Duxford Girl

Normally, when a pilot suggests restraining me to anything, I'm not necessarily opposed but when my flight instructor threatened to duct tape my hand to the stick the other day, I realized that I had picked up a rather bad habit. In my early days of flight training, I had a tendency to grasp the stick with paranoid intensity as though I would surely plummet to my death should I let go. This also caused me to forget little things like trimming. In an effort to correct this issue, my instructor then had me frequently let go of the stick. Since the Katana wasn't trimmed, she would start to fall into a steep dive. I got into the habit of letting go every time I trimmed to see that I had the plane flying straight and level. Like most habits, this mutated into a inclination to let go every few seconds including when I'm on the approach. Given that this is generally the most crucial period of flight my latest instructor is none-too-impressed with my habit and not over-burdened with the need to be super-polite all the time.

I'm not at all offended by this, in fact, I think I actually learn better this way. This only strengthens my resolve to get out a couple of times a week as I've been at this so long that I've started to mutate old habits into worse new habits. It's not always my fault that flights get scrubbed, mind you. Last week I lost a flight because of 30 knot winds and reports of severe turbulence You may be thinking that I should just suck it up and fly in the chop but 30 knot winds are outside the limitations of the Katana and if a 737 is reporting severe turbulence you can bet that that kind of chop would tear a small aircraft apart.

I'm back in the circuit again this week and with any luck I can manage not to pick up any worse habits than I already possess.