Alltrikes

Morning is the time to fly.   Unless it was blowing hard the past week, the air is clean, still and smooth.  It makes it worth getting up a 4am to launch at 5:30.  No one else is in the pattern.  Every landing is perfect.   This is the time to enjoy 100 touch and goes in a row and totally eliminate any apprehension about landing.  Your confidence builds, you are no longer a newbie.  Your have mastered your trike. 

Whoa there!  When every you start feeling like that, it is time for some serious internal reflection. That goes for everyone, including pilots with thousands of hours.  What is your comfort zone?  What are your limits?  For the new pilot in may be the first hour of the day in dead calm conditions.

The morning conditions are so sweet, some never venture out of this comfort zone.  You are in this sport purely for fun, so keep it fun, but be careful.   One day you sleep in, get the to airport late, start taking to other pilots who flew earlier, eat some breakfast with them, then finally push your trike out of the hangar at 11am.  The windsock is still hanging limp, though every once in a while you see it swivel around.  You take off and get hammered by what feels to you to be the biggest thermal the world has ever experienced. 

I remember reading about this scenario unfolding exactly as described during my first month of solo flight.  It scared me cause I could imagine the same happening to me.  An 11am takeoff in what looked like calm conditions on the ground.  The pilot found himself in big thermals and just wanted to get back on the ground ASAP.  First go around just scared him more.  Pilot induced oscillations in the pattern, fatal crash on landing. 

The key to avoid this fate is to incrementally extend your comfort zone.  Fly for an hour in the perfect morning air, but then push it out an extra half hour each time into less perfect conditions.  Believe it or not, after a while you will learn to enjoy the thermals, not fear them.  Eventually welcome them for the free lift they provide. You'll also find that conditions are much smoother in the final 20-50 ft of air just above the runway, than 500 ft to 1000 ft above in the pattern.  Just keep your speed up on approach so you can get down to the calmer air.  But the most important thing is to not put yourself suddenly way outside your experience base and comfort zone.

Years later I was out flying and found a new trike pilot who was have big pilot induced oscillation (PIO) problems in the pattern.  There was no way he could get lined up on the runway.  He had a full tank, so I pulled him out of the pattern and had him follow a 5 mile dirt road, back and forth, slowly lowering the altitude until he was making passes 20 ft above the ground.  He worked all the PIO's out of his system.   We came back to the pattern and he made a perfect landing.  Then I told him to do 3 or 4 more.

Know your comfort zone, and stay in it or incrementally extend it.