Week 6 Period: The sidestick that barely moves

Flying by pressure rather than displacement, and learning to stop arguing with a system that responds faster than you do

29 March 2027

Before you arrive#

Your two sets of refusal speeds from week 5, and the difference between them in feet of runway.

In this period#

The stick on your right does not travel. It moves about a quarter of an inch at full deflection; the earliest aircraft of this type had a stick that did not move at all, and a small amount of give was later added to it.

You are not moving a surface. You are applying a pressure that a computer reads as a request, and the computer’s response arrives faster than your proprioception can confirm it. The characteristic failure of this period follows from that: you correct, the aircraft has already corrected, you feel your own correction arrive as an error, and you correct that.

That is a pilot-induced oscillation: the aircraft is not oscillating, the pilot is — the system is executing a series of requests, each a response to the previous one already being answered.

The fix is to release the stick rather than correct more gently, and let the aircraft settle. It does so in under a second.

Afterwards#

Nothing written. Sit in the box during an unbooked slot and hold straight and level for five minutes without correcting anything. Most students cannot do this on the first attempt.