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Training
So, a bit of a rant… I am flying with a student who has been flying Trikes for a while, does not have a lot of solo time, but he was soloed and has flown with 6 different instructors according to him. Among several things, the one I cannot get past is he has reversals in pitch control. We’ve worked on it for a couple of hours now and it’s something he’s starting to learn for the very first time from what I can tell. In my opinion, pitch control definitely needs to be taught early on. We cover it typically in the second lesson. Personally, I will not fly with a student near the ground until they have mastered pitch control and soloing would be out of the question.
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4 Replies
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What do you mean by a reversal in pitch control? Is it a problem with what controls altitude vs airspeed? Or is it an issue with the front vs the back side of the power curve? Or, maybe he is a 3-axis pilot that pushes to go down?
I’m studying to be a sport CFI, so I have yet to teach. I ask so that I can create my lesson plans to make sure my future students have a good base and therefore other instructors won’t have to fight primacy in my students to correct problems.
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Yes pitch reversal means being confused which direction the controls move for pitch. Pitch control includes both attitude control as well as AOA control. If we never “ask” our students to perform a pitch control task, they may never begin to learn pitch. My first clue was the student could not coordinate a turn. The nose fell below the horizon repeatedly and once developed into a full blown spiral. Then we did pitch exercises and he started to develop the skill. I’ll make a video to show what that exercise is exactly. A short version would be to fly from trim to near stall and back to trim without changing altitude. But there is more, much more, to practice.
In any case so many pilots push out to flare BECAUSE that’s how you flare. But they have no control because they don’t know how to fly pitch. Ultimately we had a panicked reversal that got my full attention during a flare.
So many CFIs use throttle and the wing’s natural pitch stability to fly. They let the nose “self correct” and go along for the “ride” (oscillation) until the trike stabilizes. They fly it like a PPG with throttle and roll and push forward (not pitch CONTROL) for takeoff and landing.
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Okay, got it. I guess I never considered that to be a skill that would require much work to teach. Clearly, that’s wrong. I look forward to your video!
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You can get it wrong once. :).
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