Kiwi’s first try at throttling back was too soon. He felt his instructor push the throttle forward again. But his next try seemed right and he glided down to make a landing. He watched, fascinated, as they drew closer to the ground, flattened out too soon, and discovered that they were flying level at least twelve feet off the surface.
Armbruster put the engine on. They climbed up and came back and tried again. This time Kiwi judged his distance better. They glided in, bounced a bit, but came to a stop with no damage done. Again and again this was repeated until Kiwi had learned to gauge the distance perfectly.
Stopping in the middle of the field, Armbruster called to him that now they would change places. Kiwi knew this meant that Armbruster trusted him. He took his cushions and moved into the rear cockpit. They took off again.
He made several landings from the back seat, and then his instructor said:
“There’s a few more tricks you’ve got to learn, Kiwi. I’m going to take you up and put you in a tail-spin and you must get out of it.”
Before going up again his instructor explained to him that all his turns up to this point had been gradual ones in which the control surfaces acted in a normal manner.
“To make a sharp turn,” Armbruster further explained, “it is necessary to increase the bank to keep the plane from skidding out sidewise. In banking sharply, where the wings tip up until they are vertical, the action of the elevator and the rudder is reversed. That is, you now use your elevator as a rudder and your rudder as an elevator.
“You must get this firmly fixed in your mind, Kiwi, for it is very important. If you don’t, when you come to make a vertical turn and find the nose dropping, you will instinctively pull back the stick which, in the vertical position of the plane, will not lift the nose. For now the elevator, acting as a rudder, only makes your turn sharper and the nose will continue to drop. To correct this you must lift the nose with the rudder.
“Are you sure you understand this, Kiwi? Starting to make a turn, you put on a little bit of bank and a little bit of rudder. As you put on more bank and the wings approach the vertical, the stick is returned to neutral and you reverse the rudder to keep the nose level, gradually pulling the stick back to keep you in the turn. That’s the way to make a vertical turn.