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Flight Transitions

The flight transitions skill requires learning the visual cues and references important to different phases of flight. There are two points in flight where we must have some patience in teaching student pilots.  The first is the takeoff and landing, and the second is the climbing and diving. These are two phases during which the visual cues of flight change quickly. During the takeoff and landing we transition from an environment where we aware of speed and rapid changes in perspective to one that, above 1000 feet, lacks good indications of the actual flight condition, and indeed can become a bit surreal. The climb can promote complete disorientation as we unhinge our inner ear and kinesthetic balancing mechanisms from the complementary visual orientation mechanisms. In the dive we can feel the ground rushing up and encounter protective mechanisms in our bodies that may not be appropriate to good control of the aircraft. During the landing, if we are not careful where we fix our gaze, and how we control the aircraft we can encounter several nasty visual illusions. These can lead to improper control of the aircraft. They are primarily related to illusions of speed, either faster or slower than we are actually travelling, and errors in judging the glide slope and the horizon.