Rudder issues
 

Hi,

I am a PPL student with just 6 hours on my logbook and it seems I havent still grapsed the Rudder usage fully. I constantly forget to use a bit of rudder when increasing or decreaseing engine RPM during commencing the climb or descent. Would anyone advise on any exercise I can perfom in order to get the rudder usage right? I just dont feel the need for rudder and my instructor keeps reminding me that the Balance ball is not centered. I hate letting my teacher or instructor down so I need to find a way to sort this out! Any help would be much appreciated!

It will come eventually, don't worry. Just practice.

cheers,
Jake.

The best way to neutralise yaw is to look straight ahead and see if the nose is tracking left or right against the horizon (or against clouds or any visible texture when in a climb). You can also feel it without looking but it will take a good number of hours in the air before you get used to using the "seat of your pants" as it is called to identify any unwanted yaw.

As I am sure you know the rudder is a primary control.
In your early lessons you will have been shown that increasing power causes a pitch up and left roll/yaw, and reducing power right roll/yaw (with American engines)

Admitedly with the low power of he typical trainer the effect is not huge. You will probably first realise how significant it is when you try to climb on a constant heading, eg a navex, and wonder why your heading keeps drifting left,.or in the circuit doing touch and gos when you drift towards the left of the runway when applying full power, .....the reason, insufficent right rudder.
Unforunately the typical trainer often has the ailerons designed to reduce the need for rudder in turns to counter the adverse aileron yaw, so it is very easy to get lazy feet. Try to get the feel for the correct use of rudder as it will benefit you enormously

"The best way to neutralise yaw is to look straight ahead and see if the nose is tracking left or right against the horizon (or against clouds or any visible texture when in a climb)."
What if the wind is across your heading?

It will come. It would come sooner if spamcan trainers didn't mask poor 'pilot rudder use'.

As others have said it will come.

Just try to check the ball regularly, it`s very easy to be settled flying with yaw on believing the aircraft is straight.

Any uncommanded roll with a change in power is a prompt to check the ball until you gain that little extra experience.

Best of luck !

Well if you are crabbing, ahead will be somewhat displaced to one side. You will still see translation due to yaw.

Bingo, Shaggy Sheep Driver ...

That is exactly what I think is happening. I am training in C152 and it "masks" the need for rudder and I am developing "lazy feet". I repeated the lesson on climb and descend for two hours and while managed to get a strong PAT, APT and anticipation skills, I still have trouble with rudder compensation due to increase or decrease of engine power. I just don't feel it and yet when I look at Balance, the ball is reclining either left or right but not in the centre. Perhaps i need to train my vestibular apparatus with more lessons spent in the air and be patient.

Also I am thinking of using a Flight Simulator in order to strengthen my airmanship, PAT, APT, FREDA and DABLE. Do you think Flight simulator would be of any help?

Thanks everyone!

Oh dear.
But a novel intro l must say.

You just need more time, don't fret about it. I've known experienced pilots take more than your 6 hours to get used to light aeroplanes that really need regular use of rudder.

Yes! More time in the air, and regular glances at the ball.

No, at your stage, it'll just teach you bad habits. Practice checks with a photo of the cockpit.

G

My instructor says don't think about using a sim untill doing nav. You need to get used to the feel of flying the plane and all a low cost sim will do is confuse you once you really are flying.
Better to just think your way through it - maybe see if you can get time sitting in the plane when on the ground and practice going through checks or sit in a chair and go through the motions but as I say - a sim won't help.

Once you've mastered the feel then a sim might be useful for instrument flying or nav - but you are still a long way from that.

What checks are you talking about Genghis that need a mockup ?

Tommy Tickled Mary For Fourteen Glorious Hours. Don`t confuse the poor simmer.

AucT,

I'm not sure, if you are Apt to Dable with Pat and Freda. Concentrate on planes for now....

The next time you're out in the venerable 152 try the following:

Clearing turns, safe altitude, watch for traffic etc.

Feet flat on the floor. Roll the plane into about a 30 degree bank in about two seconds. As soon as you reach about 30 degrees of bank (precise angle not important), at the same rate roll it back through level to 30 degrees the opposite direction, then back through level to the first direction, and so forth. Keep going. Once you've got a nice rhythm going (it'll only take two or three full cycles), glance at the ball. It'll be slamming from side to side in the turn co-ordinator. (the other person in the plane will be too, and they'll have a foul look on their face).

Watch out the front, and notice the plane sliding sideways through the sky. Keep doing this, until you really feel you're going to loose control, or the plane is going to end up going backward through the sky (it won't, don't worry).

Now you know how not to fly.

Now repeat the traffic lookout, and do the same thing again ('cause you'll be more eyes in this time). Use the pedals with gusto, and co-ordinated with, or slightly leading the aileron, to keep the ball no more than halfway away from centered at all times. Continue practicing until you can do it.

What you will find, is that if you very slightly lead the turn with a noticeable amount of pedal, you can crank the ailerons as quickly as you want, and the ball will stay in the middle. As long as all of this is done slower than maneuvering speed, and the angle of bank remains within 30 degrees or so of level, there is no safety concern in any of it.

As for power... Haha! in the 24 years I've owned my 150, I have never noticed that it has "power". It just happily gets airborne, and gets where it's going, in it's own time. It is very unlikely that pedal use is required to compensate for power in a 150/152, it's more likely compensating for wind, or other asymmetry (that you induced).

It's good to consider it though. You will notice a need for lots of pedal in a 300HP or more propeller aircraft, particularly a taildragger.

Anticipating control inputs needed to correct for things like power, flap, landing gear changes is wise, though perhaps a little premature for a new pilot to get too worried about. Just concentrate on being aware of what the plane is doing, and should be doing, and assure that it is doing what you want it to do.

Checks are time consuming, and that's all money to a student pilot.

Sitting in front of a cutout/mockup/cockpit poster (typically about £15 from a pilot shop) with a checklist, repeatedly practicing checks until particularly the airborne / emergency checks are second nature, can save a great deal of time, and thus money in the air.

It does make your family think you've gone mad and should be left safely alone, which is another advantage.

G

Rudder shyness is a common trait even amongst experienced pilots. Don't be worried.

Just a suggestion, but try flying in very thin soled shoes. You might find that with an old pair of well worn soft shoes you become a little more aware of the rudder pedals and you might be able to feel the pressures more easily.

Balanced Flight
 

AucT:

Think of the rudder as a" Balance " control, it will come to you over time.

Another help is to do a series of left and right turns to about 30 degrees of bank, each way, only looking at the nose position relevant to the horizion. As soon as you bank the aircraft, the nose should start moving around the horizion ( by rudder use / pressure ). The same in the other direction.

Hope this helps.

Tmb

My experience is that rudder control will never totally become 100% intuitive. Only once you've flown a specific manoever in a specific airframe dozens of times will you be able to apply rudder more or less instinctively, and correctly.

But every time you go from one airframe to another you need to "reset" your feet for this new airframe, and that takes conscious thought initially. Going from glider to power and back, for instance, always requires me to do a few S-turns before I'm adjusted again to the amount of rudder input needed. And I once had a mighty surprise in a motor glider with a prop that turned the "wrong" way. The take-off roll must've been funny to watch...:eek:

I don't think there are pilots who can go from one airframe to another and fly the aircraft in perfect balance without glancing at the balance ball every so often. And you don't have to: The balance ball is right next to all the other primary flight instruments so it's perfectly legal to use it.

I agree with you Backpacker.

This morning I flew an aeroplane I know well - with 100+ hours on it, and which I occasionally instruct on, to a meeting. I hadn't flown it for some months however. I found myself having to actively monitor and manage the ball/sideslip/rudder.

This would only be a bad thing if I was unaware of the need, or couldn't cope - neither of which is true. But it is also true that I still had to work at it.

G

Thank you very much everyone! I shall try with 30 degree bank turns and buy myself a cockpit foto in order to practive checks. Any more advice would be very much welcome!

You can always turn up on rainy days when your lesson is cancelled and sit in the cockpit for real without being charged a penny for it.

Edit: Just don't drain the battery too much, fiddling with that Garmin 430.

In my old plane the equilibrium is so delicate it's almost an artform onto itself. As you trim, the tab, which is just on the left side of the elevator, induces an ever so slight roll. I'm talking a degree every second month, or something equally slow:) To compensate for this, I add the most subtle rudder trim.

But one tiny ascent, gust, descent, roll, trim change and the whole delicate balance is off. It becomes this elusive nirvana one keeps chasing. It never lasts. But it's great fun trying to keep everything in balance perfectly.

Just as roll's secondary effect is a move around the vertical axis, rudder's secondary effect is a move around the horizontal axis - rudder is also roll.

Ghengis, forgive me.

l believe that certain things should be remembered. The basics.
The ones who had difficulty remembering in times of stress during instruction were advised to save their money, at least by me.

You instruct on an aircraft that you don`t know intimately ?

Are you charging them ?

I agree with Backpacker, don't worry too much about the rudder. Think more about making the aircraft go where you want, ie keeping runway heading or whatever else is required.

I had a share in a Piper with autopilot and just used to change course and climb/descend using the autopilot. It didn't use any rudder.

The use of rudder becomes more important on landings, particularly crosswind landings and you will find that this is much more intuitive.

Dar has it. We call it 'rolling around a point'. Pick a point on the horizon, and feet on floor roll left/right 30 or so degrees and watch the nose. It will swing left/ right quite considerably.

Now do it again but this time with co-ordinated rudder (or slightly in advance) of the roll input, and when you get it right that point you chose will be glued to the spinner.

AucT

Cast your mind back to when you were learning to drive: you never knew how far to push the clutch pedal before it began to disengage... then one day you never thought about it any more?

Rudder is a bit like that!

With centre-line (tandem) seating, it's a lot easier to feel balance: ie both butt cheeks appear to bear the same pressure from the seat cushion. If one feels heavier - press that pedal to re-establish equilibrium.

Hope this helps,

Stik

Gee if you think the 152 is bad, wait till you fly a Pa28/38. :}

Seriously, I had the same problem as you have when I was learning. I can say that through practice you will learn to balance your turns instinctively, but always cross check what you see outside with what your turn coordinator/indicator is telling you. And the comment about the skill being perishable is definitely true, I tend to be all over the place if I don't fly for a while.

Rudder? what's a rudder? all you stubby wings people only need a rudder when taxying.....

Try flying in a training glider, not to mention 18 or 25 meter wingspan, and then you will discover what a rudder is for.

There is an extremely sensitive and high tech instrument usually taped on the outside of the canopy, which will soon show if there is excess rudder one way or the other in flight... sometimes it blows off and you have to find another piece of string.....

I imagine that most instructors occasionally have to teach on aeroplanes they've only got 100 or so hours on and haven't got access to the design drawings of. Embarrassing, but that's how it is, everybody's time is limited, and manufacturers can be very reluctant to let you have enough information to know an aeroplane intimately. I've only ever gone into that much detail on maybe 30 types, of the 97 in my logbook - so am presumably very limited compared to yourself?

And I did not say that I don't know the aeroplane, I said that I hadn't flown it for a few months and so needed to work harder at keeping the aeroplane absolutely in balance. It doesn't mean I failed or don't know the aeroplane - just that my feet got lazy from mostly flying aeroplanes less than 50 years old over the summer whilst I was busy writing mod applications to keep a 64 year old aeroplane, for which we can no longer get original parts, flying.

And no, I don't charge members of my syndicate for instruction on an aeroplane that I'm the only current instructor on in Europe, and which I mostly fly for fun. My choice, I charge elsewhere on other aeroplanes that I don't have a personal interest in.

So, you make sure you've been through all of the design drawings, maintenance manuals and flight test reports, and have a couple of hundred hours on every type you teach on presumably? Very admirable, I really wish I could.

(Okay, I could have just said "don't be an arsehole", but if you are going to be such a self-rightous prat, you deserve a little more vitriol).

G

Oh dear, the very best that l used to be able to do was to show how to do things, and then let them learn.

A self righteous prat ? The prat l would have to go along with. Arseh*le ? l can`t argue with that either.

Ghengis, please don`t make the mistake of acquiring ratings and assuming that is carte blanche for delivering instruction.

Ghengis the Engineer, at what point did you stop engineering and become a font of wisdom for pilots ?

I would say that every FI I know, has instructed on an aircraft they don't know intimately. The rule used to be that you had to have 5 hours on type before instructing on it, it's not even that nowadays.
Why should a FI have "intimate" knowledge of what they're instructing on? Is that intimacy with type or actual aircraft? It depends what you're doing, who it's with and your individual experience. I've got a couple of thousand recent hours on Warriors/Archers and dozens (but years ago) on a slab-wing Cherokee, one of my ex-students has bought themselves a Cherokee 180, what do I need to do to achieve the apparently desired intimacy, before I conduct a dual revalidation flight for their class rating with them in their own aircraft? NOTHING.

Just to wind the likes of you up a bit more - from my lofty castle - you probably know about as much as he/she does about who is selling what these days.

Unfortunately, the beast has to be fed.

Gosh ! things move fast !! edited to add what I should have put at the top of my post, thought I was responding to the post above ( I was at the time ! )

start with ..............
and my response was...

Absolutely, it's not less than perfect flying that one should worry about, but ignoring it and not making the right corrections.

l`m really sorry but l don`t understand what you said. Could you explain ?

Wow! and I used to get the chop for thread drift? less vitriol, amigos!

A good instructor has a reasonable acquaintance with the aircraft, not necessarily intimate. A good instructor is able to assess the qualities of his student. And a very very good instructor does not hesitate to say "I have control!" when things get too exciting.

The more experience you have as an instructor, the higher your pain barrier and the closer one can come to that coffin corner before taking over; but one's hands are never too far away. When at the age of 50 I first took up flying, and wanted to learn how to land, John Cumberpatch at a strip in the US of A which enjoyed a perpetual crosswind, never let me contact the earth. Which now makes me wonder how experienced he actually was?........

There are types of aircraft of which few examples exist, usually for very good reasons. And then some bozo actually buys it because it is cheap (for very good reasons) and asks an instructor to help him learn to fly the beast.....

Can any of you wise old birds reading this titilate us with an example from your experience of this problem?

Good post Mary...

I am not a flying instructor (so I'm likely to be reminded that there's lots I don't know about flying planes). I was thinking about this very thread last week. It was my first occasion as PIC flying a Cessna Grand Caravan. (I have about 25 total time on them). As I was doing takeoff testing of the aircraft following modification, and precise recording of time was required, I took along an observer.

He is a 900 or so hour pilot, who does not fly regularly. I let him fly the circuit part for many of them, just to refresh. I watched all of the turns (albeit shallow circuit turns) with my feet lightly on the pedals. The ball would wander side to side, with not a motion into the pedals from his side. I commented this, and got an "oh yeah" response. The subsequent turns did not show any better technique. Not an unsafe situation of course, though my butt noticed.

However, this abdication of control of one of the three axis of control, is to me indicative of common piloting error/oversight, and should be flown with much more precision by the offenders - just for precision's sake. It seems as if there must be some unspoken threshold of yaw error before correction is considered necessary. So as these "offending" pilots are not using the pedals adequately, where is that habit coming from? Instruction (lack of) must be playing a part!

I felt complimented by a remark from my 15,000 safety pilot, while test flying a Twin Otter (in which I have less than 100 hours over 25 years). He said "You must fly taildraggers a lot".

Maybe not so wise ! the next few weeks will tell.

I've just been asked to teach a 50 yr. old ( so you're in good company there Mary ) to fly.

I'm an 'advanced' microlight instructor, Tecnam, ALPI, high speed machines that give a Cessna 172 a good run for its' money, but bureaucratically still microlights in NZ, i.e. up to 544 Kg, LSA's in some administrations, and not the rag and tube units that are usually associated with the term 'microlight'

However, this guy has chosen not to learn to fly on our club Tecnam first, but buy his own " Bantam ". a NZ design of a side by side, open cockpit, rag and tube pukka 'microlight' with a two stroke Rotax engine !!

I did indeed fly this type, for about a total of about 3 hours, about 10 years ago, when I first embraced microlight flying, so I have the type rating and am technically 'legal' but .... !!

I'm now seeking someone with a similar "Bantam" who will give ME some instruction, or at least some hands on experience alongside him, first !

Trouble is, I can't carry a passenger until l've done 3 solo landings of my own, - Catch 22 - so I'll have to fly as his passenger and watch, there being no other Bantam qualified instructors around !

Watch this space ( no fool like an old fool )

Ex,

You need a type rating for a microlight? and 3 take-offs and 3 landings on type?

I can accept that good practice is that you get a bit of time on type before teaching it - I'd do exactly that I hope. The old British rule of 5 hours is a reasonable one, although it depends to some extent how you define "type".

But I've not previously heard of any regime which requires a type rating for a microlight aeroplane, nor requires 3 take-offs and 3 landings in type, rather than in class. That does sound like something of a bureaucratic nightmare to exist within.

G

N.B. Do teach the fellow how to do a circuit and landing on rudder alone. A teleflex cable failure, causing loss of the flaperons, is not an unknown event on a Bantam. I'd suggest that this is the second most likely failure after an engine failure on this type.

Come on surely as experenced instructors you don't need to get checked out per say just use common sense.

All the trike SEP's I have flown have the same picture on approach and if you nail that, the speed sorts itself out if you do the normal apparoach grad.

As for the rest of the handling have a look at the book, have a taxi and and a couple of fast stops.

Go fly it at medium weight,

Go high and run through the stalling exercises and have a steep turn or two. See what its like near the stall.

At a suitable speed throw it around a bit and see what the control responces are like. Do a PFL.

Then go an do a couple of normal circuits at book speeds different configs then do a fast approach and see how much it floats.

Then if everything feels normal and comfy, then go teach in it.

5 hours is just an arbitory number with no requirment for actually learning the envelope.