it's done. Do it until you really have that point. Because once you do, you'll start flying like I am here today. Flying in trim that leaves you less task saturated makes the airplane fly in a more harmonious way. And if you, like, divide your attention to go look at your iPad or something like that, the airplane will continue to do what you had it doing.

It's like I always tell pilots, flying an airplane is a bit more like riding a horse than it is like driving a car. And this is one of those ways, right? Like with a horse, you just kind of get it going and hold on loosely, but don't let go. It's kind of the same with an airplane. You don't want to hold on tight. You want to kind of get it headed in a certain direction and hold on loosely, but don't let go. All right. If you'd make that change, your CFI is going to give you a high five.

2. Proper Level-off Technique

The second thing I want you to think about is how to prevent climbing again after you level off from a climb. Right. It's a really common error. You get to the top of your climb, you level off. Ten minutes later, you look back and you're 500ft above the altitude you wanted to be at first. I'm going to show you why this is happening to you. It's happening because you're probably leveling off with power. Watch what happens when I get to 3300ft. Here, I will show you the improper way to level off. Notice I'm about 85 knots. There's 3300. This works perfectly in a Cessna 172. I just pull the power back a little bit, just like that, and boom, we stopped climbing.

The problem with that is maybe we're level here at 3300, but we're way too slow. And the trim that you have on your tail, it reacts to airflow. The airplane will naturally seek the speed it's trimmed for. So as the airplane accelerates, it will go back into the climb. How do you avoid that? You avoid that by finding the new trim setting first. Watch this level off that I'm about to do here at 3500. In this case, I'm not going to touch the power at all. I'm going to change the pitch of the aircraft. Right. And I'm changing the pitch of the aircraft to maintain 3500ft and letting the airplane accelerate a little bit. That way I can get some rough trim in there, then I can reduce the power to my cruise setting. But I'm already at my cruise speed, so all I have to do now is just fine tune the trim and boom. I'm flying level at 3500 at the cruise speed I want.

All right, if you find that you're climbing again after you level off, which is a really common problem, and it'll probably show itself when you start flying on instruments. So if you're just going from your private into your instrument rating and you find that you're climbing again right after you level off on your altitude. Make sure that when you level off, you're getting close to your cruise speed before you reduce the power, and make sure that trim is set for the cruise speed.

3. Control Left Turning Tendencies

Another thing your CFI is going to give you a high five about is if you track the extended centerline of the Runway and control the left turning tendencies of the engine. For that, you want to look right through here and use your Lindbergh reference to stop any yaw or roll motion. Watch what happens when I let go of the right rudder. Boom, there it is. Yaw and roll. And we see that all through the Lindbergh reference. So don't forget to use that reference. And don't forget to manage the left turning tendencies of the engine using your right foot. Also, especially when you're flying a Cessna like this, use all the windows. Make sure you're tracking that extended upwind, the extended center line of the Runway.

Conclusion