Conqeuring your fear(s) in flight.......

[avistudent]

Hello all,

I believe everyone of us here has or had fears in flight. And I would like to know how you can overcome them as experience accumulates. After today's fly, it "REALLY" got me thinking if I can ever overcome the fear of in-flight turbulance.

Today, March 19, a fairly nice day, a bit windy with scartted cloud conditions in Toronto/Buttonville (CYKZ). Today is, what the school call it, a supervisory ride with a Class 2 instructor. Just to see how i perform in slow flight, spiral, steep turns and teaching me advance stall. Everything went very well on ground and we proceed to t/o, as soon as we were in the air, the wind begins to pick up right our left (wind where blowing from the east).

All the way from t/o to 4500ft.AGL, the turbulance level, to me, is moderate to pretty bad at times. Very bumppy, with occasional jot of left and right as well as sudden downward bump, so overall, it was not pleasant condition to do slow flight.

I did not perform very well in slow flight as i was too busy compensating the turbulant air as well as getting used to it. After slow flight, my instructor realized that i cannot handle the condition, we decided to head home.

On our way back, I already feel a bit abnoxious (sp?), a little disoriented and feel like throwing up, but lucky it didnt! I was having difficulty maintaining straight and leve, which i am good at with my usual instructor as well as speed.

Overall, i was very upsat with my perforamce, due to the fact that the turbulance tremendously affacted me, in terms of my emotion, and my fear of accident.

Sorry for so long, I would LOVE to hear advices and similar stories from you

Take Care,

Tom

TT 16.3 hrs Piper Warrior 2

[Dewdrop]

Sounds like just "one of those days", we all have them. You just need to write it off to experience (and believe it or not, it is good experience) and push on with your training, in a few years you'll wonder what you ever found so differcult.

[Tinstaafl]

In this early part of your training your judgement about what is 'moderate' or 'severe' is easily skewed by not having a broad experience base with which to compare. If you're already nervous about mild turbulence then you'll perceive the turbulence to be worse than it really is. This is compounded by lack of knowledge about what the a/c is capable of handling. You can't learn everything in one day!

As you gain experience your perception (& judgement, I hope!) will change as you get exposed to a variety of conditions & as your underlying skill improves with practice. Part of the reason for minimum experience requirements for licences is to try to ensure you gain this exposure & practice.

[LowNSlow]

Stick with it Tom, most of us have had a fear of some phase of flight at one time or another. As tinstaafl says, it reduces in proportion to your experience. :ok:

[JABI]

Remember ( with all due respect) you are still very inexperienced.
You will most likely scare yourself silly a couple of times before you get your license. Usually happens when you're solo and nobody around to help you out.
But that's completely normal and happens to everybody.
I remember one encounter with turbulence that scared me silly because it was so unexpected. One moment we're droning along second later luggage is all over the place (Pa28) passenger with a bump on the head and headset missing.
Fear ( the healthy variety) is what keeps you alive in aviation, just keep a healthy suspicion of everything that does not look quite right.
In the meantime, continue and have a lot of fun!:ok:

[homeguard]

I've never had a full explanation from a medic that really explains motion sickness. One of the factors that ab initio students suffer, is that they tend to fixate on a single point.

We use many clues (the five natural senses) to ascertain what is happening to us in space. Pitch, Roll and Yaw movements. Did the horizon pitch up or did the aircraft nose go down type of scenario. The 'G' forces you may experience indicating to you that you are going up/down may be at odds with the visual clues from the aircraft nose pitching differently. The same effect may well be present in yaw and roll. The brain becomes confused. You become disoriented and feel nauseas. The brain saids you are what you eat get rid!

The best answer to this is to ensure you do not stare at a single source but keep you head moving constantly, looking around you all the time. Good airmanship actually. Do not look constantly in and out of the cockpit in these conditions. The eyes will need to refocus which will only add to the condition.

As you gain greator skill in flying the aeroplane much of what I have said will become more natural to you plus your confidence will improve reducing or eliminating the effects of motion sickness.

[Dop]

I don't particularly like it when it's bouncy either, but one thing I've learnt is that if I don't eat much just before going flying, I can start feeling queasy, if we're doing sharp manoevures like tight turns, or if it's a bouncy day.

On the last leg of my QXC, for example, I started to feel a bit queasy and wished I'd had something to eat with the tea I'd had at my last stop.

[Zlin526]

The only fear I've ever had when flying has been the 'paying for it' phase afterwards! Never have got over it:E

[yawningdog]

Don't worry. It'll get easier. Fear is just the body's self preservation system reminding you to be careful.

Just think of turbulence as the difference between driving on the highway and on the dirt in a 4x4. Just a bumpier road, nothing unusual.

If you learn in poor conditions, it'll make you a better pilot.

[trevelyan]

Agreed learning in not perfect conditions will make you a better Pilot, but to go do something like slow flight when the turbulence is bad is a total waste of time, all it does is mask what you are trying to achieve, making it hard or impossible to understand what you are supposed to be doing.



:hmm:

[B2N2]

Trevelyan, do not quite agree with you on that one.
Slow flight is a great excercise in airplane control.
You should already be fairly proficient at it in calm air before your FI asks you do demomnstrate it in turbulent conditions.
In bumpy stuff you really need to make small corrections in pitch bank and power all the time to keep things heading straight and if you practice this enough it will really become second nature.
Which will be good when you start with landings in bumpy conditions. At least you do not have to think anymore before you correct.

[trevelyan]

Thats a fair point B2N2, I was thinking more of students having to try and fly this type of manouver without having had the chance in good still conditions.

As you say, is very worthwhile for the bumPy approach, pitch and power becoming automatic!

Regards

006

[QSK?]

Avistudent:

The best way to overcome your fear of turbulence is to equate your flight to that of a speedboat racing very fast across small choppy waves on a lake.

Although the fact that speedboat is hitting the small waves quite hard with a lot of noise, and also going up and down, most people seem to be able accommodate this sensation with little discomfort or fear. The speedboat is operating quite safely provided it stays within its structural (speed) limits for rough water, and that the speedboat driver doesn't raise the nose of speedboat too high and inadvertently flips it.

The air is like the water and your plane is like the speedboat - no difference; your aircraft is reacting the same way as the speedboat and also has its structural limits (eg Va). Provided you know, and operate, within those structural limits; and also appreciate how turbulence impacts on relative wind and angle of attack you (and your aircraft) are quite safe. You would be surprised how much hard treatment many light aircraft can withstand.

So, like when you're on a speedboat, relax and allow your mind and body to go with the flow when you're flying. However, at all times, you must still recognise the limitations of your capabilities and experience, as well as those of your aircraft.

Safe, happy flying mate!

[Kellvin]

You will never really "get over it" and neither should you.

I hate stalling, always have and although my fear factor has gone down through time I still don't like it.

It did not help that one of the first times I did a stall the instructor told me to push down on the yoke and add power, this put me into a vertical dive and into VNE. Still, later I got told that if I ever get into a aircraft with no fear whatsoever then I should re-consider what I am about to do.

Turbulance never really worried me, but familarity will breed contempt and a less concerned attitude towards it.

Now it's up to you to determine if thats a good thing or not.

[FNG]

Kellvin, did your instructor debrief you after that stalling exercise? Was he or she asleep whilst you flew it? I assume that by "push on the yoke and add power" you mean unload and add power, but you describe this as though it were something unusual. Presumably your instructor mentioned that, when practising a power off stall this is the standard drill: you need to relax the aft stick force, reduce your AofA and unstall, and smartly add in power. Entering a VNE dive is not part of the plan, especially as the usual stalling exercises emphasise minimising height loss. The stalling exercises aren't supposed to leave you frightened: they are of course supposed to alert you to the warnings of a likely stall, and the dangers of stalling, but also to demonstrate that with a proper reaction you can get out of trouble. If it freaks you out that much, perhaps your next one hour flight with an instructor could concentrate on stalling.

On another thread recently , someone observed that he'd come across pilots, even those with CPLs etc, grabbing the controls during stalling exercises. Do people really remain that nervous about this, turbulence etc? Maintaining awareness of the many ways in which our aeroplanes will cheerfully kill us is one thing, but being scared of them is another.

[Kellvin]

FNG,

To be fair to my instructor, I refused to do stalls again for a long time. I managed to do a few close to my skills test and this took me through the test.

But, I was never happy with it.

Went to newzealand for a holiday with thte intention of hiring a aeroplane and flying around. NZ CAA would not recognise my licence but would let me fly with a instructor. It was a bit cheaper than here so I went up for two hours with him.

His directive was to "hone my skills" I told him about stalling so we went to 5ooo ft and stalled, and stalled, and stalled. Rocking the aircraft from side to side with the rudder. Then, back up again for power on stalls, turning stalls and every other possible stall you could imagine.

This instructor did not touch the controls at any time so I guess he was confident with stalls.

I still don't like stalls but I am confident I can cope with them.

The best bit was to go into the circuit for side slipping landings. and valley flying But, thats another story.

[FNG]

All credit, then, for getting back on to the horse that threw you.

[jayemm]

In the early days of my PPL training, I used to get into a 'stress flap' with turbulence because it felt like I had so much more work to do. Just to try to focus on the instruments was bad enough, as well as banging my head on the roof, my charts falling everywhere alongside a fear of the plane falling apart and me crashing.

My instructor's advice was "slow down and let the plane fly itself, don't fight the controls". This advice worked a treat.

In your shoes now, I'd get familiar with flying as straight and level in turbulence first, to increase your confidence then learn other maneouvres.

I found that much of the fear has more to do with lack of confidence and experience than anything else.