Seat Of The Pants?

Aviation Safety

Wednesday, January 01, 2025 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By: Omar Filipovic

Key Takeaways:

A pilot suggests using the "small of our backs" as a sensitive indicator for lateral movement to achieve coordinated flight, an alternative to solely relying on a yaw indicator.
Annual editorial indexes for Aviation Safety magazine, categorized by subject and title, are published in each December issue and are available as PDFs on the magazine's website.
To prevent dangerous porpoising landings, pilots are strongly advised to initiate a go-around immediately after the first bounce.

See a mistake? Contact us.

I couldn’t agree more with Jim Wolper in his excellent November 2024 article, “Using The Rudder,” that without some kind of yaw indicator, we can’t trust the seat of our pants. I take that literally.

As a long-time ag aviation pilot, where aggressive and repetitive stick and rudder inputs are part of the job, my suggestion to all pilots for keeping the ball centered is to fly by “the small of our backs.”