Ex. 5 - Attitudes And Movements

An attitude is always defined with respect to the horizon. A *movement* is with respect to the pilot.

A. The instructor is always the pilot in command, but he or she is not necessarily physically flying the plane at all times. In fact, most of the time you are the one controlling the plane, to build your skills.

B. Letting go of controls and THEN transferring control verbally is a bad idea! This means no one is flying the plane in between those two actions. (Well, your instructor will likely catch that, since he/she is very aware that you are a student and are expected to make mistakes, but this is not a good habit to build.)

C. Better than the previous option; however, if your instructor (and later in your flying career, your co-pilot) did not hear you or is not ready to take control for any reason, you will again end up in a situation in which no one is flying the plane.

D. Always make sure the person you're transferring control to acknowledges the transfer before assuming that the transfer took place.

A. Examining a small section of the sky at a time allows you to pick out finer details. Aircraft are tricky to spot until they are very close!

B. Wide sweeping eye movements give an illusion of large portions of the field of view being examined quickly, but you are likely to miss other aircraft that way. Your peripheral vision may pick out moving aircraft more easily this way; however, if an object is moving across your visual field, you're probably not on a collision course with it. Things that are about to collide with you appear to be stationary.

C. Listening to and making your own radio calls is important for overall situation awareness and collision avoidance, but it's still secondary to a proper look out (there is a reson we fly by Visual, not Auditory Flight Rules). Remember that many pilots report their position infrequently, inaccurately or not at all (in fact, a radio is not even required for flight in most of Canada's low-level airspace).

Trick question! Yes, all of these are characteristics of a plane flying at cruise attitude!

A. Turning and banking are related, but the relation is not as straight-forward as you might imagine. It's possible for a plane to be banked (i.e., wings tilted to the left), but not turning, if the turning tendency is prevented by use of rudder (that's called slipping and is covered in Exercise 15). On the other hand, it's possible for the plane to be turning (due to yaw), while the wings are parallel to the horizon (i.e., the plane is not banked).
B. Bank is a result or roll (motion around the longitudinal axis), while yawing is a movement around the normal (vertical) axis. Thus a plane in a left bank can be yawing to the left or yawing to the right or not yawing at all.
C. If the pilot were flying straight and level and initiated a roll to the left, the plane would indeed enter a left bank. However, if the plane was in a right bank, then rolling it to the left might just return it to straight and level flight, or even merely reduce the amount of right bank. Also, not every bank is a result of a pilot's action -- turbulence or aircraft's inherent assymetry (some planes just fly "crooked") may cause it to roll into a banked attitude.
D. All attitudes are defined with respect to cruise attitude, so in a banked attitude the wings are inclined with respect to cruise. However, in cruise attitude the wings are always parallel to the horizon, so this answer is correct. (Notice the difference between bank and pitch in this regard -- a nose is not necessarily on the horizon in cruise attitude; in fact, in most aircraft it is below the horizon.)

A. If the nose is above the horizon, the plane is indeed in a nose-up attitude, but even if the nose is below the horizon, the plane could still be in a nose-up attitude, so long as the nose is above the cruise attitude position. Hence, this is not the most accurate answer.

B. Both pitch and bank attitudes are defined with respect to cruise attitude which acts as a reference. So raising the nose even slightly above this attitude means the plane is in a nose-up attitude.

C. A plane that's in a nose-up attitude is not necessarily climbing. It could be flying straight-and-level or even descending, depending on the power setting.

D. Angle of attack is defined as the angle at which the wings meet the relative airflow. Knowing pitch attitude tells you how the wings are aligned, but it does not tell you which way the plane is going (as we discussed, it could be climbing, descending, or flying straight and level). So, we know nothing about the direction of the relative airflow, hence cannot find out the angle of attack from pitch attitude.