Visual flight or "Visual Attitude Flying" is a method of controlling an aircraft where the aircraft attitude is determined by observing outside visual references.
The remainder of this article is applicable to fixed-wing aircraft; much of it is also relevant to gliders and hang gliders, with the obvious exceptions of any references to engines and power.
For aircraft the primary visual reference used is usually the relationship between the aircraft's "nose" or cowling against the natural horizon.
The pilot can maintain or change the airspeed, altitude, and direction of flight (heading) as well as the rate of climb or rate of descent and rate of turn (bank angle) through the use of the aircraft flight controls and aircraft engine controls to adjust the "sight picture". Some reference to flight instruments is usually necessary to determine exact airspeed, altitude, heading, bank angle and rate of climb/descent.
There are 3 components to the aircraft's attitude. They are pitch, roll and yaw.
Famous quotes containing the words visual and/or flight:
“I may be able to spot arrowheads on the desert but a refrigerator is a jungle in which I am easily lost. My wife, however, will unerringly point out that the cheese or the leftover roast is hiding right in front of my eyes. Hundreds of such experiences convince me that men and women often inhabit quite different visual worlds. These are differences which cannot be attributed to variations in visual acuity. Man and women simply have learned to use their eyes in very different ways.”
—Edward T. Hall (b. 1914)
“What a cunning mixture of sentiment, pity, tenderness, irony surrounds adolescence, what knowing watchfulness! Young birds on their first flight are hardly so hovered around.”
—Georges Bernanos (1888–1948)