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.

To be honest, I only asked because I was so much reminded of my own early sins, and my own poor instructors who DID cover the instruments with whatever they found at hand!

I am hard over on this one. If you are a low houred non instrument rated PPL
there is no reason you should be looking at the AI under normal circumstances.

If the vis is so poor that you need to be looking at the AI to hold a desired attitude then you are in a place you do not want to be, ever. In Canada the PPL requires 5 hours of IF training. I teach this wholly as emergency manoevering skills designed to get you out of trouble and will if at all possible give them actual IMC exposure, but for newer pilots safe flying is looking out the windshield not staring at the AI.

As for long cross countries, unless it is really crappy I just slowly turn until the bearing and track numbers on the GPS are the same, pick something straight ahead out the windshield to aim at and then enjoy the view.:ok:

On my first flight ever I did the preflight, the radios, taxied, took off went around the pattern, after my second flight my instructor said "you meet commercial standards"...after about my fifth flight he said "I should just sign you off on the :mad: Seneca for your ATPL"...:cool:


and the majority of my flights were conducted under effective IMC but I still kept my eyes out for traffic as NY Class G is extremely busy--- blimps--- heli's--- banner towing--- other student pilots ---folks doing aerobatics and worst of all flying doctors...:eek::}

It took extreme initiative on my behalf though that's what happens when really poor people want to be pilots and you don't have the money to learn to fly you'd better already be a pilot---a real pilot!!!

My instructor admitted I knew more than him...but he adapted to me ...so you must adapt to your student there's no set rules...:)

please don't read this as bragging although I was proud of myself---hey I even took passangers along for my lessons---one dude hated that emergency descent...:}

Pugilistic

True story. My second PPL student was a 17 year old Air Cadet. It became immediately obvious that he allready knew how to fly , so I said " what is the deal with you" . Well the kid said, my father owns a bush operation in the Yukon with a Beaver, Cessna 185 and a Super Cub, all operated on wheels, skis and floats. He had been flying since he was 5 years old sitting on his fathers lap and had over a 1000 hrs of unofficial flying :hmm:. Other then a bit of radio work and the official federally mandated stupidly complicated and mostly useless way of navigation planning ( which incidentally is identicle to the UK PPL sylabus :rolleyes:) and which he will never use again , I did not have a lot to teach him :O

Funny story...I have yet to earn such easy money...:}:}

:}:}:}

I never touched one cuz I find them boring as hell...but in the right applications simulators can be useful---more for IFR training though IMHO...I need to feel the forces as that's what I'm addicted to...you should see me drive until a couple of well placed tickets slowed me down--a bit...in fact I find myself treating cars like planes....:cool:

I tried to tell those cops that the speed limit below 10000' is 288mph but none would listen...:}

Everything in the real plane for me or I'll fall asleep...I had no ground school till the kingAir

that part was always signed off even IFR...:)

Now if I were going too learn to fly Choppers then I'd find myself a nice patient instructor to slowly walk me through everything...:O

In the context of ab intio instruction I would agree with you if you only used MSFS with an instructor sitting next to you. The reality of course is that never happens and bad habits bred of the fundemental ignorance that every new student brings to the business of learning to fly, will become entrenched.

As an instructor I would much prefer a blank canvas. Personally I forbid my ab initio students from using MSFS.

However for licensed pilots working on their instrument ratings, MSFS does have some real value when practicing instructor assigned instrument procedures.

Less instrument scanning
 

I find that the aircraft and gliders I have flown in the past 60 years, have flown better by themselves (once in trim) than my fiddling with the controls !

It is not necessary to scan the instrument panel in detail every 2 seconds, but an occasional glance at the critical ones (AIS, Altitude, engine rpm and temp, oil pressure and variometer in gliding etc) . I personally prefer the analog ones because relative needle positions in colored fields are immediately recognizable.

Your eyes should be outside the cockpit 99.9% and your head "on a swivel"
to scan the airspace around you for anomalies, such as other aircraft, which now include UAV's especially in the USA.

As is probably the most overlooked fact by students, it takes much time to reach proficiency and skill levels allowing you to spend less time flying the airplane and more time stategic planning route, method and execution.
Only the acceptance of a patient attitude makes students succeed. One step at the time ! The best way to learn to relax in an aircraft is to fly often and do many many touch and goes. It worked wonders for me.

Where did you see such a claim?

Flight sim is invaluable doing an IMCR/IR. you can spend as long as it takes to understand ADF tracking for no cost!

Its not the work of the devil.

Its a tool which can be deployed to great advantage by an instructor.

Its more the self teaching then renforcement of bad practises which is the issue.

I completely agree with BPF and YW even when flying IFR in class A with the horizon visable my heads out the window. Its alot easier to maintain S&L using the real one than the AH. And once trimmed the aircraft does the flying so as long as you don't annoy her she will stay straight and level.

Record is 15mins and the length of Wales with no control inputs. Very stable day and no directs. Its quite a good training game to play with the FO's if you bitched at them for being out of trim they would just get bored with the nagging. Doing a rubbish 30 seconds hurts thier pride and is far greater motivation to trim it properly than nagging. After they can do it they trim it subconsiously.

IMHO the two unavoidable drawbacks of the typical PC sim are:

1) There is a small screen in front of you, so you completely lack the side view. To "fit more in" you have to destroy the perspective. (See point 2).
I know you can strap things to your head and "look to one side" and the screen view follows, but you still lack the peripheral vision.

2) It is extremely hard to reconcile the distance from your eye to the PC screen with the real distance from your eye to e.g. the real compass on the real coaming, so it is very hard to judge visual angles in a sim.

So for circuits and landings I would say that sims are worse than useless.

But they are fine for other stuff (as others have said many times before me):
1) If you have the scenery, then you can practice nav routes.
2) You can practice instrument nav and procedures in extreme winds, etc.

I had the same problem as soon as I came out to Germany but I had just done my IMCr in the UK... The instructor checking me out at the club covered every instrument with post-its so that he could see the airspeed and altitude only, but I couldn't... this included the RPM...

I did 30 minutes of circuits like this, and he told me fly by feel and sound...

Although I would not recommend doing this while solo, make sure you have a good instructor with you... what really scared me is that my flying was better than when I could see the instruments... And this was backed up by a little GPS thing on the plane that you can plug a USB into view on Google Earth.

It always is. The only thing I look at is the T&P's and the alt gets a periferal look at occassionally. Far from the 90/10 I am more like 99/1 and can keep half the IFR limits while flying VFR.

I know its sounds weird but instruments lead to imprecise VFR flying not the other way round. You can either do one or the other try and mix them and it all goes to pot.

Club rule "crosswind turn not above twenty degrees bank angle"?

Can't think of any other reason to look at it. And yes you should be able to learn the attitude for the above.

And can't you tell what a twenty degree bank looks like by looking out the window.

H'mm what a great rule. Make a rule up to protect pilots that can't fly properly instead of dealing with the root problem of the pilots not being able to fly properly. How much do they stick extra on the POH approach speeds to protect said pilots?

Just to add as to why I like to teach the FAA recomended 90:10 scan

1.It is my belief that a pilot should be able to use and understand any and all instrumentation/equipment in the airplane I want my students 'type-rated' on their aircraft...

2. Most of the time- in the spring and summer,at least- haze makes the conditions at lower level effective IMC... so we really don't have a choice but to use instruments at least to some extent---and as I emphasize the haze is low level therefore presents a dangerous situation...here in NY it's a bit of a 'firehose as you must -inorder to survive do both 'instrument flying and trffic scanning' lack of either skill will kill you-I have never had a student who wasn't grateful for a finally having nice clear view out of the window at times...:)

3. As much emphasis as I place on not doing it ---I can't pretend my non-instrument rated students wont accidentally end up in a cloud...while not a good thing---I do not want such an error to be an automatic death sentence or even a situation that evokes panic, I want them to say "this is illegal and puts me at risk for a midair with IFR traffic so let me calmly fly out of this and never to it again" should they mistakenly do it ---and the three required hours of instrument practice wont cut it...
4. It is what the FAA recommends and since 99%(60% go commercial) of my students get an instrument rating it prepares them for IFR rules they don't really need to learn how to scan- just the rules particular to IFR---they already have a full and partial panel scan down pat I can then emphasize approaches...

5. From my aforementioned posts--- clearly I emphasize traffic scan for both [VFR and IFR students] and I also cover all the instruments with a map at times to emphasize power + attitude=performance regardless of whether you're using instruments or not most students quicky adapt they begin to glance at the instruments and absorb the information and how the indications are changing subconsciously...


That being said I do emphasize staying in trim---even when I was a student-pilot my hands were off of the flight control much of the time except when low down or in turbulence--i.e when they needed to be on the flight controls they were... even my 2G steep turns were hands off I'd 'set it and forget it'...:cool:

I found it fun to let the aircraft turn itself or I just tended to use my fingertips...and flew much of my flight through the pitch trim---for engine failure establishing glide speed was extremely easy since we were on the fast side generally when he'd 'fail' the engine...I'd just yank back the yoke to zoom up a bit-to get a little extra height while setting the glide speed with the trim wheel...most students if taught correctly love the trimmer...:)


That being said I do agree about all that was said about flight SIMS near useless and wasteful for VFR and could be a real money saver for IFR training if done under strict guidance...I don't necessarily forbid my students from using it it as I can't control what they do at home---I just assure they grow bored with it as they find the airplane much more engaging anyway so that they don't want to use it...:zzz:
I'm a very sensitive yet laid back person...the way I teach flying reflects that...no worries ever...:)

I teach my students that planes are easy...it's the ground [and all the stupidity that takes place thereon] that's hard to deal with!!!!...:\



:):):)

I used to use FS2000 during my PPL, to fly XC flights, so I had an idea of what ground features to expect. It was well worth having.

Today's (FSX, and that is already old) is much better.

I then used it for the IMCR, where it saved me £1000s. That was 10 years ago. But haven't used it since - for better or worse. Perhaps because the FAA IR and the JAA IR doesn't involve any IFR procedure knowledge that isn't covered in the IMCR.

Most instructors dislike "sim pilots" but there are so many prejudices in flight training one doesn't know where to start. They like clean-sheet students. They also don't like somebody doing a presentation on VFR flying abroad ;) That sort of thing will be thoroughly non-promoted at the school; they are afraid of their instructors' authority being undermined, they don't like the low billing density inherent in long trips and they don't like their shagged knackered clapped out planes going "tech" (one of the first euphemisms one learns in this game) in France or whatever.

One should never go flying unless one can do the flight on the ground first. This is obviously true for IFR but it's also true for VFR in the navigation sense. The sim has a place for that if you are teaching dead reckoning.

Can't learn aerobatics on a sim, need the side view...also can't learn the pattern and judging distance from RWY and such...:cool:

as I said I've overcome some of my predjudices regarding sims for IFR training to save costs...but I just think they are incredibly :mad:ing boring, I can't stand them...I can barely tolerate teaching on the FAA approved-IFR trainer which you actually can legally log some hours on...I like the real deal but it's far too expensive for many students...plus I hate when students have million of hours on it and they think they can really fly---every instructor I know young or old hates self taught MS-Sim pilots as they are never there too learn...they know everything... a the real obstinate ones never get signed off on anything because they are way too dangerous and have countless bad habits....we wont risk our reputaions like that...yet the think they can take and Airbus out of Laguardia on a busy day!!!!
I've never used a sim myself save advanced training on jets and T-props...where of course everyone does...:)

I wouldn't have an issue with that, to be quite honest I would like to see your presentation on it. In that line of things I will happily admit that you know way more about it than I do. Yep round europe in a CAT I have no problem with ops backup but doing what you do different story.

I have zero problems as well with gliding students converting to powered gaining altitude during a PFL either.