Originally Posted by
Kolossi
@double_barrel:
I'm a bit late to this party I know, but re the "death grip" - I think I read this whole thread and didn't see mention of a tip I got here on Pprune and still use to this day in the air (and in the car on a long motorway cruise). I couldn't get by with thumb and one/two fingers, I naturally wanted to hold the yoke with the hand. As you start to tighten the grip though, your body tenses and you get in a positive feedback loop. To break this, when you realise you are holding too tight, put a 90 degree bend at your wrists! So arms held as normal but with the wrist joint outside and next to the yoke, then wrist bent in 90 degrees, then hand, fingers and thumbs on the yoke as "normal". It turns out that in that position, it's very difficult to grip the yoke hard and as the grip therefore relaxes, you get positive feedback the other way!
Re taxiing, glad you are getting the hang of it. It took me a while too having done lots of cycling when I was young so I was pre-programmed in the reverse sense in the same way as a soap-boxing custardprc. The way I re-learnt was to use a pc sim with rudder and yoke controls. It cost me £130 on ebay, and 3 years later after my PPL was safely earned, I sold it on ebay - for £130!!!! I really really don't want to start the debate on using flight sims during training, but for that one particular thing it suited me very well. Lots on here disagree you should even fire a sim up whilst training though, YMMV.
Thanks for the 'grip' advice. I will try that. I thought I had it dealt with until my first more-or-less unaided landing, then I realized that I was back to the death grip and over-controlling.
The rudder thing is now way better, both on the ground and in the air. I did wonder if a sim would help me to build the right instincts and to run through procedures, checklists etc in sequence at the appropriate time. Sounds like it's contentious on here! I certainly find that sitting down and running through things in my head really helps. I see a big jump in performance at the next lesson if I have done that and am really mentally prepared, compared to rushing from work, racing through traffic, dashing into the aircraft and screwing it up.