The trick to getting good is small steps.. Learning to do small, very specific things by repetition.

THE #1 most overlooked thing is having a really good understanding and sense of feel for rudder control in any and all attitudes going from one to the other in any combination. Just as flying towards you is probably 2nd nature without even thinking about it, so should be flying uplines, down lines, wheels to you, canopy to you, inverted, upright whatever. If you can control yaw with the airplane in any attitude you will be miles ahead.

Also learn the tricks. Tricks like while inverted to correct heading with rudder imagine your rudder thumb on the inboard wingtip, push the wingtip forward or back to steer the plane. Its a temporary thing, once your brain catches on it becomes automatic and you dont even think about it anymore.

Learn to do the basics really well.

1. Learn to fly stright and level inverted and upright. Fly from one end of the field at the EXACT same altitude and EXACT same distance out back and forth back and forth. Use the rudder to control distance out and dont show jumpy corrections. Burn a couple of gallons doing this... Start 100' out and 50' high, not 120' out and 55' high not up and down,,,, establish a flight path and be exact until you can put the plane whereever you want and keep it there..

2. Learn to do 2 rolls then 3 then 4 then 5, 6,7,8 using elevator only,,, rolling constantly and using the elevator (timining is the key) to maintain altitude and heading while constantly rolling. Dont try 3 until you can do 2 perfectly. and so on... Once you can roll from one end of the sky to the other move on to sloooooow rolls. Have to mix out the bad tendencies of coupling now. Burn at least 1 if not 2 gallons before moving on...

3. Start on one end of the field and slowly start to roll the plane right. As the plane heads towards knife edge begin inputting opposite rudder to maintain heading. As you pass through KE begin letting off opposite rudder and easing in down elevator to maintain level flight. As you pass through inverted start letting the elevator come back to neutral and easing in rudder in the same direction as ailerons, right in this case. As you come though KE and back towards upright ease out of the rudder, dont get anxious, just let it ease back to upright and fly out straight and level. Try to make it as looooooong as possible. Burn at least 2 gallons of fuel doing nothing but this.

4. Once you can do loong straight slow rolls, then start learning to do multiple slow rolls in sequence, two in a row is TOUGH to do correctly. If you can learn to do 2 or 3 non stop continuouse slow rolls in 1 pass you can do anything. It takes a lot of concentrations. Doing this is what won Chris WHite the national title in Intermediate Pattern this year at the NATS. everone else just jammed the sticks over and did two rolls. He did his from one end of the box to the other, very impressive.


And Thats just rolls. Then there are snaps and spins(controlled spins that is). Im telling you, you learn the rudder backwards and forwards 3D wont seem nearly as tough and your manuevers will look 1000000000000000000000000000 times better.