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time, look out the front and pay

close attention to what the nose is

doing relative to the horizon.

As we start the turn, it’ll try

to drop a bit - that’s because the

airplane is sinking a little, and its

natural stability (as discussed ear-

lier) wants to point the nose down

to compensate. What do we do?

Simple - we add just a bit of back

pressure during the turn. If you

note exactly how far below the

horizon line is before you start a turn, then add back pressure as

necessary while turning, the turn should come out level.

Now let’s try a real steep turn - we’ll start this one to the left.

Roll the airplane into a 60-degree bank - that’s the second large

mark at the top of the artificial horizon.

You’ll notice a couple of things right away. One is that the

airplane turns a lot faster; the other is that it will take lots more

back pressure to keep the nose up. You’ll also notice that a lot of

airspeed will get scrubbed away: to maintain altitude in a 60-

degree bank requires so much

back pressure that you’re putting

a constant load of 2 G’s (a “G” is

equal to the normal force of grav-

ity) on the airplane; all of a sud-

den, that poor little Lycoming has

two whole 172’s bolted onto it!

That rustling noise you hear

behind you is the passengers get-

ting those little waxed paper bags

out of the seatback pockets…

TURN COORDINATION

Something else you may have noticed, especially during the

steep turns, is that the ball in the turn coordinator instrument might

have been doing some weird things.

This is because the airplane doesn’t always want to go where

it’s pointed (or, conversely, point where it’s going).

ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER

Let’s return, once again, to trimmed straight-and-level flight.

Now we’re going to try some turns to either side - first gen-

tle ones, then steeper. Remember, turns in an airplane are made

by directing part of the lift in the desired direction, and we do this

by banking.

Let’s try one to the right. Note the heading shown at the top

of the directional gyro - that’s the direction we’re headed right now

- and the direction at the 3 o’clock position, 90 degrees away,

which is where we want our turn to finish up. Got it? Fine…now

start applying gentle pressure to the right on the yoke while looking

out forward at the horizon. The airplane will start to bank to the

right. Glance at the artificial horizon. When the bank has reached

30 degrees, the first large mark (past the two smaller ones) at the top

of the instrument, roll the yoke back to the center.

You’ll notice that the airplane tends to hold whatever bank

it has with the yoke centered. As you rolled into the turn, it start-

ed turning (changing its heading) to the right. With the yoke cen-

tered to maintain the 30-degree bank angle, it continues turning

right. As you approach your planned new heading, you’ll do just

the opposite: roll the yoke to the left to bring the wings back level,

then center it once again to keep them there.

Thus, you see that a turn in an airplane is actually requires

four separate control movements:

Pretty cool, huh? Except that chances are, now that you’re

back in level flight, that we’ve lost some altitude. Why? Because

any lift that we use to make us turn (by banking) is that much lift

taken away from the basic task of keeping the airplane up in the

air. Let’s turn to the left, back to our original heading - but this

SimTip

You’ll need some form of

rudder control (either

pedals or the keypad 0

and period) for these next

maneuvers.

Flight Instruction

60 Degree Bank

1. a roll-in to the desired bank angle.

2. re-centering the controls (with minor adjustments as

necessary) to keep the turn going without letting it get

either shallower or steeper.

3. then an opposite roll-out to return to level flight.

4. another re-centering of the controls after that.