Instructor Report: Zen lessons

Actually, the word was less politically correct than “butt.” My instructor was ex-military and now a chief flight instructor who was expected to be a bit tough with his students. Back then, the phrase “politically correct” had not been invented and in fact, Butch was a great guy with a big heart and a wealth of knowledge who had taken a young kid (me) under his wing.

Thirty years later, I find myself in the right seat, shouting “fly with your butt!”

Make your own ‘figgles’

It is understandable that many pilots fly with heavy reference to instruments. After all, that’s what most of us have been taught to do, especially if we have been trained for IFR. Younger pilots especially have grown up on computer games and flight simulators, which reinforce this emphasis. However, for VFR flying, heavy reliance on instruments makes it much more difficult to fly visual maneuvers well, whether those maneuvers are called out in the commercial or private pilot flight test, or to simply fly a good pattern and landing.

The problem is this: Most instruments tell the pilot what has just happened, not what is about to happen—and even then, knowing what the instrument is saying requires looking at it, which takes attention away from where it should mostly be for a visual maneuver: outside the airplane.

“Instruments are not needed to fly an airplane.” This might seem like heresy, but it’s only a slight exaggeration. Airplanes talk, and if a pilot learns to listen, the instruments only confirm what she or he already knows.

To help learn how to listen to an airplane, I like to fly a series of exercises with my students—what I call the “Zen lessons.” The purpose of the Zen lessons is to learn to listen to what the airplane tells you, using all the senses, not just the eyes and certainly not the instruments.

To help with these exercises, I use a special flight training device. Foggles prevent the wearer from seeing outside the airplane. For the Zen lessons, we use “Figgles.” They prevent the wearer from seeing inside the airplane. Making a pair of Figgles is easy. Just start with an old pair of sunglasses and place a strip of electrical tape over the lower half of the lenses.

See and listen

The first step in the Zen lessons is to set up the airplane for trimmed, straight-and-level cruise flight, then put on the Figgles. Instantly, the instruments disappear and, amazingly, the airplane doesn’t fall out of the sky. Once the student has become comfortable with this experience, I call their attention to the sound of the engine and then don’t say anything for several seconds. I encourage them to really listen to the engine and to try to fix that sound in their memory. After several more seconds, I call their attention to the sound of the wind flowing over the windscreen and the wings and ask them to fix that sound in their memory, as well. Surprisingly, some students had never really heard the wind before; it was crowded out by the sound of the engine and all the other inputs.

Just like a blind person learns to heighten the use of their other senses, depriving a pilot of instruments helps them sense things they might not have noticed before. Once those things are fixed in mind, we note the distance of the nose below the horizon. By fixing the pitch attitude, engine sound, and wind sound in their memory, we set a picture of what cruise should look and sound like.

Once the pilot has had a few minutes to get used to this new environment, we reduce power to a point just enough to keep the airplane in straight-and-level flight at the typical approach speed. For this first change, I talk them through setting the power and pitch until we are in stable, level flight. Once again, we spend several moments listening to the sound of the engine, listening to the wind, and looking at the position of the nose relative to the horizon. This is a good demonstration of “pitch plus power equals performance,” but without any instruments.

From this stage, I ask them to take their time, return to cruise flight, and tell me when we get there. I fold my arms, shut my mouth, and wait. It is not uncommon for the student to get within 5 knots and 100 rpm of the previous cruise settings. We then go through a couple of cycles between approach and cruise speeds, all the while maintaining a (relatively) constant altitude.

Turns and coordination

Once the student is comfortable with straight-and-level flight sans instruments, and in changing from cruise to approach and back again, we introduce turns. Nothing steep yet; I just ask them to identify something on the horizon and then to make a gentle 360-degree turn left or right until they get back to their starting point. Beginning with a coordinated turn (which may take some verbal coaching), I will gently press on one of the rudder pedals so as to create about half a ball deflection, while asking them to concentrate on how their weight is distributed on their bodies, and especially how their shoulders might be leaning left or right. Most students immediately recognize even this slight deflection and often express surprise at how they have never noticed their shoulders leaning during an uncoordinated turn. I then encourage them to play with the rudder pedals to see how sensitive they can get to lack of coordination. While they are doing this, I call out the ball position, to give them a measure as to how coordinated or uncoordinated their turn is.

Once the coordinated turn is nailed, we step up the game. I verbally coach them through the necessary angle of bank and pitch to hold a level steep turn, then ask them to fix in their memory what the sight picture looks like out the window. Of course, they have been looking only at this the whole time, so all they have to do is memorize what they are seeing. Once we have this in one direction, we try it in the other direction. With side-by-side seating, the sight picture will be a little different. Once they have established this, I then ask them to do steep turns left and right. Amazingly, many students will immediately complete both left and right steep turns while remaining within private/commercial checkride standards. In many cases their turns will be to tighter bank, altitude, and heading tolerances than they ever did before, even though they are now wearing the Figgles and can’t see any of the instruments.

We then remove the Figgles and the student does a few more steep turns, again concentrating on looking outside the airplane. Often, they revert to focusing mostly on the instruments. As soon as they do, their performance suffers, and they see it. This encourages them to move their focus back outside the airplane and just steal an occasional glance at the instruments to ensure everything is where it should be.

Looking left and right

Learning to fly the airplane visually doesn’t involve just looking out the windshield to determine pitch and roll. With the Figgles still off, we do some more turns (not necessarily steep) and again play with the rudder pedals. I encourage them to look out the side window and watch the line that the wing tip inscribes across the ground. As they press left and right pedals (at first, with my help), they see how the wing tip is dragged forward or back across their ground reference. This provides another way to measure coordinated flight—by watching how the wing tip moves across the ground in a turn. Of course, they can also feel their shoulders swaying side to side, providing a tactile measure correlated to the visual cues of the wing tip. This is helpful in many phases of flight but will pay dividends especially when attempting the commercial eights on pylons maneuver.

Unloading the wings

Many students have an academic knowledge that stall speed is not constant. However, many have never really seen a good demonstration of that, or learned to coordinate their feeling of weight in the seat with the increased stall speed of the airplane. For this lesson, we leave the Figgles off.

We start first with a power setting slightly above what is necessary for level flight at the approach speed and then commence a wings-level, flaps-up stall, recovering when we hear the stall warning horn. I ask them to pay close attention to the airspeed indicator and to make a note of the speed at which they first hear the horn. We allow the airplane to recover and build up more speed, then roll into a steep turn while pulling back to increase G loading (i.e., an accelerated stall condition). In some cases, I help with a little more back pressure, to ensure we get a good demonstration. I ask them to note the speed at which the horn is heard and then we recover.

Depending on how aggressive the pull back is, the horn will typically sound about 15 to 20 knots higher (in a Cessna 172) during the accelerated stall than it does in the unaccelerated (wings-level) condition. For many students, this is an eye-opening, first-hand demonstration of how the base to final turn can get them in trouble—and moves it from an academic theory to this could happen to me.

From here, we will engage in a series of steep turns. I encourage them to pull back on the elevator until they feel themselves getting heavy in the seat, then push forward on the controls to unload the wings. We repeat this exercise, concentrating on developing a sensitivity to the feeling of weight in the seat, and observing the immediate unloading of Gs when the controls are pushed forward. I point out how the elevator control produces an instant reaction in G loading and how, if they are ever in a base-to-final turn and feel themselves getting heavy in the seat, this is their first line of defense: They should push forward on the elevator and, above all else, resist pulling back to tighten up the turn. Getting heavy in the seat is a warning sign, and it is important to be sensitive to that feeling and know what to do in response.

Developing sensitivity to G loading without looking at the instruments is a Zen skill and has the potential to go beyond simply flying the airplane better. It produces potentially life-saving benefits, particularly when you consider that flying with Zen produces a sensitivity to not only G loading of the aircraft, but also to cross-controlled situations—all the while keeping eyes outside the cockpit.

The Zen lessons provide an immediate reward in terms of the ability to fly steep turns. I have seen students struggling with this maneuver transform their performance simply by removing the distractions of the instruments.

However, they provide a lot more than that. Aside from the confidence to fly the airplane in the event of an instrument failure, students become much more attuned to the airplane, what it is doing, and what it is telling them—how it “talks” to them. They develop a greater sensitivity to remaining in coordinated flight without having to fixate on the ball. It also pays dividends in one of the most important areas of flight: the traffic pattern. It helps give students the confidence to keep their eyes outside of the airplane, looking for traffic and setting up the pattern. It gives them better sensitivity to keeping the airplane coordinated and unloaded, particularly in the base to final turn.

In IFR flight, we learn to ignore everything except the instruments. However, in VFR flight, flying by the “seat of your pants” is a valuable skill. Like my old instructor used to say: “Fly with your butt!”

Dave Forster is a CFI and experimental aircraft builder from Texas.