Aileron

I'm pretty happy with tonight's flight. There are flights where I feel stupid and clumsy and seriously doubtful of my learning abilities, and then there are flights where things go pretty smoothly and I think hey, I might just get this yet, and tonight was one of the latter. The nose wasn't wandering all over the place, I could hold a heading, I could hold an altitude; I was flying.

I also tried talking on the radio, though that was less graceful. Radios are fun because you get to sound all pilot-like, but some transmissions can be very information-dense so you have to be on your toes to process it all. I definitely need to work on getting more comfortable with radio comms.

We practiced some steep turns and slow flight over Fremont before deciding on the spur of the moment that it would be fun to go visit my instructor's plane at KRHV. I entered the right downwind from the east and flew the landing with a lot of instruction from my CFI, but more or less by myself. And it was a good landing, centered all the way down, and a light touch on the ground.

After a brief stop, we took off from KRHV and headed back to KPAO. Our route took us directly over the runways at KSJC and KNUQ, which firstly was awesome because we got to see these big airports from not that high above (1400 ft). And it was fun to see the airliners at KSJC holding short for the little Cessna puttering overhead.

I again more or less flew the landing at KPAO, which also felt good, while we discussed sideslips a bit.

On the ground, I had a bit of an epiphany while my instructor was explaining sideslips. All of the training material I've read introduces the rudder in coordination with the ailerons. I think the motivation is to prevent people from trying to turn the plane with rudder alone, which can result in a spin. But thinking of the rudder purely as the thing that corrects aileron yaw forces you to identify exception cases, cases where rudder use is opposite from normal use, for example in a slip or picking up a wing in slow flight. I was a bit worried about this, having a very important control that sometimes works backwards, and relying on me to remember when it works which way.

The epiphany was when my instructor said, "Your feet have to act independently of your hands. Your feet have to do whatever it takes to control the yaw." Feet control yaw. Obviously I knew that before, but I didn't think in terms of that. I thought in terms of cases: left roll needs left rudder, right roll needs right rudder, pitch up needs right rudder. Thinking of the controls independently of each other simplifies things greatly. Feet control yaw, always, no special cases.

784SP

• Flight Hours: Δ1.0   Σ15.2