looking out the window
 

Im looking for advise on how not to look at the instruments so much and to look out the window more. Im learning how to maintain straight and leavel flight are there any tips on how this can be done with just a quick glance at the instruments.
Does it come with experiance.
thanks.

My first thought:

Yes, it does come with experience.
But also, more important: Fly attitudes.
Put something from your cockpit onto the horizon, maybe your standby compass? A spot on the windscreen? When you are flying straight and level, look for something to point at the horizon and keep it there.
Same goes for the descent and climb.

That worked for me when I first learned to fly the mighty Firefly.

Well if u are flying a cessna 150/152 or 172. Just keep the nose about four fingers below the horizon at cruise power 21-2350 rpm or watever it is and hopefully u will be flying straight n level.
Best of luck

C152 - how much are you paying for your instructional flights and where?

Try to keep it at about a 90:10 ratio of outside:inside, also use the horizon view at the side...using your instuments a little bit is ok because it will help you to adapt to instrument flying later if you choose but because it's absolutely imperative!!! to keep a constant scan for traffic---and develop that traffic lookout scan you should use the instruments sparingly....just a quick glance at airspeed, altitude, TC] [mainly at this stage the ball], heading, and vertical speed should suffice that's called a partial panel
since you have the horizon the AI wont be that important
I emphasied the 'side horizon' for two reasons

1...Traffic scan
2...if you want to do aerobatics later...;)

You can also learn to correlate the instrument indications with what you see outside that's important for later instrument flight so you can picture what the plane is doing in the clouds...lots of new pilots have your difficulty too much PSP...:}:ouch:

But...

You do not want a midair collision on your first solo...:\:\:\

When I started my lessons we there was so much heavy haze that I actually had to rely on instruments it was really [IMC]...I could see the traffic but not the horizon... it was a big blur especially since we were alway over water ...but that entailed me looking continously up and down and side to side because the practice area was very busy plus people were doing aerobatics and towing banners and sight seeing but at this stage developing a traffic scan is of utmost importance---

In fact even under IFR when in VMC it is still the pilot in command's responsibilty to SEE AND AVOID!!!

One way of thinking that may help, is if you think of it the natural horizon is one huge attitude indicator...;););)
look at this video...

Peggy Lee - Sweet Happy Life - YouTube

:):):)

Exactly straight and level? ---step on the ball, if it moves, and keep your nose on the horizon.. and all of the stuuf above I mentioned...:)

Learn to fly gliders. Much more canopy, much less instruments to get distracted by. And lots of other gliders close by, typically.

Let me guess: you spent a lot of time in PC-simulated flying, before getting into the real thing?

You have already used the right word - glance. Set Power, Attitude and then Trim. Only when you have done this should you 'glance' at the instruments. Look out again and assimilate the information you have just absorbed whilst confirming you still have the selected attitude and are in trim. Glance at the instruments a second time and then back out again. What has changed? If you have gained/lost altitude, select a new attitude by adjusting the position of the horizon, wait a few seconds, then trim. Wait. Glance at the instruments and back out. Wait. Glance at instruments again then back out. What has changed? Have you achieved what you want to achieve (level flight)?

A couple of other things:

Never chase the instruments.

If your wings are level but a point on/near the horizon is moving L/R, then you are not in balance. Check the ball.

Listen. If the engine noise is changing and you haven't adjusted the throttle you must be either accelerating or decelerating (think car going up/down hill with a constant pedal position).

Enjoy. These early lessons 4-9 (you're talking about 6) are imperative as they form the fundamental building blocks. Don't rush, or allow yourself to be rushed, through them.

It comes with experience. As you get more relaxed you will just be glancing at the GPS etc.

Get the instructor to put yellow stickies over the instruments :)

First, you have an instructor for a reason, so listen to him, not me!

But on a theoretical note:

Most of the responses have included "keep the nose on (or x fingers below) the horizon".

Hands off, a trimmed fixed wing aircraft will happily oscillate up and down swapping height and airspeed in a "phugoid" oscillation.
The oscillation period theoretically depends only on speed and is typically 20-30 seconds.

Confusingly, the pitch and vertical airspeed change fastest when the height and airspeed are not changing at all, and vice versa - trim actually keeps the angle of attack the same throughout!
This is why "chasing the needles" is a hard way out of the problem.:uhoh:

However, if you hold any sensible attitude at all vs the horizon, the vertical airspeed acts like a kind of friction.
This is because it changes the angle of attack so as to oppose the vertical motion, and damps the oscillation.
Theoretically the oscillation is damped away to "noise" in some 2-3 seconds.

Then you can fly the aeroplane again!:)

Indeed from the instructor's side this is the best way to teach it. I cover all the instruments (apart from ts and ps) with my clipboard when teaching exercises 6-9, only removing it so the student gets the glance they need. This builds the correct ratio of looking in to looking out.

If you learn power, attitude, trim correctly you can jump into pretty much any aircraft and have it flying the correct airspeeds and perfectly level with just a little trial and error.

Jan, :ok: You beat me to it. I was just going to tell him/her to stop playing with FS at least until the problem is solved and preferably until (s)he has completed his/her PPL.

I found this when I first started learning but now (circa 130 hours) don't find it a problem. The main thing that did it for me was a near miss over st Mary's marsh. It was a handy reminder of just how busy se England is on a sunny day. I now have the opposite problem of being terrified to look into the cockpit for more than a couple of seconds which can make nav challenging. :ugh:

The point here really, ignoring the detail, is gaining the experience to understand, trust & value the superior information that the outside view gives you on what the aircraft is really doing.

Personally I didn't really get this until doing the IMC rating when the outside view is taken away from you - this rammed home the fact that the instruments can fail in some very difficult to spot ways which will give the wrong information that, in standard vfr conditions over land, is impossible to get from looking outside.

Maybe work through, with your instructor (it's their call based on where you're up to on your course), how you should react if AH, ASI, tacho, altimeter etc fail in flight as it will, if nothing else, get you thinking about & realising the value of the outside view.

I used FSX for practicing IMC procedures (+ one big sheet of A3 to cover the top half of the screen) but found anything else was pure gaming - good fun but about as useful a flight training aid as GTAIV ;)

enq ...GTAIV???

:)

For the average VFR flight the only instruments that are really necessary to monitor are ASI, Altimeter, and RPM gauge.

Since most of the flight is going to be cruising straight and level, after you have the aircraft stabilized in the cruise flight attitude, power set, trimmed, and the aircraft pointed at a geographic feature in the direction you want to go; there is pretty much no reason to be looking inside except for an occasional glance at the
T & P,s and the altimeter.

My number one pet peeve is pilots who chase the gauges. The two classics are when too low/high to push or pull while staring at the altimeter until it is at the right number, but then make no effort to set the correct cruise attitude and trim. Sure enough a minute later the aircraft is again off altitude and the whole process starts again. The other classic is chasing the airspeed on climbs and descents instead of again setting and holding an attitude, by looking out the windshield then letting the aircraft settle down and only then referencing the ASI.

A recent student, who sadly held a CPL, was a terrible airspeed chaser. I finally broke him of this bad habit by covering up the ASI at the start of the prestart check and leaving the cover on until the end of the shut down check.

The AI and DI also do not exist for my PPL students until the nav and instrument phase near the the end of the course. The natural horizon provides all thr pitch and roll cues you need and the map provides the geograhic references in order to establish direction.

At the very least try covering your AI on the next few flights. It will make you a better pilot :ok:

What a wonderful thread this is with the collective thoughts of so many ---helps make me a better instructor too...:ok:

I think some people may be too rigid in their rules.

If you are flying a simple plane with no instruments, then obviously you will just be looking out of the window.

But the real world isn't like that.

A typical hazy English summer, say 2k-5k vis, especially over the sea, is very hard to fly (other than at a low level, which brings its own issues) without a periodic reference to the AI, not to mention modern nav instruments (GPS) because visual nav is then very difficult.

Obviously a 10hr pilot is not going to be doing that but a 10hr pilot is not going to be doing a lot of things (like, errrm, the radio :) ).

At some stage you need to turn out a pilot who can use his £10,000 ICAO compliant Private Pilot's License for actually going somewhere, and I am not talking about the 1000km viz and blue-sky-to-outer-space conditions on which instructors are willing to allow the QXC.

So there will be a progression towards an instrument scan, at some stage.

A good pilot, even a plain PPL, will be naturally scanning both the instruments and the outside.