Using Flying to Change You
A collection of thoughts, ideas, and suggestions
---Flying gives the power of purpose to your efforts.
---Flying requires economy of effort, efficient study and financial caution.
---You need to fix your aspirations and what you do on the goal.
---You must direct your time, money and efforts to your flying goal.
---Total immersion is the best way, most rapid, cheapest and rewarding.
---You must be confident in your ability, intention and situation.
---Your peace of mind is dependent on how your confidence carries you over difficulties.
---You learn to fly because you see it as providing a service either to you or others.
---The flying is a personal benefit that you see as also of benefit to others.
---Having flying as a dynamic motive removes the drifting aspect our lives.
---Flying has the capability of making you happier and thereby others happier.
---You need a ‘can do' and ‘will do' entrance into flying.
---You also need an instructor and facility that is equally supportive of your potential.
---Along with desire must be adequate resources of time, support and money.
---We all have resources and capabilities that we have never reached.
---Your unused, un-awakened and untried talents needed in flying lie awaiting.
---Your life's experiences have some door opening capability waiting to be found.
---Your life's experiences have some door closing capability waiting to be found.
---Flying requires that you separate the applicability of your experiences and ideas for flying.
---You possess reserves of mental and physical power yet to be realized. Use them.
---Your subconscious is a well of information that will solve most difficulties if brought to the surface.
---The subconscious can use your conscious senses to bring awareness not previously realized.
–-Think about your flying difficulties and successes when going to sleep and before fully awakened.
---Many of an individual's greatest achievements occur through the use of the subconscious.
---The use of your subconscious is what separates the ordinary from genius.
---Genius is but the belief in your capability commonly known as self-confidence.
--You must believe in your own latent powers to do what you want to do.
---Your special interest in things about flying will improve you recall ability.

Helping Your Instructor Help You
The more an instructor knows about you, your background, motivation, finances, and goals the better he will be able to advise you on how to proceed. You must reveal any concerns you have about yourself in regard to flying. Are there health, emotional, or conceptual problems that you can foresee? Even if you are not aware of any, it is more that likely that something will arise at some point in your training. Spending more money does not guarantee better instruction.

Flying should be fun. It is a challenge but those students who continue find the challenge enjoyable. Stress, apprehension and even fear are part of the challenge. If your instruction does not replace them with fun then something is wrong.

Flying has many forms of stress. Some are self-imposed, some are by the instructor, and still others are external and beyond any control. Don't try to do something about things you have no control over, like the weather. Bend with the impossible, adjust to the unpleasant, and speak up against the correctable. Instructors can adjust to your needs. Recently had a student who objected to my gum chewing...I stopped. Student input is needed to make instruction better. As a student, you know how to learn best. Any reluctance to help the instructor do better is just prolonging the problem. It is just as important for the student to understand the instructor as it is for the instructor to understand the student. If it isn't working for you...change instructors.

I try to teach efficiency in flying; not shortcuts. The way you preflight, taxi, runup, takeoff and fly are indicative of personality traits. We often feel that expertise in one chosen field carries over into flying. Parts may but flying is a unique blend of training and skills. I will modify what I can, blend in that which is acceptable, and erase what I must. If you have flown previously some of this will be more difficult than if I was working with a clean slate.

A Pilot Extrudes Confidence and Poise
---Poise is a calmness, quietness and emotional control in dealing with adversity.
---Well-controlled behavior reduces the trauma of an aircraft emergency. It's called poise.
---Flying confidence limits instinctive reactions and gives training an opportunity to prove its value.
---Training in calmness and poise control the unexpected without an incessant waste of nervous energy.
---This is not to imply that you resign yourself to fate. You use the checklist and keep trying.
---Poise is controlled power where knowing what to do keeps the odds in your favor.
---Do not let the annoying things that are always a part of flying surprise and irritate you. Pilots do not.
---The exterior demeanor of a pilot does more than mirror attitudes it intensifies and creates them.
---The acquired self-confidence of a pilot is reflected in sincerity of speech and manner
---Beginning pilots sense trepidation, concern and fear in varying degrees. A some point it becomes fun..
---Doing what you enjoy builds the mind and the body.
---Beginning pilots sense trepidation, concern and fear in varying degrees. At some point it becomes fun.

Memory Is the Second Thing You Lose 
---Memory requires interest triggers to exist.
---You will remember that to which you pay attention with intent to remember.
---You will also remember that which occurs in conjunction with a significant event.
---Memory exists with associated triggers, the more the better.
---A better memory depends upon the weaving of memory triggers or facts than can be associated.
---Anything vividly presented and paid attention to is more easily remembered.
---There is reason to believe that an increase in oxygen while studying can improve retention
---The greater the fatigue the less will be remembered.
---Forgetting is equal in importance as remembering. Selective forgetting is a valuable skill.
---Speakers often tie ‘war stories' to information as a memory aid.

Using Forgetfulness
---The selective activity of the mind has a utility for forgetting just as does a computer.
---The ability of the mind to forget is what preserves its usefulness.
---We must forget to retain our sanity.
---Forgetting skills require that we do all we can to avoid any aspect or association that improves memory.
---Diversion of your attention into high interest activities is the secret to the art of forgetting.

Helping Yourself
Most of your flying skills will be an assembly of fundamentals. A fundamental is in turn an assembly of small actions, reactions and anticipation. Only with practice (of the right kind) do these small actions become smooth whole maneuvers. Failure to master a component part will contaminate the entire maneuver.

1. The basics of landing an airplane require such an assembly of fundamental skills. Most fundamental is airspeed control. The proficient pilot is able to anticipate the power, trim and yoke movement required to achieve a flight speed sought for a specific configuration. This is as true for the proficient student as it is for the proficient instrument pilot. Know what it takes and then do what it takes. The mastery of speed, or any other basic, rests on a strong chain of selected events. Once weakness weakens the entire maneuver.

2 .If you are a student who has a death-grip on the yoke, you are working too hard. You will fly better by learning to trim and let go. Most any airplane can be flown quite well without touching the yoke. Use the rudder. A well- trimmed plane can be made to climb or descend slightly, just by nodding the head. Try it. I used to call trim the power steering of flight. I was corrected into calling it cruise control. Knowing what to do and when to do it allows the lightness on the controls that makes flying easy.

3. Even talking on the radio can be made easy. To talk effectively, you must know where you are or will be when you plan to talk. You will give your altitude as an additional warning to other aircraft. You will rehearse to eliminate unnecessary verbiage and eliminate pauses and punctuation. All the rest is 'canned', in the same informational sequence for every ATC situation. Additional information by the pilot beyond the minimum shows the extent to which the assertive pilot is in command. You must know enough to protect yourself from ATC mistakes.

4. When not flying, a good student pilot is thinking about flying. Will study beyond the minimums of knowledge and assignments. Comes to sessions with prepared questions.

5. Have you ever been told that the question you asked related to information that you did not need to know yet? An instructor's failure to make use of this learning opportunity dulls initiative, weakens curiosity, and inhibits future questions. The only question that an instructor may not respond to is the unasked question.

A Study of Manners and Consideration
---Lack of consideration between pilots is rare but when it occurs very noticeable.
---Oddly, I have noticed it most when airplanes are being shuffled about an airport like cars.
---In a runup area at a runway I see planes park in the middle of a four-airplane area.
---I have seen aircraft unintentionally or unknowingly cut in front of an aircraft on final. It happens!
---In the upper airspace I have never seen such.
---As a group, pilots are the most sharing of people always helpful and willing to give help and ideas.

Talking Airplane Is Not Just Talking
---You cannot think about flying without having the vocabulary of necessary words.
---The development of a technical vocabulary requires an orderly daily number of new words.
---A new word is not ‘yours' until used 32 times in meaningful context. Talk and write your new words.
---You do not truly understand your flying material until you can explain it to a ten-year old child.
---Try to simplify clearly and directly with an illustrative example to help the audience remember.
---Use associative ‘war stories' to clarify and aid remembrance.
--- Get to the essentials and stay there in any discussion or presentation.
---Do not use words unfamiliar to your audience without synonyms, antonyms or explanation.
---The more associative ideas we have to support an idea and its explanation the better we remember.
---Any weakness of vocabulary limits thinking as well as speaking and writing.
---In flying it is best to avoid superlatives such as never and always.
---I have yet to find any aspect of flying without exceptions but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
---Being able to use words with appropriate meanings gives conversation power.
---Answering a question with an appropriate answer avoids the hidden humor of giving mismatch.
---Listening is a skill as important as is talking and opens the way to enlarge knowledge.

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