Radio Control: Aerobatics
IF YOU'VE BEEN following along for the last several months, you're aware that quite a bit of column space has been devoted to "how-tos" for straightening up and squaring away almost every aspect of your aerobatic "game." The discussion has dealt mainly with techniques for building the automatic eye-to-hand connection that is the physical core of the sport-a "see the model, fly the model" approach. However, there is much more to performing well under pressure than just learned skills or physical ability. New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra once remarked that "90% of everything is 100% mental." Regardless of the scrambled syntax, Yogi was 100% right. "Mental toughness" is a popular term in modern sports. It is used to describe athletes who compete as well mentally as they do physically; who never beat themselves with mental mistakes, who don't become unnerved when the heat is on, and who refuse to fold in the clutch.
Radio Control: Aerobatics
LAST MONTH, in the midst of my diatribe on learning to fly straight and square, I mentioned something about passing on a few practice techniques for learning to use the rudder properly. By "properly," I mean as something besides a ground-steering, stall-turning device that comes in handy for the occasional snap roll, spin, or tumble - which is approximately the skill level of the average, well-practiced RC pilot. Using the rudder properly for Precision Aerobatics means a level of mastery that includes genuine three-axis control of the aircraft regardless of attitude, speed, altitude, or flight conditions.
Radio Control: Aerobatics
LAST MONTH we left our discussion of practice techniques for the squareness "sight picture" just as it was time to start putting the pieces of the pattern together by bringing center maneuvers into the fold. Center maneuvers differ in several very important ways from the various turnarounds, which you should already have a pretty decent handle on, if you've been following along for the last several months. First, and most important, they are done in the center, which is why we call them center maneuvers!
Radio Control: Aerobatics
LAST COLUMN, I promised to offer a few real-world practice techniques for learning to see and fly level, and also to talk a little about cause-and-effect in relation to the most-common piloting errors. Learning to fly straight-and-level may sound like a task for "trainer night" at the field, but it's no joke if you truly want to see those low scores go away. It is really very simple: A straight house is built on a square foundation. The flip side of that ancient cliché is even more true. A crooked foundation means that the house doesn't really have a chance from the start, even with a master carpenter (or coach) placing shim after shim as the structure goes up. By the time the second story (Advanced class, say) is reached, the whole mess is so out of plumb that drastic measures are needed just to keep the shack from falling down.
Radio Control: Aerobatics
LAST MONTH I made reference to something I called the "sight picture," or seeing in perspective. I promised a full discussion of the concept very soon, and that time is now. I wrote that this ability to judge perspective was what enabled an artist to realistically render a three-dimensional scene on a two-dimensional canvas, or let a carpenter look at a structure from an oblique angle and tell that it was out of plumb. For our purposes, I stated that it was being able to look at a flying model as a stationary pilot/observer and tell when it was tracking square to the line of flight. I stated that it was a natural gift to some.
