New student pilot apprehensions

Let me add one thing. The instructor knows all this and is in the back
seat to keep you out of trouble. You learn only from such mistakes and
correcting them. The instructor will take over if you exceed boundaries
uncomfortable for him/her. He/she will not let you kill you both. You are
not alone with these thoughts and you are not alone in the glider. Stay
with it; it will become as unconscious as walking while talking.

At 03:20 25 April 2009, Hellman wrote:
Michael,

Welcome to the club. I think all of us experience some kind of
trepidation at first, and it's probably a good thing since it makes us
more cautious and the best way to reduce risk is to be aware of it.

Turning to your specific issues:

It's important to remember that you are learning to fly formation at
the same time you are learning to fly. That's a tough load to carry
and will make you feel a bit clumsy at first. It's not you. It's just
that you're trying to learn two things at once.

Over-controlling is normal and the solution is to relax a bit. When I
first learned to fly about 30 years ago, every time the tow plane hit
lift and would bob up, I would pull back on the stick to follow him.
Then I hit the lift and would rise above him. Stick down to
compensate. What did we get? PIO (Pilot Induced Oscillations, in case
you haven't heard that one yet) My instructor told me to try something
counter-intuitive, but that worked like a charm. Next time the tow
plane bobbed up, DO NOTHING and see what happens. Amazingly, it worked
much better. I'd hit the lift a second or two later and bob up as I
should. Of course, only try this with an instructor along. But after a
while you'll learn how much control to use.

It's well known in control theory that over control can induce
instability, especially in systems with a delay (and your reaction
time as well as the glider's introduces delay). So it's not that you
should do nothing, but the amount of control you're adding is way too
much. Over time you'll learn the right amount and your current
nightmares will seem like a distant memory.

Along these lines, when I was learning to fly, I told my wife that I
thought I'd never get the radio calls down. It was like a foreign
language. (I now realize it is a foreign language. It just sounds like
English!) She reminded me that I'd learned much harder things and
assured me that it would come with time. Of course, she was right. So
try to remember how impossible it felt to learn to ride a bike when
you were doing that as a kid. Now? Simple pie. Soaring will become the
same, but try to remember some of the caution you currently feel. It
will make you a safer pilot.

Another things that might be good would be to read the articles on my
soaring safety web page

http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/soaring/safety.html

and look for similar ones elsewhere.

Again, welcome to the club!

Martin