IDF; pilot advice

Just sitting here about to start writing when the Big Voice came on:

"This is the Command Post. There has been an indirect fire attack. All personnel are released. All personnel are to remain vigilant for UXOs. All clear, all clear, all clear. I say again, this is the Command Post...."

My cousin is in IFS in Colorado and has asked me a few questions on flying via Facebook. The letter is somewhat interesting, maybe even to non-pilots, and I don't have anything else to write about today, so here it is.

~~~
4:19pm Mar 19th

Good stuff, well tell the Major I said hey. Got to fly yesterday, went pretty well. We did some ground reference maneuvers (S Turns/ Turns around a Point). Going up again today in two hours for a lot of the same. Should be a good time. They tell us we're ten days behind schedule and that as soon as the super senior class gets out its game time. I believe the words my flight commander used were, "Get ready for the suck... its gonna hurt." Basically they're double turning us up the ass to try and make up for lost time. Yay... at least it means less time in the Dirty P.

Any advice on mastering trimming or pitch picture?

~~~
2:48pm Mar 20th

Ha...yes, welcome to the suck indeed. Every training training program you go through with the Air Force will be just as rushed.

First let me say that piloting advice is very individual. I might say something that works perfectly for you, or it might be totally useless - this was one of the hardest things for me learning to fly. Sometimes, for no obvious reason, a certain instructor just can't teach things to me very well.

Okay, trimming. The trick with trim for me was that it was hard enough for me just to know what normal control movements were. Adding another movement on top of that would suck my concentration. And then I would forget I had trim in and have to fight it in some other phase of flight. So, here's what I did, may or may not be good advice and or work for you: I would just fly by hand, and only when I noticed how much pressure I was holding would I trim. And I wouldn't use a ton, or try to fine tune it, just a couple of clicks. (Your trim button/switch does click, doesn't it?)

Or, one other thing you can do is just plan a few clicks here and there,
i.e., when rolling wings level in the pattern in the Tweet after initial climbout (as I recall), I knew three clicks of nosedown was about right, and then I didn't think about it again for awhile. So just find the points in the flight where you have a lot of control pressure (nose down on final, nose up on t/o, etc.) and come up with a preprogrammed trim movement
(i.e. one click, 3 clicks, etc.)

(This is a really funny conversation considering trim in the MQ-1, but I'll save that convo for another time...the MQ-1, of course, as in so many ways, is completely different from normal airplanes.)

As for pitch, I assume this is on final? Pitch was even harder than trim, in terms of seeing the same thing as the IP. In fact, I'm not even going to try to describe a pitch picture in text. Let me just give a technique for final that I didn't really start using religiously until after pilot training. I assume you won't be doing any instrument flying there, but that is where a first learned this. I would give myself a PAR, which is to say, I would call out everything I was looking at, something like, "I am on airspeed, high, on centerline, now hot - pulling some power, on altitude, on centerline, on airspeed, low - adding some power, slightly right of centerline - coming left..." etc., all the way to the flare. This has a couple of advantages: the first was that because I was verbalizing it, it improved the speed of my crosscheck which improved my flying, and second, because I was verbalizing it, the IP knew what I was looking at and his/her feedback was much more focused, i.e., "you caught the sink, but you got into the sink because you pulled power too early," etc.

Incidentally, who are the instructors of this program? Active AF? Civ?
Also, how long is your commitment for your wings?

~~~
5:03pm Mar 20th

Ok, here goes:

I consistently adjust pitch and trim before power... which is obviously wrong. I'm going up today and I'll try flying first (pitch/power) then trimming as you suggested. The trim button doesn't click but there's a series of lights on the instrument panel that shows the setting.

My pitch on final is horrendous. Part of my problem is on my base turns I was making 30-40 degree banks and rolling out way early and inside the runway. Then it becomes an aileron/rudder struggle. Throw a bit of wind in there and forget it... I'm doing a go around. Yesterday was a good correction day for that... we did 6 touch and goes so I think I've got a better idea of what to do. I'm still flaring a bit too early... those numbers just get so damn big... :)

I have been talking through things lately and it's help tremendously, especially on checklist items. The tendency is to rush and then forget a step and that's never good for business (or check rides). Talking has kept me "honest".

The IPs here are mostly civilian. The AF contracted the training out to Doss Aviation:

http://www.dossaviation.com/

But with that, there are a number of active duty officers here. They serve as our "Military Training Officers" and some of the upper staff. They'll fly with us on occasion but typically just on check rides. A lot of the civilian IPs are prior military... many retired 04s - 06s. Good instructors over all.

The commitment for pilots is the same as its been: 10 years after you pin your wings on. As you know, I'm getting paid as a 2 lou right now but it doesn't count towards that contract. A reality I know you faced coming out of the zoo. But hey, if I wanted fair I wouldn't have taken a commission... ;)
~~~

3:49 PM, 21 Mar 08

Yes, don't trim before you know what normal control pressures are at a given attitude.

Wow, no click in the trim button, that would mess with me.

Another technique for learning pitch/power/trim is to get the plane relatively stable and then relax your hands a lot. The airplane will show you what it's natural tendency is. This is what you trim out. When you get good, you can remove you hands entirely and the plane should most stay on airspeed/altitude/heading.

Obviously you can't do this in a critical phase of flight like short final, turn to final, etc.

Overcontrolling (e.g., 30-40 degs on turn to final) is my natural tendency, so it's something I had to fight against, or you become you own worst enemy (e.g., you turn late, so you bank a lot, but then you turn too fast and roll out inside final, have to turn back and dump the nose because now you're too high, etc...one large correction leading to another large correction, all the way around.) You will get over the worst of it early on in the flying.

The verbalizing trick became a lot more useful in a crew airplane, because it keeps your crew on the same page (literally, in the case of checklists). Your co-pilot would know you were addressing sink, your nav would know you were addressing heading/centerline, your engineer would know you were addressing the fact that the engines were NTSing, etc. One of the single best pieces of advice I ever got from an instructor was this: "Any time someone talks to you in the airplane, say something back." If you don't say something to acknowledge it, they don't know if you heard them, if there's another problem, if you were listening to a radio call, if you are asleep/dead, etc., especially if they can't see you, as for a loadmaster in the back.

more questions? Send 'em.
~~~

That's the end of the letters, here's the oddity of the MQ-1:

Most airplanes trim to an airspeed, i.e., you set the trim nose level and the airplane should mostly stay in level flight at the same airspeed, assuming you don't touch the power. If you pull power off, the plane will pitch nose lower (that is, descend) to maintain the same airspeed. If you add power, the plane will pitch up (climb), still trying to maintain airspeed. But in the MQ-1, because of the number of computers between you and the airplane, you trim to an attitude, i.e., you set five degrees nose up and the airplane will fly it. The nose up attitude will start a climb, but if you don't have enough power set, you will run out of airspeed. Opposite problem with nose down trim (too much airspeed if you've got the wrong power).