The Death Grip!

by | Apr 30, 2012 | All Pilots

The “Death Grip”. It’s not just students that do it, pilots do it too. So what am I talking about? I’m talking about squeezing the yoke so hard that your fingers turn white! Let me start by saying, STOP! I understand the fear and unknown in the beginning of your training, but I see pilots with years of experience doing the same thing.It’s usually the turbulence rocking the plane back and forth that people are really nervous about.

People think that if they don’t hold the plane there and do the best they can to keep the plane from rocking, it will flip over from the turbulence. I used to feel that way while I was learning many years ago. It’s not always turbulence, it could be just fear in general.Other reasons, from what I’ve seen so far, is because people are not trimming the airplane. The trim is there for a reason, and that is to relieve the control pressures, allowing you to fly with just a touch of the fingertips. If the plane is not trimmed, it will want to climb or descend and the only way to stop it without trimming will be to manually hold the plane, fighting those control pressures. Whatever reason it is, you are just making it harder on yourself.

For you students, you have to force yourself to understand that just because it’s turbulent, doesn’t mean you will lose control if you don’t hold the yoke really hard. Next time it’s turbulent out, trim the plane (if you don’t know how yet, ask your instructor to demonstrate this) and let go of the yoke. The plane will rock and roll but doesn’t flip over. Every now and then you may get a strong gust of wind that will roll the plane more than is comfortable but all it will take is quick correction to level the wings again. For the most part, the plane will be stable, just rocking back and forth without your hands even touching the yoke!

Now that you know that you won’t lose control of the plane, try to keep the plane trimmed and fly with fingertip pressure only and it will reduce your workload.Just imagine a boat rocking in the waves of the water. If you tried to stop the boat from rocking, would you be succesful? If you squeezed the controls of the boat really hard, would the boat stop rocking? If you let go of the boat, would it rock any worse? I think you know that the answer is NO to all of these questions. The plane is no different. The plane is the boat and the waves are the turbulence. Just relax, ride the waves and focus on learning! It’ll take a little while to get past this fear, but once you do, you will wonder why you ever worried about it in the first place!

First Blog and Dedications

by | Apr 24, 2012 | All Pilots, Pilots, Student Pilots

Well, I finally decided to start a blog after my former student and friend Terry, said about a million times that I’d be good at it. Terry has followed many aviation blogs and always has a story to tell. He is a very detailed person and writes novels for emails when he writes to me.

My responses are just as long and with the amount of detail I write in my responses to him, I could have had about 3 years worth of content for my blog! I will try to give you as much interesting stuff as I can. I usually have something to say, so I will do the best I can to make your time here enjoyable. Please feel free to comment on things you would like to see here.

I got a late start getting this site going and it took awhile since I’ve never done it before and am not familiar with this program. It will take a bit before everything is in place so I hope you understand and come back again.

Before I go, I want to thank my friend Terry for all his great emails, for pushing me to do something aviation related and for being such a good friend. He is truly an inspiration and someone I admire. I also want to thank my girlfriend Jackie who supports me in anything I want to do and pushes me beyond limits I would not feel comfortable doing alone to become a better, more successful person. Bye for now.

Take care!