Flight Training - January/February 2021 - 47

ADVANCED PILOT INSTRUCTOR REPORT

FINALLY!

ZEN LESSONS

A CARD
FOR PILOTS.

LEARNING TO LISTEN TO THE AIRPLANE
BY DAVE FORSTER

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" STOP LOOKING AT THE BALL! FLY WITH

JOHN SAUER

your butt! " shouted my instructor.
Actually, the word was less politically
correct than " butt. " My instructor was
ex-military and now a chief flight instructor who was expected to be a bit tough
with his students. Back then, the phrase
" politically correct " had not been invented
and in fact, Butch was a great guy with a
big heart and a wealth of knowledge who
had taken a young kid (me) under his wing.
Thirty years later, I find myself in the
right seat, shouting " fly with your butt! "
MAKE YOUR OWN 'FIGGLES'
It is understandable that many pilots fly
with heavy reference to instruments. After
all, that's what most of us have been taught
to do, especially if we have been trained
for IFR. Younger pilots especially have
grown up on computer games and flight
simulators, which reinforce this emphasis.
However, for VFR flying, heavy reliance on
instruments makes it much more difficult
to fly visual maneuvers well, whether
those maneuvers are called out in the
commercial or private pilot flight test, or
to simply fly a good pattern and landing.
The problem is this: Most instruments
tell the pilot what has just happened, not

what is about to happen-and even then,
knowing what the instrument is saying
requires looking at it, which takes attention away from where it should mostly be
for a visual maneuver: outside the airplane.
" Instruments are not needed to fly an
airplane. " This might seem like heresy, but
it's only a slight exaggeration. Airplanes
talk, and if a pilot learns to listen, the
instruments only confirm what she or he
already knows.
To help learn how to listen to an airplane, I like to fly a series of exercises with
my students-what I call the " Zen lessons. "
The purpose of the Zen lessons is to learn
to listen to what the airplane tells you,
using all the senses, not just the eyes and
certainly not the instruments.
To help with these exercises, I use
a special flight training device. Foggles
prevent the wearer from seeing outside
the airplane. For the Zen lessons, we use
" Figgles. " They prevent the wearer from
seeing inside the airplane. Making a pair of
Figgles is easy. Just start with an old pair
of sunglasses and place a strip of electrical
tape over the lower half of the lenses.
SEE AND LISTEN
The first step in the Zen lessons is to set
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Flight Training - January/February 2021

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