When you pilot an aircraft, you have lots of important information on your dashboard. Beautiful and intuitive displays show precise data on key performance criteria (are you going up or down, how fast are you travelling, which way are you heading, are the engines OK?).
When you fly complex manoeuvers, there’s a lot going on. Every control input has a primary and a secondary effect (if you roll the wings to the left, you may well find the nose starts to point off to the right); there are several other factors such as engine speed, even which way the propellor turns, which all make a difference to what actually happens to the aeroplane as you go through your sequence.
To make that complex manoeuver look graceful and accomplished, you need to understand the aircraft and practise a lot; and whilst you’re actually flying it, you need to spend almost all of your time looking outside to see where the horizon is and which way your nose and wingtips are pointing. You get a lot of information literally from the seat of your pants as you feel yourself being pushed to one side or the other. Your elegant dashboard is almost useless until you are back into normal flight: it doesn’t tell you what you need to know, and even glancing at it makes you miss the really crucial information.
You definitely want to have your state-of-the-art dashboard. At the same time, in a complex world when you need to make difficult moves, you need to spend a lot of time looking out of the window.
And just to stretch the metaphor even further … when you’re in cloud, or when there’s no clear horizon or reference point, no sensible pilot attempts a complex move - you just concentrate on your dashboard.
When you fly complex manoeuvers, there’s a lot going on. Every control input has a primary and a secondary effect (if you roll the wings to the left, you may well find the nose starts to point off to the right); there are several other factors such as engine speed, even which way the propellor turns, which all make a difference to what actually happens to the aeroplane as you go through your sequence.
To make that complex manoeuver look graceful and accomplished, you need to understand the aircraft and practise a lot; and whilst you’re actually flying it, you need to spend almost all of your time looking outside to see where the horizon is and which way your nose and wingtips are pointing. You get a lot of information literally from the seat of your pants as you feel yourself being pushed to one side or the other. Your elegant dashboard is almost useless until you are back into normal flight: it doesn’t tell you what you need to know, and even glancing at it makes you miss the really crucial information.
You definitely want to have your state-of-the-art dashboard. At the same time, in a complex world when you need to make difficult moves, you need to spend a lot of time looking out of the window.
And just to stretch the metaphor even further … when you’re in cloud, or when there’s no clear horizon or reference point, no sensible pilot attempts a complex move - you just concentrate on your dashboard.
