There's no substitute for real life practice! You can't learn to fly by reading a book, nevertheless it is crucial that you are at least prodding the correct stick when you want to change speed or height. If you have something like MS Flight Sim I can talk you through flying the Cessna from taking off at London City to a beautiful landing at London Heathrow without once touching the elevator. Take off, climb, level off, turn above London, descend and land nose high at Heathrow with no bounce, and no elevator is involved. You can see from the instruments that the speed does not change and it really does ram home the message that throttle makes you go up or down and not faster or slower.

Just to prove it in real life I did it a few weeks ago one very calm evening with the Thunder Tiger trainer my pupils are using. I trimmed the elevator for a low speed, then did a take off, circuit and nose high landing without touching the right stick. This helps prove the rules to those who doubt them, and also it made them really p****d off because without touching the elevator I did a better landing than they do with it. It also annoyed them that the plane flies in a straight line for me and I don't touch the controls whereas it wanders all over the place for them and they have to keep controlling it. That's the giveaway - I do nothing and it goes straight, they are sawing at the controls and it goes all over the place! When you are still learning and lacking confidence to leave the plane alone, or really worried about crashing it, you just do far too much controlling. Remember back to when you were learning to ride a bike and you frantically swing the handlebars back and forth but still fall off, yet once you can ride a bike you can do it without touching the handlebars and you would have difficulty making it fall over. Small, smooth movements, made promptly is the trick to flying, but that needs anticipation and that only comes with practice practice practice!

Harry