No matter if you are an amateur pilot or a certified pro, there is always room for improvement in aviation. Here are a few aviation tips and tricks to help make that possible.
Pilots need to be flexible and innovative thinkers, while still adhering to strict procedures and protocols. Here are some examples when breaking rules may be warranted.
1. Pay Attention To What Your Butt Is Telling You
Learn to Fly can be expensive! Each flying lesson seems to bring another essential piece of pilot gear that needs to be purchased – often surprising newcomers and even experienced pilots! When learning, this can quickly become overwhelming as more items appear necessary than expected – new students may be especially overwhelmed by all that needs purchasing on the market!
Centering an aircraft while flying it is key. One of the primary lessons taught to students by aviation instructors, keeping an aircraft centered allows it to fly more precisely while reducing mistakes made when its nose points where you want it instead of where the plane thinks it should.
Smooth scanning is also essential to effective flying. Too often pilots scan in an irregular manner and miss important cues from their aircraft. By remaining fluid during scanning, your aircraft will respond with small nudges in the right direction that bring it exactly to where you wanted it to land.
Pilots should always carry a flashlight in their flight bag, along with non-polarized sunglasses to preserve depth perception and easily read glass cockpit plane screens. Polarized lenses can have negative impacts on depth perception and can make reading screens difficult.
An essential addition to every pilot’s flight bag should be a handheld radio. This allows for communication with tower personnel and fellow pilots if your primary radio fails, as well as exploring local airports to familiarize yourself with aviation-specific terminology and calls – this will prove invaluable when taking your pilot license exam and starting to fly on your own!
2. Get An Instrument Ticket
If your flight plans include frequent travel through clouds or to areas with challenging weather, or you are considering upgrading from your single-engine airplane into something with more complex features and bigger engines, an instrument rating could be valuable in developing precision and understanding of airway systems.
An important advantage to flying for real is logging actual instrument time rather than sim time – something employers value more highly than simulator time experience.
Instrument ratings will make you a superior VFR pilot, but flying without them under less-than-ideal conditions is one of the deadliest mistakes made in general aviation, due to spatial disorientation occurring so rapidly if you cannot see what lies ahead.
As you learn to fly, try making decisions as deliberately as possible when making decisions. This will prevent making hasty decisions and improve safety; think through every aspect of the flight prior to takeoff.
Purchase a good hard-shell case to protect your instrument during transport to and from the airport. Some airlines require that instruments are placed in special cases that prevent them from shifting around in the aircraft, protecting it if it accidentally gets unloaded at an intermediate stop and also decreasing the chance of becoming lost or stolen.
3. Make At Least Every Third Landing A Touch And Go
One of the best things you can do to develop your flying skills is making at least a third of your landings touch and go. A touch and go landing involves landing, but rather than taxiing back out again before taking off again, adding power to the plane instead and taking off again immediately after. Every student pilot learns this maneuver, while it also serves to sharpen professional airline pilot’s skills.
Touch and goes are excellent training sessions for pilots because they condense much of what comprises an everyday landing into a short maneuver. Touch and goes allow pilots to practice multiple landings quickly in relatively little time and identify any issues with aircraft, flight plans or maintaining control after touchdown – they should be practiced regularly as it helps your overall flight skills! Touch and goes are like going to the batting cage for pilots!
But remember: just because you’re doing a touch and go doesn’t mean flying on any runway that you don’t qualify to use. In certain conditions and circumstances, touching down may not be safe, such as on an airport field that has too soft of surfaces for safe landings.
If the runway conditions or lack of airtime is uncomfortable for you, or there is not enough airtime available, full stop landing may be your only option. Just ensure to announce each leg of the pattern so other pilots in traffic patterns and ATC know what you are doing.
4. Make Planned Go-Arounds From Time To Time
Precision in flight is an indispensable skill. This distinguishes a pilot who only comes close to their intended flight path from those who can actually control it exactly the way they desire, especially when flying heavy or nearing their aircraft’s practical service ceiling and margin for error becomes tighter.
Planned go-arounds are crucial for maintaining cognitive stimulation and situational awareness, while also helping ensure any bad habits picked up during flight training aren’t repeated. Pilots often unwittingly pick up bad habits from their instructors which require extensive effort to break.
An effective way to do this is by planning and flying short field maneuvers regularly, such as planning short field trips with an instructor or simply searching for geographical features suitable for landings. Doing this will develop pilot’s short field skills – something which is especially helpful at exotic airports with extremely short runways. This could take the form of either planning an instructor-guided field trip, or flying around solo looking for landing spots that might present themselves.
Learn the “cockpit songs” of your aircraft to ensure you can quickly recall its procedures should an unusual situation arise during a checkride. While this may prove challenging in flight conditions, practicing at home will allow your muscles to remember these procedures even under pressure.
5. Do Something New
Each pilot can become comfortable after flying for some time and develop bad habits, which is why it is vital to fly frequently with different people and explore new routes. You can challenge yourself further by pushing your skills further or practicing new techniques; whether this means practicing short field and soft field landings or more complex endeavors like aerobatic training; the key point is that you continue stretching yourself.
Consider using your layover as an opportunity to walk around the airport and get some exercise, taking advantage of its wide range of offerings such as indoor gardens, art displays, massage chairs and movie theaters – you’ll help stay more physically and mentally prepared for your flight! Plus it will keep your body physically strong as well as mentally sharp!
Before getting in your car and heading off to the airport, spend a couple of minutes clearing your mind of any other thoughts or worries and pushing them from your mind. If this proves impossible for you, do not go out flying as doing so will only compound problems further – this applies regardless of flight length; always ask before recliner your seat if someone behind is claustrophobic or has an infant behind.