Improving flying skills.

[Chuck Ellsworth]

I have been asked to discuss improving flying skills by a poster who was reading the 500 foot circuit thread.

I am very reluctant to get into giving advice on how to fly with nothing but a keyboard, to teach flying properly requires an aircraft to teach it in.

However I will try and answer. Some questions newer pilots may have.

First is the issue of safety flying al low altitude, say 200 to 500 feet for circuits.

So with that in mind let's climb up to a safe altitude in our minds here and let's have a look at the safety factor.

It will generally be performing turns at low altitude where pilots can get into trouble if they are careless or inept.

So for our first pseudo lesson lets do some turns.

Pick a safe altitude and start doing forty five degree bank angle turns at constant cruise power and keep at it until you can maintain plus or minus twenty feet....that is the first marks on your altimeter either side of the zero.

No need to worry about stalling during this simple maneuver because you started at cruise airspeed and your stall speed only increased about 20 percent.

Once we get real comfortable with flying a constant 45 degree turn either way and maintaining plus or minus twenty feet we will be well on our way to being safe at low altitude.

Let's see if this attempt at giving advice here will be worth the time and effort I am putting into it.

P.S. ::::

By all means feel free to comment on or disagree with what what I say because I have no illusions that I am without flaw in my thinking and opinions on driving flying devices.  :)