I flew with a guy today who is 23 years old with 940 hours TT. He is taking a job in Alaska flying a Beaver come May. Currently, he is working at a nearby seaplane school as a float instructor.
He’s been flying floats for a long time and in the pursuit of this new job, he needs to get some more night XC time. So I checked him out in our Cessna 172.
Coming from his background, flying Cubs around all the time, it was fascinating to me some of what he had to say about the finer points of the basics of flying an airplane. He had a nice touch when it came to coordination and explained what a Dutch Roll was. His use of rudder was admittedly much better than mine and I took that as a lesson (even though I was acting as instructor for the flight). I mean, I can step on the ball as well as the next guy, but just how do you keep the ball from leaving the center of the inclinometer? You’ve got to be proactive instead of reactive. He showed me how you can bank the plane to 45 degrees and back to 45 degrees on the other side while keeping that ball in the center the whole time. Use of rudder to counteract the adverse yaw. Adverse yaw, to me, has always been more of an academic point than a real thing. But, I was able to see clearly that it certainly has a place in flying an airplane.
In my pursuit to learn all that I can and be the best that I can be, I feel I learned something today – a very basic stick and rudder technique. Use of the rudder – I think that is an under taught area. I am going to teach more of that going forward.