Leading Turns With Rudder

The rudder should only be used to combat the effects of adverse yaw when
the ailerons are applied to make the glider roll and turn. For most types
of glider the stick and the rudder should be applied at the same time, but
when the required angle of bank is reached the stick should be centralised
just before most of the rudder is taken off. This however rather depends
on the type of glider being flown; for some very big span gliders and
vintage types it can pay to lead just slightly with the rudder, but always
remember that the ailerons are the primary roll controls. I get enough
students who put gliders into a turn with a big bootful of rudder without
using the stick at all, and then think that because the glider is now
turning, due to the secondary effect of yaw, they must have used the
ailerons. This is of course a good receipe for spinning in!

Derek Copeland
(UK Instructor)


At 16:53 21 July 2008, sisu1a wrote:
Hi All,

An SSA 'Master' CFIG I know is perpetually hammering it into his
students that to initiate a turn in a glider, the FIRST thing you do
is feed in rudder. On his 1-5 list of making a turn in a glider, #1 is
rudder (as it's own separate input). While this may be aerodynamically
acceptable practice for a 2-33, it seems a recipie for disaster in
other ships to begin a turn by intentionally skidding. Since in a
pinch, one has a tendency to revert to instincts that were first
learned/practiced (right OR wrong), I see this as a setup for possible
future problems.
Since I have issues with this, I want to gather some other opinions
(particularly those of other CFI's) to help present a case to
possibly get this corrected. He holds little value of MYopinion, so I
was hoping to get some 'name brand' opinions to help my case. And if I
am just putting to much into this, I would rather hear it from this
group.

-Paul