Dizziness disorientation

wrote in
:

I'm not a guru, but I have experienced weathervaning when flying
"hands off & feet off" in a direction that was 60* or so against
the prevailing wind current.

Airplanes do not weathervane when they are off the ground in a steady
wind.

Bertie

Mistaking rudder out of trim, maybe, for "weather-vaning" while
embedded in a moving air mass?

I think of our 152s little trim tab. It's adjusted so that you
absolutely have no tendency of the plane to yaw straight and level.

I noticed flying the 172 the other day that it had a tendency to come
off course more.

Is this a rudder trim effect (plenty of aircraft have rudder trim
tabs)?

Probably he's noticing the drift while enroute and has the whole wind
thing assways in his head. This is pretty common amongst British pilots.
They get told about wind in books but are taught no ground reference
manuevers at all. They can probably regurgitate what they have been told
about wind, but I have found few of them who really understand it, let
alone manuever the airplane anything like instinctually in relation to
wind.
They get told a lot of really useful things that US pilots do not, BTW.
Largely about weather and nav, but aircraft handling is abyssmal.
A lot of old american airplanes have been imported there in recent
years. Luscombes, Champs, cubs, etc. and they are wrecked at a ferocious
rate, partly because of this deficiency in initial training, partly
because of the wild weather and their fondness fo rvery short fields,
and partly because most of them don't get to fly enough because of the
Wx and the horrific costs.
I completely believe the OP, a UK PL meant what he said. I would reckon
his instructor knows only marginally more than that about wind.

Adn don't even get me started on how they aproach stalls!


Bertie