How to Perform Clearing Turns 

Thank you for all your help. I’m a student pilot and I watch all your videos to help with my training. Thank you for putting your time into this for us!! You have inspired me to keep on with my training and one day I hope to be a. CFI teaching others to become great well informed pilots!!

Good morning, everyone. I like to include a maneuver checklist before clearing turns. This includes having an emergency landing site below me, making sure my cowl flaps are set, knowing the carb heat temperature, and getting a block airspace from ATC. Also, I look over the iPad for ADSP traffic. Then, as a previous comment noted, drop the right wing, look to the left and then began the left clearing turn and proceed.

Thank you so much my private instructor never taught me this maneuver. I self taught this. I still passed my private license and i kinda sorta got it but now i 100% get it.

One thing that you may need to add, is that performing clearing turns in a high wing versus a low wing, also presents its own set of issues. You can see very well equally above you in a low wing, but you cannot see above you or in the turn from the sides in a high wing airplane.

Apologies for jumping the gun on the first video I saw. I’m glad I came back bc the last 5 or 6 videos I’ve seen have been very informative. 0 crash jokes but 100% useful and helpful knowledge! Thank you!

The reason you see something moving sooner via peripheral vision is that the Rods in the eyes connect via the Magnocellular pathway through the optic chiasm and back via the Optic Nerve to the Occipital Lobe where vision is primarily processed. This particular axonic pathway is actually larger, so information travels faster to the Occipital lobe, than the information you see when you look directly ahead ) via the cones.It’s milliseconds, but it makes a difference. The Cones ( the cells in your eyes which you use to see directly aheadprimarily process this information via the Parvocellular pathway, which is a smaller axon, yet this smaller axon has to send more detailed information to the brain than the Magnocellular pathway. So information isn’t processed as quickly. We see more detail and color with the Cones, but all this ‘extra’ information takes longer to process than the simple, yet vital information about something moving towards us in our surroundings which the Rods send from the periphery of our eyes, via that larger (magno) cellular pathway. It’s not surprising that the Magnocellular Pathway, that the eye’s Rods use is older, and therefore one of our survival mechanisms. Our peripheral vision is actually 360 degrees around each eye😊 If you want to hit that fastball coming at you, use your peripheral vision-look at the ball sideways, freak every one out, then hit the ball out of the park, and freak everyone out even more🤣🤣 it works.looking out with our Peripheral vision will keep us pilots alive♥️ One caveat: Perioheral vision declines with age😵‍💫 don’t play baseball🤣

Thank you… truly… for all these videos. As a 50 y/o student pilot, I’m gobbling up all the info here before my check ride and you’ve been there with me for the entire journey. It’s appreciated.

Love you channel

No belly check? Before turning left I, and many other instructors and DPEs lower the right wing below the horizon before turning left for checking for aircraft lower than we are. High wing aircraft we do a two wing dip before starting a turn. Especially in the pattern.

Thank you for your videos!

If you turn 90 degrees left then turn back 90 degrees right (back to your same heading) aren't you checking the same area (and missing your entire back-right quadrant)? Wouldn't you want to turn 90 left and then another 90 left so you have a full 360 degree view of what's around you?

Before you perform any maneuver? So if I were practicing stalls, I would do a clearing turn between each stall? Or a clearing turn between each steep turn?

Are you available as an instructor for private pilot?

Not sure if it's vernacular or regional, but peripheral vision has 2 Rs, Sounded like periphial.