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#11
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Coordinated turns and the little ball
Robert M. Gary writes:
I'm a flight instructor so I can feel 1/4 of a ball out, but that's what I'm trained to do. However, in your simulator, I would not worry about it. You're not going to be able to reproduce the environment similar to the aircraft without having rudders, etc. When I play MSFS I set it to autocoordination. I have independent rudder enabled and the stick can be twisted to move the rudder independently, but it's quite hard to precisely control the rudder this way. Even so, I don't want to just ignore the rudder completely. I'm doing okay in using rudder to stay aligned on runways and to land in very modest crosswinds, but keeping a turn coordinated is challenging (in part because you're moving the stick in several different ways at once). -- Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail. |
#12
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Coordinated turns and the little ball
Dudley Henriques writes:
You're right. The best yaw indicator in the airplane is the nose of the airplane. Instructors should be able to pick up the slightest amount of uncoordination simply by watching the nose. Its also a good idea to wean the student off the ball and onto the nose as soon as possible. I'll go so far as to say that it was my common practice to do this on the first flight. In my opinion, much too much attention is placed on the ball as a coordination verification tool, and much too little attention paid to the nose of the airplane by a great many CFI's. How can I determine that the turn is uncoordinated by looking at the way the nose moves? -- Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail. |
#13
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Coordinated turns and the little ball
Tony Cox writes:
Pretty much everyone can sense large deflections -- they'll feel as they're being pushed to one side of the plane. The more experienced you are, the smaller movements you can detect without looking. Is this the movement that makes people sick? From your description it sounds like the turning of a car (which usually doesn't make people sick, unless the car is really turning back and forth a lot). It is considered to be good style, and it is generally more efficient, to maintain coordinated flight in most situations. Is it possible to do a coordinated turn by adjusting pitch and roll at the same time, without the use of the rudder? Do autopilots use the rudder to maintain coordinated turns? Better for passengers & easier not to spill your drink. But in a slip -- used to deliberately increase air resistance when you are too fast or too high, or to align the plane with the runway in a crosswind landing -- the plane will be uncoordinated on purpose; the ball on the inside of the turn doesn't indicate "an error" at all, nor does it make the flight any less safe. I regularly forget the difference between a skid and a slip. A skid -- which doesn't have any purpose outside of training AFAIK -- is more problematic. This tends to be a issue on base-final turns when pilots are tempted to use too much rudder to tighten up the turn if they've underestimated wind drift or otherwise miscalculated. When you are in a turn, the inside wing is always moving through the air a bit slower than the outside wing and so is closer to stalling. A skidding turn increases this airspeed difference, and if you're too slow turning base to final, the danger is that it'll make it more likely that the inside wing will stall and start a spin. Just where the ball might be when this happens would depend on your airspeed, so there's no simple "red line" beyond which you can't push the ball if that's what you're looking for. I'm just trying to figure out how closely I should try to keep it aligned, since I have no physical movements to provide clues. I've been trying not to resort to rudder alone for runway alignment. I'm still not very good at alignment except when coming straight in from a great distance away, with no wind. Just keeping the aircraft on the runway during landing is a challenge. I don't usually turn off the wind, though, because I figure that in real life, dead calm wind is the exception to the rule. -- Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail. |
#14
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Coordinated turns and the little ball
The best yaw indicator in the airplane is the nose of the
airplane. How do you read it? Jose -- "Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where it keeps its brain." (chapter 10 of book 3 - Harry Potter). for Email, make the obvious change in the address. |
#15
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Coordinated turns and the little ball
"Jose" wrote in message ... The best yaw indicator in the airplane is the nose of the airplane. How do you read it? You eyeball it. The nose will pin entering into and out of a turn if the exact amount of complimentary rudder pressure for the amount of aileron displacement is being used. The nose will either lead or lag the turn entry or exit (slip or skid) if the amount of rudder in play is excessive or inadequate for the amount of aileron pressure in play. A good pilot will watch the nose entering into and out of turns watching for this "pinning". The pin won't stay there long, but long enough to establish control pressure application quality. As an extreme example of how this visual cue is used by many demonstration pilots; in a low altitude slow roll entry, you naturally need inside rudder with initial aileron displacement to offset adverse yaw as in any turn entry. But at low altitude, in a slow roll entry, you absolutely can't pull the nose down which is exactly what you will do if that inside rudder is held in too long. In other words, what you want in this situation is NOT to pin the nose. The problem isn't that the nose pin is wrong. The problem is that it's not a turn entry, but a slow roll entry, and to boot, its a slow roll entry at low altitude. Where you would be neutralizing the lateral stick while blending in an increase in angle of attack for the split lift vector found in a normal turn, in the slow roll scenario, you are going to need a rudder switch to top rudder to keep the nose up as the airplane rolls to the knife edge position. What I'm getting at here isn't a lesson in low altitude rolls. What I'm stressing is the absolute need in this situation to know what's happening with the airplane based on visual cues ONLY! This means NO BALL!! Actually, in the slow roll scenario, you USE that adverse yaw to your advantage by ALLOWING it to happen. Again, its a visual cue, NOT an instrument cue. You look at the panel at all in the low altitude scenario and you won't have to worry about dinner, because you won't be there! Visual cues on the nose again; only this time you're using adverse yaw instead of fighting it. Rolling left, instead of stopping the right yaw, you allow it. You watch the nose carefully. As you roll left without left rudder, the nose will swing right and up. You watch the nose and play that against the left aileron pressure you're applying. As the roll progresses, you simply follow the adverse yaw with RIGHT RUDDER to keep the nose up. What I'm describing here is simply the entry into the roll. Once the roll is established, the rest is standard procedure for a slow roll. So how does this apply to giving primary instruction? In my opinion, getting the student out of the panel (the ball) and into watching the nose during initial training is extremely beneficial. With practice using the nose of the airplane as the primary reference and visual cue in verifying control coordination actually becomes second nature, and once accomplished, becomes an ingrained habit that follows a pilot throughout his/her career. Bottom line on all this......a pilot thoroughly acclimated from the very beginning to using the nose of the aircraft as a ball will detect and reflexively correct any deviation from coordinated flight no matter how slight. Correct rudder use should become second nature to a pilot trained in this fashion. Dudley Henriques |
#16
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Coordinated turns and the little ball
Dudley Henriques schrieb:
The nose will pin entering into and out of a turn if the exact amount of complimentary rudder pressure for the amount of aileron displacement is being used. Once the turn is established and sustained, I see no way to check coordination by looking at the nose. Stefan |
#17
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Coordinated turns and the little ball
Mxsmanic schrieb:
Is it possible to spot an uncoordinated turn visually, just by watching how things move out the window, or is it only perceptible through the movement of the aircraft? In a sustained turn, you can't see it. But you can feel it. In a real aircraft, that is. I'm trying to figure out how hard I should try to keep the ball centered. It's goot piloting to keep the ball centered. Always work on your skills to keep the ball even more centered. Actually, the ball is a pretty coarse instument. So if the ball moves out of the center even by a detectable amount, you are flying really uncoordinated. I note that rudder can keep the turn coordinated, but changes in pitch seem to be able to do it, too. Pulling back on the stick in a turn not only maintains altitude, but it also seems to coordinate the turn to some degree. "To some degree" is not good enough. It may be good enough from a strictly practical point of view, but it's bad style. I've seen videos of pilots rolling an aircraft while pouring drinks. I haven't tried that in the sim. Shouldn't be very difficult while playing MSFS... Stefan |
#18
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Coordinated turns and the little ball
I think he'll still pour the drink all over himself...:-)
mike "Stefan" wrote in message ... I've seen videos of pilots rolling an aircraft while pouring drinks. I haven't tried that in the sim. Shouldn't be very difficult while playing MSFS... Stefan |
#19
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Coordinated turns and the little ball
"Stefan" wrote in message ... Dudley Henriques schrieb: The nose will pin entering into and out of a turn if the exact amount of complimentary rudder pressure for the amount of aileron displacement is being used. Once the turn is established and sustained, I see no way to check coordination by looking at the nose. Stefan Copied from the post you are answering; "The pin won't stay there long, but long enough to establish control pressure application quality." Dudley Henriques |
#20
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Coordinated turns and the little ball
Dudley Henriques schrieb:
Once the turn is established and sustained, I see no way to check coordination by looking at the nose. "The pin won't stay there long, but long enough to establish control pressure application quality." When starting the turn, you roll, which means you apply ailerons. When the turn is established, you don't apply ailerons anymore (how much exactly depends on the aircraft, some even require outwards ailerons to prevent overbanking). Hence the "pressure application quality" you establish at the beginning of the turn doesn't do you any good to stay coordinaed once the turn is established. Stefan |
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