Learning to Aviate with Rich Stowell
Imagine you’re wandering around a convention hotel with time to kill. On a whim, you take a seat in the back of a packed conference room. It’s a gathering of biomechanical engineers. The speaker creates a scenario. Psycho-slasher Michael Meyers is stalking her from behind, kitchen knife poised overhead. She asks, “What will you tell me to do?”
If these engineers are anything like pilots, you might hear something like, “increase the propulsion phase horizontal force!”
Too late. The villain from the Halloween movie franchise just claimed another victim. Assuming you’re not a biomechanical engineer, what would you have said?
You duck into the next conference room. You’re now surrounded by military pilots. The instructor lays out a scenario where the jet fighter unexpectedly flips inverted. “OK, now what?” “Reorient the lift vector” drowns out other answers.
I’ve never been to a seminar for biomechanical engineers, and I wasn’t in the military. But I have given hundreds of talks to pilots. I often ask, “I’m in an upright stall, what should I do?” The most common answers are “reduce the angle of attack” and “reattach the airflow.”
Let me add a wrinkle. Suppose you hear a frantic ten-year-old over the radio. He says, “the pilot has passed out! A horn is going off and the plane is shaking! What do I do?”
You’re the only one who can save this youth. What will you tell him when you key the mike?
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” – Confucius
Our natural tendency is to overcomplicate things. We can’t help it, especially when we have knowledge in a particular domain. It shows up when we use “jargony, complicated vocabulary to communicate a basic idea.”[1] Flight instructors are notorious offenders.
For example, I used to teach my ground school sessions as if I were a promotional model for force vectors. But years of creating aviation-themed STEM programs has forced me to think in simpler terms.[2]
General aviation has traditionally taken an engineer-oriented approach to flight training. More about abstract theory than how to fly. Eighty years ago, Wolfgang Langewiesche wrote: “What is wrong with ‘Theory of Flight,’ from the pilot's point of view, is not that it is theory. What's wrong is that it is the theory of the wrong thing—it usually becomes a theory of building the airplane rather than of flying it.”[3]
As a result, we relish the jargon. We embrace talking in abstract terms. And we spend a lot of time on the what and the why of flying. Yet a more pilot-oriented approach would serve students better. This approach emphasizes the how of flying. The specific actions the pilot needs to take for the desired outcome. Where simpler language is used when solving problems.
What does that approach look like in the case of a knife-wielding maniac sneaking up on someone? Run!
What if your lift vector needs reorienting? Roll will be a key action.
Stalled? Push.
Getting to simple isn’t simple, especially given our bias toward complexity. It takes conscious effort. It requires us to “challenge our thinking.”[4] “To sift the essential from the non-essential.”[5] Yet when you peel away the layers of complexity, you’re left with “the beautiful simplicity of flight.”[6]
For example, just nine principles form the basis of light airplane flying. The principles, though abstract, connect to pilot actions and vice versa. Our flight maneuvers are made up of roll, yaw, and pitch. Our flight paths are either straight or curved.
from The Nine Principles of Light Aircraft Flying by Rich Stowell
It’s a glorious day to be flying. You’re not thinking about the molecular properties of the air, or the luminous flux of your landing light. The fundamentals are clear in your mind. You’re able to combine them to achieve myriad outcomes. You move the controls. The airplane responds. S-turns and chandelles, straight slips, wingovers, and more.
The challenge for instructors starts with the desire to simplify things for students. Break things down into their basic parts. Learn to explain using simple, concise language as if teaching a sixth grader. Creating analogies helps. And be aware of the tendency to creep toward complexity.
The challenge for students is to be proactive partners in your aviation education. Create your own analogies to improve your understanding. Visualize your maneuvers before flying. Confused? Feeling mired in complexity? Don’t be shy. Tell your instructor when you don’t understand something. Ask your instructor to simplify.
Striving for simplicity will lead to more aha moments during training. A big aha moment for me early on was realizing that we use the elevator to bend or straighten our flight path.[7] Simplicity also opens the door to the correlation level of learning.
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[1] Atlassian, “Why we’re hardwired to love the hustle (hint: it’s complicated),” Atlassian.com, May 16, 2019, https://www.atlassian.com/blog/productivity/complexity-bias-hustle-culture, accessed September 10, 2024.
[2] STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.
[3] Wolfgang Langewiesche, Stick and Rudder (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1944), 5.
[4] Dr. Kimberly Janson, “The Power of Simplicity: How to Avoid Overcomplicating Things at Work,” Forbes.com, May 6, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbescoachescouncil/2021/05/06/the-power-of-simplicity-how-to-avoid-over-complicating-things-at-work/, accessed August 23, 2024.
[5] Shane Parrish, “Sifting the Essential from the Non-Essential,” Farnam Street, https://fs.blog/albert-einstein-simplicity/, accessed September 14, 2024.
[6] Instructor Kristy How crafted this wonderful phrase in a LinkedIn message after attending a daylong workshop I conducted in Australia in June 2024. https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristy-how-8a174a46/
[7] For more about this, see my free Learn to Turn program at Community Aviation.
>> This post was written by a human <<