Help me clear up my brain fart

"Ken Hornstein" wrote in message
...
I tried ... my butt's stupid, I guess. Unfortunately, I always run into
problems like this ... common explanations are "you should feel it in
your butt/seat of the pants/take your pick".

IMHO, statements like that are too vague to be really helpful. This is a
common problem with instructors. They only have one way to say something,
and it's often not an informative way. They have a terrible time adjusting
to different students.

Well, I _don't_. No one
can really explain to me what I'm supposed to feel. I suspect there are
a bunch of cues that contribute to this feeling, and I'm just not
putting them all together. Other than flying a lot, I'm not sure how
I'm supposed to train for this.

Start with the extreme cases and work back from that. Get an instructor to
help.

Mike's comments have been the most helpful so far, IMHO. In a car, if you
turn a corner quickly, I assume you'd be able to tell with your eyes closed
whether the turn was a right turn or a left, correct? The reason is that
your body is pushed to one side of the car or the other by centrifugal force
(ignore anyone who replies to this telling you or me that there is no such
thing ). If your body tries to slide to the right, it's a left turn and
vice a versa. This corresponds to a skid in an airplane.

Likewise, if the car is traveling across a slope (rather than up or down
one), it will be tilted ("banked"). You'd be able to tell which direction
the car is tilted by the direction your body is being pushed. If your body
tries to slide to the right, the car is tilted to the right (it's lower on
the right side) and vice a versa. This corresponds to a slip in an
airplane.

The rudder is used to negate any such "body sliding". If your body is
sliding to the left, you need more left rudder (or less right rudder). If
your body is sliding to the right, you need more right rudder (or less left
rudder).

Now, to demonstrate this in an airplane, fly a level slip. That is, in
level flight bank to one direction or the other and use the rudder to hold
the heading constant. You'll find your body trying to slide toward the
downhill side of the airplane. This is your "butt" telling you that you are
in uncoordinated flight. You might need a pretty decent bank angle for you
to notice this, but any airplane ought to be able to slip with a large
enough angle that you can feel what we're talking about.

You can also do the same exercise with the skid. In level flight, yaw the
aircraft with the rudder while keeping the wings level with the aileron.
Use a lot of rudder input. Again, your body will try to slide, only this
time it will be toward the outside of the yaw or turn. And again, this is
your "butt" telling you that you are in uncoordinated flight.

Especially for the skidding case (but also for the slipping case), you'll
want to make sure you keep your speed up so that you don't stall. Va is
probably a good target. You'll need extra power to keep the speed up as
drag increases during the uncoordinated flight. One reason for bringing an
instructor along is to ensure that you go through the demonstrations safely,
and another reason is to make sure that you actually get a nice, clear
demonstration (by yourself, you might be too hesitant to get enough control
input in for you to really notice what's going on).

I simply don't believe that you are incapable of distinguishing coordinated
and uncoordinated flight without the use of the turn coordinator. For minor
deviations, the difference is subtle, to be sure. But with the proper
demonstration, I think you will be well on your way to easy, coordinated
flight without worrying about the instrument.

I'll also reiterate that even if you don't immediately learn to distinguish
small deviations, you certainly ought to be able to distinguish deviations
large enough to be a safety issue. I suspect you already can, and just
don't know it because no one ever showed you that you can.

Pete