Leading Turns With Rudder

On Aug 1, 4:57*am, Brad wrote:
You may be on to somthing. Some pilots are referred to as naturals and
their skills are readily apparent.
A young friend of mine won a national hang gliding competition flying
bare bar, no instruments at all. The times I flew with him were
inspriring.................you see, I too was a member of those
ranks....heh..............the rest who have to study and make fun of
the Zen masters will always wonder how it's done, as they re-read
everything Reichmann wrote whilst grunting in the restroom.

Learning young makes a huge difference. I learnt to sail racing
dinghies in my teens and when I compare how I sail with how I fly the
differences are huge, even once I've allowed for my much greater
experience in dinghies. I raced my dinghy with no wind indicator,
just the wind on my skin. The one I had fell off, I didn't replace it
immediately and found I sailed just as well without it. Better in
some ways - it left my attention completely free to look outside the
boat.

I learnt to ski to a fair standard for a UK 2-weeks per year person in
my 20s & early 30s and it doesn't take too long to get back into the
swing of it, so long as the conditions are not tricky. I never
mastered ice or bumps!

And with sailing in particular, I would find it very hard to explain
to a middle-aged beginner why I do a lot of what I do - I just know I
need to do it. I feel it. In short I've got the Zen thing with boats
- and I found it applied to larger boats as well when I did a little
sailing on them back in '97.

noel.wade wrote:


IMHO the best pilots are the ones who "detach" themselves and shift
their Point Of View to that of the aircraft itself. They aren't
thinking about the flight in terms of how they perceive it as an
occupant from their particular seating position or their control
stick. Thinking in terms of the aircraft and the air around it is
infinitely better than trying to act as a manipulator of levers and
pulleys inside a tube.


One hundred hours? Two hundred? How long would you expect it to take for
a pilot to develop that POV?


Jack

user wrote:

...where did I leave my copy of The Zen of Gliding?

"noel.wade" wrote...

IMHO the best pilots are the ones who "detach" themselves and shift
their Point Of View to that of the aircraft itself. They aren't
thinking about the flight in terms of how they perceive it as an
occupant from their particular seating position or their control
stick. Thinking in terms of the aircraft and the air around it is
infinitely better than trying to act as a manipulator of levers and
pulleys inside a tube.


Noel's description is apt, though it won't fit everyone. It is probably
possible to fly fairly well without reaching that consciousness, but
it's more satisfying when you do. I suspect that fighter pilots in the
days before BVR fights reached that level or died, and probably still
need to do so. Don't knock it till you've had it.


Jack

I do the best with what I've got... and yes! there's a copy of Reichman next
to my favorite reading stool.

Just call me Rudy. Roooooody! Roooody!

Cheers to funny hats!


"Brad" wrote in message
...
You may be on to somthing. Some pilots are referred to as naturals and
their skills are readily apparent.
A young friend of mine won a national hang gliding competition flying
bare bar, no instruments at all. The times I flew with him were
inspriring.................you see, I too was a member of those
ranks....heh..............the rest who have to study and make fun of
the Zen masters will always wonder how it's done, as they re-read
everything Reichmann wrote whilst grunting in the restroom.

Brad

On Jul 31, 7:00 pm, "user" wrote:
He says... from the lotus position, index finger on thumb, palms turned
upward, and fingers spread. Be the glider. Hmmmmmmmmmm.... Hmmmmmmmmm....

Maybe someday I'll reach that plane (pun intended). In the meantime, the
best I can do is manipulate the controls to keep the string straight and
the
speed within a knot or two of where I think it should be. Beep, beep,
beep... Hmmm... Now where did I leave my copy of The Zen of Gliding?

:-)

"noel.wade" wrote in message

...



I probably shouldn't leap back into this mess, but let me just point
out one more thing:

People tend to think about stick movements and pedal movements when
they talk about "coordinated" flying.

But the truth of the matter is that the airplane doesn't CARE what
goes on in the cockpit. It cares about how the air flows over the
craft and the control surfaces.

"Flying coordinated" means making WHATEVER control inputs are
required, in WHATEVER sequence necessary, to keep the airflow as
orderly and efficient as possible.

IMHO the best pilots are the ones who "detach" themselves and shift
their Point Of View to that of the aircraft itself. They aren't
thinking about the flight in terms of how they perceive it as an
occupant from their particular seating position or their control
stick. Thinking in terms of the aircraft and the air around it is
infinitely better than trying to act as a manipulator of levers and
pulleys inside a tube.

--Noel- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Some people would say I'm already there. Being there, I know different.

Gotta go. Reichman's calling.


;-)


"J a c k" wrote in message
. ..
user wrote:

...where did I leave my copy of The Zen of Gliding?

"noel.wade" wrote...

IMHO the best pilots are the ones who "detach" themselves and shift
their Point Of View to that of the aircraft itself. They aren't
thinking about the flight in terms of how they perceive it as an
occupant from their particular seating position or their control
stick. Thinking in terms of the aircraft and the air around it is
infinitely better than trying to act as a manipulator of levers and
pulleys inside a tube.


Noel's description is apt, though it won't fit everyone. It is probably
possible to fly fairly well without reaching that consciousness, but it's
more satisfying when you do. I suspect that fighter pilots in the days
before BVR fights reached that level or died, and probably still need to
do so. Don't knock it till you've had it.


Jack

John H. Campbell wrote:
..... So, in teaching, why not
stress monitoring methods first -- primarily visual (yaw string staring
in the face for just that purpose)


Mostly because if you do that from the start, the student will focus on
the yaw string and drop everything else (an exaggeration, but you get
the point). I think that Piggott may have it right when he says that the
yaw string is most useful for long straight glides - to ensure that you
have no inadvertent slip. I tell students about the yaw string, of
course, but I also say that I can tell if their turns are coordinated
with my eyes closed because my shoulders won't move.

Tony V.

On Jul 31, 6:59 am, "user" wrote:

sniped alot
Slewing the nose before banking... every time you turn?

"Leading with the rudder" does NOT equal "Slewing the nose before
banking" !

You can lead with the rudder and still get a coordinated turn entry.
You might only lead by a fraction of a second, but you can push on the
rudder before the stick. If that is what works best in the glider
that you are flying.

Todd Smith
3S

Then you're talking about a mental game, which is fine. Focus on the rudder
since it requires a larger movement at low speed.

Nontheless, the rudder balances aileron drag. Coordination is simply defined
as balancing the yaw moment from the ailerons with a SIMULTANEOUS and
opposing yaw moment from the rudder. The amount of rudder needed to
compensate for aileron drag is inversely proportional to speed. The question
in my mind is, does the original post's premise of a regimen of

"...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 its own separate input)."

produce a good pilot? At anything more than a few knots above MCA, this
formula will lead to a slewing nose, in equal proportion as I would expect
to see in an underruddered turn entry near MCA.

But maybe I'm just over sensitive to yaw motion... or maybe I'm just being
too dogmatic about sloppy flying (or thinking).


"toad" wrote in message
...
On Jul 31, 6:59 am, "user" wrote:

sniped alot
Slewing the nose before banking... every time you turn?

"Leading with the rudder" does NOT equal "Slewing the nose before
banking" !

You can lead with the rudder and still get a coordinated turn entry.
You might only lead by a fraction of a second, but you can push on the
rudder before the stick. If that is what works best in the glider
that you are flying.

Todd Smith
3S

Except in the case of very long span gliders, I wonder if the "lead with
rudder" pilots are actually flying very differently from the "both
together" pilots? I think that they may simply be describing what it
feels like to initiate a turn. Here's a hypothesis based on four
knowns:

The primary effect of the aileron is as a *rate* of roll control - keep
the deflection applied and the glider keeps rolling.

The primary effect of the rudder is *degree* of yaw control - keep the
deflection applied and the yaw stays steady.

For a given airspeed and a given aileron deflection at 1g there is an
appropriate amount of rudder deflection.

The forces required to apply rudder are generally higher than to apply
aileron.

Therefore, when we begin a coordinated turn and apply the appropriately
coordinated rudder and aileron deflections at the same rates - say over
one second (and let's say that the glider takes 2-4 seconds to roll into
the full turn) then the pilot will be aware that all of application of the
rudder deflection will all have taken place in the first half to quarter of
the of the roll into the turn and will also sense that more force was
required to apply the rudder than the aileron i.e. what feels like leading
with the rudder may a lot closer to coordinated flying than is apparent
from the words used to describe it.

John Galloway




At 11:35 02 August 2008, user wrote:
Then you're talking about a mental game, which is fine. Focus on the
rudder

since it requires a larger movement at low speed.

Nontheless, the rudder balances aileron drag. Coordination is simply
defined
as balancing the yaw moment from the ailerons with a SIMULTANEOUS and
opposing yaw moment from the rudder. The amount of rudder needed to
compensate for aileron drag is inversely proportional to speed. The
question
in my mind is, does the original post's premise of a regimen of

"...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 its own separate input)."

produce a good pilot? At anything more than a few knots above MCA, this
formula will lead to a slewing nose, in equal proportion as I would
expect

to see in an underruddered turn entry near MCA.

But maybe I'm just over sensitive to yaw motion... or maybe I'm just
being

too dogmatic about sloppy flying (or thinking).


"toad" wrote in message
...
On Jul 31, 6:59 am, "user" wrote:


Slewing the nose before banking... every time you turn?

"Leading with the rudder" does NOT equal "Slewing the nose before
banking" !

You can lead with the rudder and still get a coordinated turn entry.
You might only lead by a fraction of a second, but you can push on the
rudder before the stick. If that is what works best in the glider
that you are flying.

Todd Smith
3S

On Aug 2, 7:35*am, "user" wrote:
Then you're talking about a mental game, which is fine. Focus on the rudder
since it requires a larger movement at low speed.

... snip ...

The question
in my mind is, does the original post's premise of a regimen of

"...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 its own separate input)."

produce a good pilot? At anything more than a few knots above MCA, this
formula will lead to a slewing nose, in equal proportion as I would expect
to see in an underruddered turn entry near MCA.


Yes, it is a mental game. The instructor's job is to train the
student to fly correctly. The talking is just a means to the end. I
don't care if the instructor tells the student to first yell "olly
olly oxen free" before he turns. If the student performs a good
coordinated turn entry, then the instructor has done their job.

Todd
3S