At 19:00 16 January 2005, Greg Arnold wrote:
'Apply full rudder opposite to the direction of the
yaw string' -- what
does that mean? What is the direction of the yaw string?
If the loose
end of the yaw string is on the right side of the canopy,
is the
direction of the yaw string to the right, or is it
to the left?

Seems like there is some potentially confusing terminology
being used here that I've never heard before. I've
always been taught that the the 'direction' of the
yaw string is the side of the glider it leans to, and
so you correct by pressing the rudder on the opposite
side.

Here I think people are saying that if the yaw string
is displaced to the right side of the glider it is
'pointing' left. While I can understand how you might
naturally want the front end to be the tip of the 'pointer',
I think it's confusing to refer to 'pointing' at all
because of this left/right confusion. I prefer to
say the yaw string is 'to the left' or 'to the right'
as position is less ambiguous that the 'pointing' direction.

To be honest, I've never looked at the yaw string in
a spin as it has never been ambiguous to me which way
the world was turning - if the world is going round
and round counter-clockwise how can this not be spinning
to the right? I guess I presumed that for a spin to
persist the glider would have to stay skidding, but
in a fully established spin you might wonder, if the
yaw string was far enough forward (say in a two-seater),
whether the rotation overcomes the skid in terms of
the local flow across the canopy - apparently not given
the comments here. Boy I'd hate for that to be wrong
though.

Years ago when I was flying a Ventus A 16.6 (easy to
spin unintentionally in my experience) I taught myself
that if the inside wing in a turn ever dropped, to
push the stick forward and into the turn and to hit
top rudder. You try to make it as instinctive as possibe,
but it takes practice. The top rudder is the easiest
part - the stick movement is against most people's
instincts.

9B