Our orientation, what we believe with integrity and conviction, will have a lot to do with how we act, react, or respond in a crisis. Contact flying is looking at everything out there while instrument, or blind, flying is looking only at instrumentation that interpret reality. The brain absorbs a great deal about our environment through our five senses while the computer simulates thinking in the way it is programmed to simulate thinking. As so many here have said, we need to use all the tools in our tool box. My problem is that I fear teaching bad orientation through belief in less efficient techniques, procedures, or tools.

My teacher tendency to try to indoctrinate is limited to flying, but looking both at accident data and the world at large I see inefficient orientation. The most printed and distributed book in the world attempts to indoctrinate the belief that there is an entity in the universe, and beyond the universe, that calls itself, “I AM.” When I look at the world, not just a simulation of the world, I observe physical events well beyond the power of man. Kilimanjaro makes Hiroshima look like a small firecracker, for instance. Thermal or orographic lift makes all but rocket engines look like wind up rubber bands. Gravity and ground effect are also very powerful. When a student pushes the throttle full in and pulls back on the stick and believes the airplane will now go up no matter what, I am amazed. Who do we think we are? Do we think “We Are?” How can we come up with such strong belief in cubic inches of cylinder displacement?

Just some thoughts of an old pilot who woke in the night thinking of such things and thought he might ought write them down while he can still remember them.

Jim, I love reading these. I don't usually reply to them but I read each of them over a few times to make sure I'm absorbing what you're putting out.

Always look forward to your words of wisdom Contact....to show our appreciation, we got together and found you an avatar. Please accept this with utmost respect.

I accept your generous gift of a very handsome avatar. All I need now is your Jedi mind tricks to get it onto the screen. If you guys cannot do this, please instruct me in old man plain English how to do this.

-Right click on the picture and select "copy";
-Click on "ME" in the upper right corner of this page to go to your profile;
-Scroll down about four lines and click on "options" on the left side;
-Select "Change Avatar";
-Select "upload new avatar";
-Right click in there and click "paste".

CFOT wrote:-Right click on the picture and select "copy";
-Click on "ME" in the upper right corner of this page to go to your profile;
-Scroll down about four lines and click on "options" on the left side;
-Select "Change Avatar";
-Select "upload new avatar";
-Right click in there and click "paste".

If I missed a step please correct me guys.

I got to Select "Upload New Avatar." It wanted a picture.

Thanks Matt. He looks just like me.

contactflying wrote:Thanks Matt. He looks just like me.

Negative.

No leather jacket.

The Army uses indoctrination to get our unquestioning attention and I believe in it as a start point in education. The problem is the belief without criticism part. We need to know why we choose to do what we do to control the airplane. We need to question every technique no matter how complex or more importantly how simple.

Indoctrination to pull back, create more than 1g, with the elevator in all turns leads to muscle memory to pull in all turns. Indoctrination, or at least orientation, in allowing the nose to go down as designed in all turns leads to muscle memory to unload the wing in all turns preventing load factor of more than 1g in all turns of any bank angle. Do we need a turn of any bank angle? Not until we need a really steep turn. Can't we just pull harder to get a faster turn? No! Would default unloading the wing lead to unloading muscle memory in the limited pitch and bank necessary to fly by reference to instruments? That is the only criticism I can think of about my teaching everyone I fly with to unload the wing in all turns preventing load factor. My hope is to prevent the eventual stall at low altitude that kills good pilots doing things the way they are indoctrinated.

Some of you can multitask much better than I can. Would it be possible to default unload while contact flying and default pull a little extra gs in limited banked instrument turns? Ol contact has been doing that for years. Every crop duster I know does that.