You’re on your Private Pilot checkride and established in a steep turn. Everything is perfect. You’re spot on your altitude and the bank angle is pegged at 45 degrees. It seems easy. You’re thinking: “I’ve got this!” Then the nightmare happens. Your scan moves down to your heading indicator and you realize you’ve already blown past the heading by 20 degrees. A good reference point could have prevented the dreaded pink slip.
It’s easy to get stuck inside the cockpit, staring at the instruments as if you’re wearing blinders to the outside world, particularly with the pretty screens in glass panel equipped airplanes. You may become fixated on the instruments to maintain heading, airspeed and altitude. But looking outside gives you the whole picture, literally. The horizon serves as the ideal reference for attitude. It takes a fraction of a second to determine whether the nose of the airplane is pointing down or up, or whether it is on the horizon. Another great benefit of keeping the eyes outside the cockpit, TIS, TCAS and TAWS aside, is that you can see if there is any traffic or a potential hazard in your path of flight.
