Cheryl's Thoughts on My SOLO Flight

So, we went through a short lesson on airfoil and wing geometry today. The focus points for today are mainly on the basic aircraft flight controls: ailerons, elevators and rudders.

The ailerons:
- Move surfaces on the outboard portion of the wings
- Roll the aircraft (one wing tip to move up and the other, down)

The elevators:
- Move surfaces at the rear of the horizontal stabilizer
- Control the pitch and position of the plane (where the plane nose is pointing towards), as well as the angle of attack of the wings

The rudders:
- Small moving surfaces at the rear of the vertical stabilizer
- Controls the side-to-side motion of the plane

With this basic knowledge about the flight controls, we then proceeded to challenge ourselves with the flight simulator. For me, I feel that it isn't that difficult once you get the directions and angles right. The challenging part is that we have to be very precise about the angle of the plane, especially when tilting. Even the slightest angle of 1 or 2 degrees off can cause the plane to be steered away from its destination. Therefore, it is important for pilots to take note of this during flights.