{"id":4955,"date":"2018-08-24T11:38:50","date_gmt":"2018-08-24T18:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=4955"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:52","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:52","slug":"212-the-power-of-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/212-the-power-of-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"#212 The Power of Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Written August 2016<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a big believer in the importance of practice.\u00a0 That\u2019s why when I was asked what I do when I fly by myself, the answer was pretty easy.\u00a0The opportunity to fly by myself doesn\u2019t happen too often.\u00a0 Maybe it\u2019s why the quality of my demos is beginning to deteriorate.\u00a0 I guess I better go back to my original plan of flying by myself for 1 hour each week.\u00a0 The purpose of that flight is simply to keep up my proficiency.<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/h3>\n

But the question was, \u201cWhat do you do?\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s a pretty good question.\u00a0 I guess I could break it down to two things.\u00a0 One is to simply practice the same maneuvers I teach in order to display some sort of proficiency when I demo them so that my students won\u2019t shake their heads and mutter to themselves, \u201cwhat could I possibly learn from THIS clown?\u201d<\/h3>\n

The other thing I do is to practice something in which I rarely give any dual.\u00a0 Aerobatics.\u00a0 Almost any aircraft is capable of aerobatics.\u00a0 Bob Hoover proved that.\u00a0 It\u2019s primarily its ability to withstand G force and drag from the wings that determine what an airplane is capable of.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the limiting factor is really the pilot more than anything else.\u00a0Some airplanes are certified for aerobatics\u2026 some are not. \u00a0If a student can get into trouble and attempt to \u201cSplit S\u201d out of a botched maneuver, it helps if the aircraft is capable of withstanding the resultant loading.\u00a0That\u2019s why I don\u2019t teach aerobatics in aircraft which are not certified for it.\u00a0 Besides, I may have made a living as an aerobatic pilot for 14 years, but I\u2019m a horrible aerobatic teacher!\u00a0 I like to think it\u2019s the same gene that caused my father to be an inferior polo player\u2026 In his case, he was too concerned with the welfare of his horses[1]<\/a>; in my case, it\u2019s concern for the airplane!<\/h3>\n

If there is one maneuver which tests one\u2019s ability to perform fundamental aerobatics, it\u2019s the slow roll.\u00a0 All my flying career, mostly in the airshow business, I performed in airplanes which were not equipped with inverted fuel or oil systems.\u00a0 That\u2019s why I\u2019ve always referred to those maneuvers as \u201cballistic aerobatics\u201d.\u00a0 For the same reason, I\u2019ve always referred to a slow roll in such an airplane as a \u201cslot roll\u201d.\u00a0 I call it that because, while in a slow roll, the nose of the airplane is going up and down in an imaginary \u201cslot\u201d while the pilot simply flies the G\u2019s.\u00a0 A barrel roll will feature a heading change, a slow roll will not. \u00a0The slow roll also requires proper rudder input to do it correctly.\u00a0 That may be the hardest thing to perfect, because the rudder input is \u201cbackwards\u201d through half of the roll.<\/h3>\n
\"\"
Practicing the Landing in a Turn.<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Interestingly enough, I find that the maneuver I practice the least is the landing in a turn followed by slaloms.\u00a0 As difficult and complicated as it is, I don\u2019t seem to have a lot of trouble with it and it is often left behind in a personal practice session.\u00a0 I should probably practice it more, since it\u2019s important that I do it well and with precision.<\/h3>\n

Since I feel that you should always practice that in which you are weak, I usually finish off my practice session with some power-off accuracy practice.\u00a0 I combine that practice with the attempt to do smooth landings and adhere to the centerline.\u00a0 In the event of a crosswind, I may practice the \u201cdiagonal\u201d landing, taking a few degrees out of the crosswind by landing diagonally on the runway with no attention to the centerline.<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/h3>\n

So I guess you could have figured this out all by yourself.\u00a0 Since I teach certain things, it stands to reason that I should be fairly competent at performing those things.\u00a0 And if you know anything about my philosophy of learning, you also know that I feel that nothing beats plain old practice.\u00a0 One of the best indicators of the importance of practice is simply formation flying.<\/h3>\n
\"\"
Practicing formation flying with Darren Pleasance.<\/strong><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You might think that you\u2019re flying with great precision, putting the airplane right where you want it. Then you form up on another airplane and realize that you really weren\u2019t as precise as you thought you were!\u00a0 But with practice, your power changes and small adjustments become smaller and smoother.\u00a0 And THAT is the power of practice<\/h3>\n

[1]<\/a>Larry Lansburgh won the trick riding and single steer roping at the Salinas rodeo when he was 15.\u00a0 He went on to be inducted into the American Horse Show Association hall of fame and was a two-time Academy Award winning film maker.\u00a0But that\u2019s another story!<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Interestingly enough, I find that the maneuver I practice the least is the landing in a turn followed by slaloms”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4956,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[35,67,102,165],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4955"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}