Leading Turns With Rudder

On Jul 21, 9:53*am, 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

I am a CFIG at a club that uses G103 for primary instruction. The
amount of rudder application required in a turn is not cut and dry.
There are many variables...speed, amount of aileron applied and how
fast it is applied. It is also not a step 1, step 2 affair. It all
comes down to a "balance of forces" which equals an "aircraft flown in
trim". The fallback that I encourage students to use is simultaneous
application of rudder with the stick input. It just so happens that
in the G103, half rudder with half stick application and full rudder
with full aileron stick input works very well at thermalling speeds
and the yaw string will hardly move. Of course, the rudder must be
returned to nearly neutral when the stick is returned to neutral.
Students frequently forget that part.

Randy