HEY! WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?
Too many of us waste too much time aloft looking nowhere in particular – and then going there. You should always be looking intently somewhere while aloft, for many good reasons. (And by this we don’t mean at avionix, flight director, GPS, PDA, or other trifles you’ve cluttered the cockpit with to distract yourself from reality.)Of course you must always watch for traffic. To find it, experts say gaze continually a few seconds at a time in one sector rather than sweeping across, and then shift your sightline to an adjacent sector. That is the best way to scout for bogies because their movement against a still background gives them away. It’s not the only way to use your eyes in soaring, though. Once you see traffic, the point is not to quit searching and watch it. Continue looking elsewhere for all kinds of information while tracking the known bogie(s) in your head. Traffic at any level other than your own may have no meaning except for implications about soaring potential, and focusing on irrelevant detail prevents your seeing other things that are important. Traffic at your altitude however, camouflaged by the horizon, remains a perpetual menace in every situation whether you see it or not, so any time you aren’t looking somewhere else for some better reason, examine the horizon closely.Yet it’s not only about collision avoidance, it’s about everything. Observing ground position, finding lift, dodging shadows, studying the sky’s evolution; there’s always more to see than you have time and eyes for. And it’s not only about optical acuity either. Some pilots who ‘don’t need glasses’ still fail to see traffic in plain sight, or birds soaring nearby. Between your cornea and your conscious mind exists a multiverse of variables, organic, psychological, metaphysical, you name it. But whatever the state of data delivered by the optic nerve to the mind’s doorstep, from there on it’s yours alone to utilize, misinterpret or completely ignore. In other words there’s a willful element to gleaning full value from what your eyes give you. (Operators can always blame the equipment, but the equipment has no say…)Meanwhile, this whole discussion will be of little worth unless you aim your vision where the rich info is – and that in fact is EVERYWHERE. Each minute or two, glance at least briefly all around outside, just for situational awareness and to detect any surprises. (Surprises are there, detected or otherwise!) Freshly updated comprehension of where you actually are, where you’re really going, and what might – or could – happen is what you need for making smart, even creative decisions instead of clueless, hapless ones. The data is everpresent; you just need to look in the right places.So much for the general. Now for the specific.Ordinary pilots seem to look least often exactly where vital telemetry waits in its purest form:* straight down (directly below, toward the center of the Earth) for ground position and drift.* straight up overhead (that cloud closest to you is the one most pertinent to your situation).* in straight flight, 90 degrees out each wingtip to be sure of wings level (and to see anything just before it passes behind you).After 33 years in the back seat I’ll swear on a stack of all Holy books that almost no one ever peeks in those cardinal directions except inadvertently. C’est la vie.And while we’re at it here’s another one. There seems a universal tendency while thermaling, to stare into the turn and down. Obviously it’s a natural inclination, but the benefit, if any, is obscure. To quicken your reaction time and stay in stronger lift more of the time, focus directly straight ahead out the nose while circling, through the yaw string to the horizon. Say what you will, but it works! Better yet, try it first and then say what you will…