When it comes to flying, there are many steps and procedures that you should take to have a good, safe flight. You must approach a flight with the utmost care and know what you are doing to succeed in a flight. Here, we will teach you the basic flight maneuvers you should know so you can gain a basic understanding of flying. To get a full understanding of flight, however, you should attend flight school.
Straight-and-Level Flight
The basic definition of straight-and-level flight is any time that your direction and altitude do not change. You can do this by keeping your wings level with the natural horizon and keeping your plane parallel with the earth. To keep your plane level, it is important to constantly check the wings and the horizon to know what kinds of corrections you need to make.
Turning
Turning is the action of changing your direction or heading during a flight. By banking your wings in the direction that you wish to turn, you can change your heading. This banking can cause a loss of some lift that a straight-and-level flight provides. This means you will have to compensate for this loss of lift by tilting the plane nose. It is very important that you do not overbank the plane as you turn. A 45-degree bank is slightly too steep and causes the plane to overbank. You can stop and recover from overbanking, but it is important to know the risks when doing a steep bank.
Climbs
Climbs are a way of increasing the altitude of a plane during flight by tilting the nose of the plane upward. It requires more lift and force than normal straight-and-level flight, as you must fight gravity and the weight of the plane. You will have to apply more thrust to sustain a climb when compared to a straight-and-level flight. When starting a climb, it is important to slowly pull back on the controls to lift the nose of the plane. Jerking the controls to move the plane’s angle will cause problems during the flight.
Descent
A descent is the opposite of a climb in most ways. It is used to decrease altitude by lowering the nose of a plane toward the ground. This maneuver does cause a decrease in the amount of thrust needed to keep at the same speed as a straight-and-level flight. As such, you should lower your thrust when starting a descent if you wish to remain at the same speed. It is a good idea to descend at a fixed speed to keep full control of the plane.
These are the basic flight maneuvers you should know if you are learning to fly. Each maneuver is more complicated than we have briefly described here. To truly get a full understanding of each maneuver, you should attend flight classes.
