Flying, to me, has always been about pushing the limit within safety considerations. It sounds oxymoronic, I know. Pushing the limit usually involves risk, and risk in aviation can be deadly. A pilot can always play it safe by hiring a more experienced pilot to take her/him flying to push her/his limit. This could work in the short term. There will, however, come a point where a pilot experiences situations for the first time and s/he will have to make her/his own decision.
Lucky Cup, Experience Cup
I recently heard this saying: Say you have 2 cups. One cup is filled with all your luck in your life. We will call it the “lucky” cup. The other cup is empty and is labeled “experience”. Now, try to fill the “experience” cup, from other sources, without emptying your “lucky” cup. (e.g. learning from other’s experience, trying new things within a safe environment, etc.)
I find this saying very apt, especially for me as a pilot. I keep wondering how far I can push before it’s too far. We never know how big or how full our “lucky” cup is. If we keep using the “lucky” cup to fill up the “experience” cup, one day we will run out of luck. In aviation, when we run out of luck, we can literally go 6 feet under.
Handling Skills Is Nothing Without Knowledge
As a flight instructor, my student, not I, is handling the airplane 80% of the time. The remaining 20% is split into 15% and 5%. 15% of the time I am teaching my students new skills while the remaining 5% is when feces is about to hit the fan and I have to take control to move (out of the way of the feces).
Although I have less time on the controls, that is, less flying the plane myself I find my flight knowledge improving at a faster rate.
Instead of focusing on flying the airplane, I get to sit back and observe how the airplane reacts based on my students’ decisions/controls. This vicarious gives me another perspective to understand the characteristics of the airplane, thereby increasing my knowledge of the theory behind each handling skill.
Controlling the airplane has always been easy for me. All it takes is strength. The difficulty lies in achieving accuracy and precision. In the past I lacked the knowledge of the physics of flying. It always frustrates me when I don’t get the result I had in mind.
Now, armed with knowledge behind the handling skills, I find myself equipped with ample mental strength that flying demands. At the same time, I feel more comfortable and confident enough to push my limits within, I repeat here again because it’s important, safety considerations. The “furthest” I have pushed is doing circuits in gusty wind with direct crosswind in a Cessna 172. In hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have flown in those conditions with my student because it wasn’t beneficial to him. On second thoughts, both of us benefit as he gets to experience a demanding situation and I get to push my limit just a little more.
What’s Next?
I hope to do some mountain flying this Summer. My goal right now is to clock hours to meet the requirements of mountain flying. Here’s wishing me all the best!
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