If there’s anything I wish I could do for aspiring pilots or those struggling through their basic training, it would be to teach them to fly an airplane before learning to drive a car. The two-dimensional thinking employed when operating a surface vehicle becomes dominant—probably because we spend more time in a car than in an airplane—and often doesn’t translate well into the three dimensions required to fly. Oddly enough, it’s not that pilots don’t readily grasp the vertical (up/down) dimension; they do, along with the horizontal (left/right). But adding lateral movement (yaw) sometimes is too much for their two-dimensional thinking to handle.
The result is poor understanding of what the rudder pedals are for and how to use them. Sure; pedal-mounted brake controls are easy to grasp, since they’re something that translates from an automobile to a cockpit. But using only one rudder pedal at a time—as when countering torque and P-factor on a takeoff—can be elusive. And let’s not ruin a student’s confidence by diving into adverse yaw, slips and crosswind landings on the first lesson.
