It’s easy to get interested in flying. Didn’t you ever wonder how a 100,000-ton ocean liner can float, or how a 500-ton jumbo jet can stay in the air? I believe most people have a basic curiosity about how machines work and how they are designed. But usually it doesn’t seem that important to learn more, or maybe it feels too complicated or scary.
I originally got interested in aviation from spending a lot of time on boats. Many things about boating also apply in flying. Like a good boater, a good pilot obeys proven rules regarding navigation, etiquette and safety. The big difference between planes and boats is that planes operate in three dimensions.
The physics of flight are actually quite simple. Going left and right in a plane is not much different than in a boat. It’s the vertical or third dimension that intimidates people. Everyone has a natural fear of heights and awful mental images of planes nose-diving.
Before I started flying in real airplanes, I spent a lot of time on desktop flight simulators. The amount of detail in programs like X-Plane and Flight Simulator X is amazing. You can fly from airport to airport in “real time.” The cockpit graphics are incredibly realistic: every dial, button, instrument and control device works. You can view any part of the airplane, interior or exterior, from any angle and any distance. And you can pick from a wide variety of airplane types from a 747 all the way down to a small Cessna. You can even simulate take-offs and landings, at almost any airport in the world, using a program called VATSIM (Virtual Air Traffic Simulation) that lets you communicate with live “Air Traffic Controllers” (guys who are practicing to become real ATCs).
X-Plane really helped me understand how the four forces of flight – lift, weight, thrust and drag – interact with each other. It also taught me about the different control surfaces that all airplanes have in common: elevators, rudders, ailerons and flaps. These devices control the three basic components of an airplane’s motion – pitch, yaw and roll – or, in other words, whether a plane goes up, down, straight or sideways.
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I still love boats, but nothing beats the excitement and challenge of moving in three dimensions.
– Garrett C.