A very good landing

[3WE]

What is it doing now?

*it = a student pilot in a solo flight in a Cessna

Great find!

Arm-chair ass-hat speculation:

1. For the majority of his life, turning the steering wheel right = turn right. (It works marvelously in flight, too.)

OR

2. He has been listening to Evan’s disdain for the use of rudder: “I want to be an airline pilot, so I won’t use rudder...stall warning, full power, high performance climb attitude...don’t touch any CBs...”

[Gabriel]

There is a video that I can't find now of a Cessna porpoising during landing and the pilot deciding to go around. The plane yaws violently to the left and starts to climb with a huge sideslip while the persons on the ground yell "right rudder, right rudder!!!" (as if the pilot could hear them).

It is a little out of context now, but I just happened to find it by chance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eopl5QLQ5zs

[3WE]

There is a video that I can't find now of a Cessna porpoising during landing and the pilot deciding to go around. The plane yaws violently to the left and starts to climb with a huge sideslip while the persons on the ground yell "right rudder, right rudder!!!" (as if the pilot could hear them).

It is a little out of context now, but I just happened to find it by chance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eopl5QLQ5zs

Ok, that is not_a demonstration of genius airmanship , but neither is there a relentless pull up nor injured lights nor grass blades, and no observers nor jet photographers hitting the ditch...only a loss of style points...

[Gabriel]

Yes, as I said it is out of context now. It was not intended to criticize this pilot in any way (which could be fairly done, by the way), but just to show the intensity of left yaw tendency in a 182 at full power and low speed.

Back then (when I wanted to post the video but could not find it) this conversation took place between elaw and me:

Me: Side note. After some 180 hours TT, I finally learned the hard way what the rudder pedals are really for when I did my first touch-and-go in a 182.
elaw: C'mon, man, you gotta give us more than that! So you're saying using the rudder was more important in the 182? I wonder why?

So I was answering to elaw, and the video was intended to be part of that answer.

[3WE]

Gabieee:

Yes...

So I was...

Yes...

So I was just hijacking the video for some worthless outsider pontification and Devil’s advocating.

If I did a 172 go around right now, I bet there will be a left “turn”, a delay and then some of those awful rudder reversals as my airmanship sucks.

182- I suspect I would be well educated (‘educated’ in the active tense, NOT the past tense).

I also appreciate the earlier context.

[Gabriel]

182- I suspect I would be well educated (‘educated’ in the active tense, NOT the past tense).

Hahah. I almost spilled my coffee when I read the part in parenthesis. (Literally: I was drinking coffee and started to laugh)

[Gabriel]

As an old song says:

You can always go around
If it don't look right comin' down
Don't wait until you're sideways, maybe sliding on the ground
You can always go around

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr5d3sGxSXQ

Another student pilot that drifted to the left landing a Cessna, this one did try to go around.
Well, it doesn't always work, apparently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZc1TdJFAFs

He survived. The plane didn't.

[elaw]

Heh... I saw that one a few days ago. You'd think when his heading was almost 90 degrees off that of the runway he'd realize going around isn't working and at least kill the engine but no....

[3WE]

1. Tunnel vision (I don’t want to too boldly proclaim I would never do that).

2. That being said, bring on the corn and admonishment...he should have consulted the QRH...I always THOUGHT a 172 would tip in a sharp turn on the ground...no corrective aileron, the thing just cocks right, stays flat and heads for the grass.

3. Perhaps he listened to Gabriel’s song too much, and this time should not_have gone around?

4. Gabieee- note, flying is ~7 times more dangerous than driving.

5. Nevertheless, we need more regulation and training, and public, physical beatings.

[Gabriel]

It is really hard to see, but it looks to me that his first reaction to the left drift was to press the left pedal (then he realizes his mistakes and overreacts with the right pedal and right brake, and later he tries to steer with the yoke).

Now, that pedal-side confusion seems crazy. After all, it is unthinkable that someone driving a car or a bike would steer left when he intends to steer right. But with airplane pedals, it does happen (if ask me how I know, I'll tell you that a friend of mine knows that it happened to a friend of him).

And that is because the design of the rudder pedals is wrong.

Think of the design of the stick. Tilt the stick back, the plane tilts back, tilt the stick forward, the plane tilts forward, tilt the stick left, the plane tilts left, tilt the stick right the plane tilts right.

Now thing of the deign of a steering wheel, the handlebar of a bicycle or motorcycle, or those of the lawn mowers or the electric supermarket karts for the handicapped, or, to relate it closer to the rudder pedals, the steering bar of those downhill rolling bearing carts that you steer with your feet placed directly on that steering bar. When you rotate any of those things to the right, the vehicle turns to the right, nd if you rotate it to the left, the vehicle rotates to the left.

All that makes very consistent, intuitive and natural.

UNTIL YOU GET TO THE RUDDER PEALS.

So, push the right side of the plane forward and the left side of the plane backwards and you would be yawing to the right, EXCEPT IF YOU PUSH ON THE RUDER PEDALS where doing exactly that makes the plane yaw left. This is unnatural, unintuitive, brakes consistency and, perhaps more important, breaks our learnt muscle memory of, for example, riding bikes.

Why on Earth where the rudder pedals designed like that? (or as my Father in law always says when he finds a user-unfriendly design like a food packaging that is hard to open: "Who was the son of a b1tch that designed this?") It is a mystery to me.

[3WE]

...And that is because the design of the rudder pedals is wrong...

...It is a mystery to me...

Ummm, the second sentence is a problem Mr. Aereoengineer.

Yeah, I MIGHT confuse my Flexible Flier sled, but on my John Deere tractor, the right brake pedal sends lots of PSI to the right brake.

We need our feet to do braking AND steering, so maybe the normal configuration is the better selection.

I did briefly try to steer with the yoke on taxi...but, TO DATE, have not_confused the pedal operation in my 100 hours.

[Gabriel]

...And that is because the design of the rudder pedals is wrong...

...It is a mystery to me...

Ummm, the second sentence is a problem Mr. Aereoengineer.

Yeah, I MIGHT confuse my Flexible Flier sled, but on my John Deere tractor, the right brake pedal sends lots of PSI to the right brake.

We need our feet to do braking AND steering, so maybe the normal configuration is the better selection.

I did briefly try to steer with the yoke on taxi...but, TO DATE, have not_confused the pedal operation in my 100 hours.

First of all, of course I did try to steer with the yoke the first day at the controls. The instructor knew that it was going to happen and said "and that is why for the first few lessons you are going to taxi with your and off the yoke". But I did have a couple of those left-vs-right moments in those first few hours.

Second, brakes. I wrote a full paragraph on brakes, except that I deleted it before posting. But since you bring it....
In it I said that differential toe brakes are the only possible reasonable excuse to do so. It would be utterly confusing to have the brake pedal that makes you turn left on top pf the rudder pedal that makes you turn right. I don't know, however, how intuitive or confusing would be to have the brake pedal mounted on top of its corresponding rudder pedal, both reversed from its current standard. The intuition would be that pushing a side forward makes that side move forward. So when you press forward on the left brake the left wing goes forward.... by braking the right wheel.

But my paragraph ended saying that, regardless of the above, all that is irrelevant: The rudder pedals as we know them today far precedes by a few decades the implementation of the differential toe brakes, so they were not a factor when the rudder pedals were standardized as they were and still are.