Flyin the rollercoaster

pkloop

New Member
Am I the only one who feels like flying is like riding a rollercoaster? One moment your up you've got it then the next moment your headin down and feel like you've never been in an airplane..much less flown one. I'm learning as we all are about flying, but anyone care to share there experiances good, bad, transition to "rollercoaster" moments?
 
I have never flown an aircraft, but I can remember the first time I was on one. We were descending into SFO and the pilot had cut back on power. I don't really know if it was too much of a cut or not but all of the sudden, I got that funny falling sensation in my stomach. My dad also noticed it. Even worse than a rollercoaster. It only lasted for a few seconds, but I really enjoyed that feeling. I imagine when I learn to fly, I will be giving myself butterflies once in a while too!
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Give it more than an hour next time
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Also, a lot of our users are on the east coast 9:28pm here = 12:28am there, and it's a Wednesday!

What you are describing goes away with time. I think it really helps to fly it, you KNOW what you are doing and you KNOW what the airplane will do, so you can anticipate it.
 
Next time, let go of the yoke, the plane will oscillate up n down until it hits the A/S that it is trimmed for and if you don't mess with it, it will hold that altitude. If its going up n down, your not trimed for the A/S you think or your causing the oscilations. I alway's let go, the plane fly's better by itself. Try It!
 
Heh, I can tell you're used to flying FSI airplanes. I tried to demo that to one of my students in a 1982 C172 with 11,500 hrs. on the airframe, and the stupid thing wandered all over the sky...never even came close to maintaining the speed I had trimmed it for.
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Oops..shoulda worded that better. I mean the "rollercoaster" of knowledge. One minute you think you've figured out the airplane how it flies, lands etc next minute it does something different.
 
Hey man you're not alone...

In fact I experienced something like this a few days ago.

In my previous lesson we'd been up in the pattern. Things went very well (this was third lesson doing pattern work). Things went so well in fact that my instructor feels that I'm ready to solo. So the next lesson rolls around and we get into the pattern and this time ATC tells us to use right traffic this time. No problem I think, even though all my practice to this point has been left traffic. Boy oh boy was I wrong. As I turn crosswind I suddenly forget how to do a coordinated turn. My brain eventually kicks in and I hit the rudder.

I land for the first T&G and then suddenly I'm flying sideways off the runway (no wind that day...amazing I know). *sigh* at least the landing was smooth....of course I touched down with all 3 wheels at once which wasn't good, but I did smash the nose wheel.

Anyhow, I know what you mean, but I can say this: after that crappy T&G things got a lot better. I just thought about the whole process as I was doing it. I even started talking through the steps you know, like, "Okay, at pattern alt - 500' so lets turn right, make sure you're coordinated, look outside..." etc. In the end that rest of my landings were quite good (although I gotta remember to keep my airspeed up on final), and I made all my radio calls (which is something for me, prior to that point I was letting the airplane get ahead of me and my CFI made the calls for me, so I could...um...fly). IMHO, we're learning a new skill here and I find that for me it's when things start feeling "automatic" that things start going downhill. I just concentrate as if I'm doing this for the first time and things fall back into place. Like my CFI says, "it's the magic of repetition".

Keep the faith.

Naunga
 
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