A plane can turn left and right, just like a car. But there are two other ways a plane can move! Let's look at all three ways a plane can maneuver in the air:
A plane yaws when it turns left or right. This is just like a car.
A plane can also pitch, either down or up.
A third motion is a roll, one way or the other.
When you learn to fly a plane, you first must learn which controls will cause each of the motions. But it's a little more complicated than that, since often you want to make the plane do two or three of these motions at once, such as when you are turning and descending. And there are a variety of controls, including a wheel, pedals, and throttle, all of which can cause a change in one of the motions.
One of the first things you will be taught when learning to fly a plane is how to keep it flying straight and level. Watching a pilot do it, it seems very easy, like driving a car. But it isn't that simple!
In a car, this skill quickly becomes easy. An experienced driver knows from instinct, because he's familiar with driving, that only small adjustments are necessary on the steering wheel, to keep the car moving in a straight line. But if you can remember the first time you got behind the wheel of a car and drove it, you may remember how difficult it was to keep it moving in a straight line, without a lot of rapid turning of the steering wheel, back and forth. You may have thought it was difficult to learn.
After a while, you could anticipate, without really thinking about it, how much you needed to move the wheel back and forth, to counteract the tendency of the car to wander, and were able to keep it running straight, without big turns of the wheel.
All this learning took place in order to keep the car from turning just left or right as you drove. But a plane can turn left or right, up or down, or roll one way or the other!
You have to learn how much movement of the wheel and pedals is necessary, in order to keep the plane from wandering left/right, up/down, or into a roll either way!
Until you learn how much pressure to apply to each of the controls to counteract the plane's wandering, the plane will likely be pitching, rolling and yawing all over the sky! Learning to master all three at once, without really thinking about it, so you can keep a plane flying straight and level as easily as you would a car, takes a lot of practice!
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Flight Page 1
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Physics | Biology | Science | Worsley School
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