On Jun 10, 1:26 pm, Mxsmanic wrote:
Bob Moore writes:
Head and body should remain perpendicular to the floor of the
cockpit. This comes naturally if the turn is coordinated.

Interesting. When you learn to ride a motorcycle, you're taught to keep your
head normal to the horizon in turns ... because turning your head with the
bike as you lean into a turn results in disorientation.

Perhaps pilots would be less prone to disorientation if they kept their heads
normal to the horizon, even in turns (for instrument flight, this would mean
keeping one's head level with the horizon of the attitude indicator).

I note from in-cockpit videos of aerobatic pilots that they keep their heads
level with the horizon, not level with the aircraft.

Normally I avoid engaging in the normal name-calling and slander that
attends almost all of your posts, but today I cannot resist. I will,
however avoid the temptation for infantile popping off at you, and
just answer the question as well as a few observations, and a parable
from the history of science ...

I will note immediately, that you do seem the use the word "But" far
too often for someone who is asking for factual responses to specific
questions about pilots' actual experience; of their training, or post-
training flying. For example, quoting you:

"But you can look where you're going in both cases: with
your head level with
the horizon, and with your head level with the aircraft. "


"But" implies that you are interested more in entering into a
discussion or argument about what "ought" to be true, rather than a
discussion of what "is" true in the experience of the people / group
you are asking questions of.

I should not have to quote you back to you again, however you did ask
"Head orientation in turns--how is it taught for aviation?", and:

"When you make a coordinated turn in an aircraft, are you
taught to let your
head tilt with the bank angle of the aircraft, or are you
taught to keep your
head normal to the horizon?"

Your response immediately below indicates that you are more interested
in exploring your own theories on this subject, rather than the actual
experience of people while they were being taught:

"Interesting. When you learn to ride a motorcycle, you're
taught to keep your
head normal to the horizon in turns ... because turning your
head with the
bike as you lean into a turn results in disorientation."

Unfortunately, this seems to be your most common approach, a form of
the bait and switch, you ask for experiences then seek to discount
these experiences with your own theoretical structure of how things
"ought" to be.

Descartes did this too, even in the face of the overwhelming empirical
(and theoretical) power of Newtonian mechanics. Descartes kept harping
on about the "occult" nature of the force of gravity (on the basis
that it "ought" not be true because it involved believing in forces
that act at a distance without a mechanism or particles for the
transmission of the force). Descartes himself had an extremely non-
empirical theory that involved whirling "vortices" of particles in an
"ether" ... strange his reluctance to embrace a complex and powerful
mathematical system such as Newton's universal gravitation, from such
a good mathematician as Descartes was.

Newton said "yes ... I have no mechanism, but I don't care ... it
works ... and very well". Rather than evaluate whether real
observations showed that universal gravitation "is" a good description
of the world, Descartes kept insisting that it "ought" not be true.
The fact that Einstein later supplanted Newtonian mechanics is
irrelevant ... Descartes' approach was still wrong-headed and failed
in its own time, and did not lead anywhere later either, as it turned
out.

Descartes was an idealist (that is, the belief that truth should
somehow be deducible from just the power of thought, without any
reference to the world outside of one's head). Idealism used to be
called the "French disease" (so was syphillis) by the English speaking
world, and it seems as if you might have caught it (the idealist bug
that is). Remember "is" and "ought" are very different things.

Back to your original question ... I will supply an answer of what
"is" ... I was (as you asked) taught during my ab initio flight
training to keep my head and body in a straight line, and not bend at
the neck, neither away from nor toward the direction of the turn.
Swiveling the head and/or moving the eyes to watch the patch of sky
you were heading toward is taught (of course). Swiveling the head in
the other direction is also taught to look for possibly converging A/
C. However, one is taught to NOT bend your neck during turns. The
argument is made that doing this makes you more prone to
disorientation, sloppy flying, and a phenomenon called "the leans"
after prolonged turns or during instrument flying.

And before you start ... spare us the inevitable "But, ...". Don't
argue with me about whether this "ought" to be true ... you asked "how
is?" and I just answered your question, from my actual experience of
private pilot flight training.

J