Try taking a pen, stand up next to a table, and write your name in cursive as neatly as possible on a piece of paper without allowing any part of your body to touch the paper or table. Now, take the same pen and write your name in cursive as neatly as possible, but bend over and ground the heel of your hand on the table. Which signature is neater? If you did not cheat, then the one in which you grounded your hand on the paper is much neater and more professional in appearance. Now, do the same experiment, but do it in the passenger seat of a car while someone is driving you down a bumpy road. Why does the grounded hand produce a better signature? It is because you wielded the pen from a position of stability.
Transfer this same thought process to the cockpit. Flying is much like writing with a pen. You should use fine muscles in the forearm and hand to move the flight controls. I see lots of pilots who are having trouble with finesse at the more sensitive phases of flight (landing, instrument approach, etc) and invariably they will fly with the arm totally unsupported. The controls move around much more than necessary because nothing is supporting the arm or hand. Every bump of turbulence registers an unneeded control input that requires another control input to neutralize the original unneeded input . Finesse is simply not possible without a supported arm.
Most people select a seat position to satiate the legs, totally ignoring the rest of the body, especially the arm that moves the flight controls. Try sitting in your airplane and move the seat forward and back, up and down, and if possible lean the seat back and forth as well. Find a position where the eyes can see over the panel , the arms can reach everything in the cockpit with ease, the heat does not hit the cabin top with a headset on, and where the legs are able to easily reach the rudder pedals when fully deflected to one side. And…find a position where the elbow, or preferably, the lower forearm rests against a leg or an arm rest. The arm that moves the yoke must be supported in some manner.
The UH-60 Blackhawk and AH-64 Apache are incredibly sensitive aircraft. You don’t have to move the cyclic hardly at all to get a response. I’ve seen pilots who ham-handed the controls and botched landing after landing move their seat up 3 inches which forces the forearm to rest against the leg and quickly the rookie turns into precise pilots able to handle the most intricate of flight maneuvers. Same goes for the airplane you fly…
You will probably be a little uncomfortable for a few minutes as your eyes get used to a new higher perspective, or as the legs bend a little more during a landing, or as the seat moves closer to the panel, but you will soon become comfortable as you get used to the new position.
If you are having trouble landing, I’d bet that grounding the hand will produce better landings within just a few traffic patterns.
