Seeing Your Airplane

HARD FOCUS VS. SOFT FOCUS

By Don Apostolico [email protected] Photos courtesy of the author

As seen in the April 2025 issue of Model Aviation.

Have you ever wondered why some modelers can "thread the needle" and fly their airplane like it’s on rails? These pilots do so because of the way they "see" their aircraft. It’s called visual awareness, which is the pilot’s visual perception of the airplane’s position relative to its surroundings. Pilots who "look but don’t see" lack visual awareness. This narrative is about how to "look and see."

There are two ways to see anything. One is with a hard focus and the other is with a soft focus. The good news is that everyone already knows how to do both, but not everyone has applied it to flying because they might not have trained to do so.

Pilots who were not trained to be spatially aware often experience challenges and other issues, such as:

• Not seeing the wind drift on final approach, resulting in landing right or left of the runway centerline.
• Landing long or short of the desired ideal touchdown location centered on the pilot.
• Allowing the wind to drift the airplane off the runway heading so that the airplane touches down off-heading and on the edge of the runway.
• Allowing the airplane to drift off-heading upon takeoff.
• Not being capable of consistently making accurate spot landings.
• For RC Aerobatics pilots, the lack of awareness results in points lost for reasons covered later in this narrative.

What Is Hard Focus?

One definition of hard focus is the visual concentration on a single point to the exclusion of all other peripheral visual awareness. Some refer to this as "tunnel vision," which limits spatial awareness. Knowledgeable observers can watch a pilot fly and usually tell whether a pilot is using a hard or soft focus. What these pilots see resembles Photo 2, which is tunnel vision on only the airplane or a limited area around the model. They don’t see the big picture.

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To solve this deficiency, spatial awareness can be easily taught with proper flight instruction. I have included some recommendations for flight instructors later in this narrative.

What Is Soft Focus?

Soft focus is the expansion of visual awareness to include the whole flightline environment. It is a pilot who knows where the airplane is relative to everything else on the field. It’s not hard to do. You must have awareness to actually do it. Everyone uses both types of focus when driving their car, so let’s discuss using it when flying an airplane.

How Do You Perform a Hard and Soft Focus?

Everyone already knows how to do this without effort. Soft focus is performed by relaxing the eye muscles to widen your visual field. This is usually done automatically but can be done willfully when desired. Your eyesight is much like autofocus on a camera.

For example, a person’s soft focus is used when admiring a painting. We don’t think about it; we just do it and we see the entire painting. No training, special effort, concentration, squinting, or conscious effort is needed to soften your focus and see the entire "field of view."

If you want to admire a single leaf (hard focus) on the painting, you willfully transition to constrict the eye muscles to create a hard focus without thought or effort. The same process is used when flying an RC airplane, except some pilots never switch from a hard to soft focus.

If the reader uses only a hard focus to fly their aircraft, correcting this problem, at first, takes willful awareness. After practice, the new default will become a soft focus while flying. It is similar to driving a car; you shift from hard to soft focus all the time to be aware of the traffic, pedestrians, traffic lights, potholes, and potential hazards around you.

Hard Focus While Flying

Photo 2 shows an airplane flying down the runway with no other visual clues as to where the airplane is relative to anything else on the field. There is no way to tell whether this airplane is inside or outside of the runway centerline or boundaries while flying a straight line or drifting downwind or crosswind because there are no visual clues to reference the flight path.

This image is what a person sees when using a hard focus. Because the pilot is not consciously aware of and doesn’t see their airplane’s position relative to the trees, runway, windsock, clouds in the background, and other features, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t there. It simply means that the pilot doesn’t see the features because they are using tunnel vision to observe the airplane.

Soft Focus While Flying

Photo 1 shows the airplane in the sky at the same field while using soft focus, which shows the airplane’s position relative to eight key check points on the field. Will all of these objects be in perfect focus? No. They are observed with soft focus and peripheral vision, but they are visible to the pilot while flying.

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Here are some uses for the eight checkpoints in the photo:

1. This tree can be used as a reference point for the zero line.
2. This tree can be your reference point for making your turn from base to final. That doesn’t necessarily mean that you turn over the tree. It is used as a reference point for turning before, after, at, inside, or outside of the tree, depending on the aircraft flown. A jet uses a different size of traffic pattern than a trainer, but the tree can still be used as a reference.
3. The cloud can be used as a reference point, in this case, to designate the lateral center of the runway.
4. The airplane is over the center of the field.
5. This arrow points to the largest tree on the right side of the tree line that can be used as a marker to establish traffic pattern height above the tree on downwind for a right-to-left landing.
6. The arrow points to the windsock. This marker can be used to designate the turning point reference from downwind to base when landing right to left. Fast, heavy, large airplanes might turn after the windsock. Small, lightweight foamies would turn well before the windsock marker.
7. The clump of trees at the far end of the runway is on the extended runway centerline and can be used as a reference to line up on final approach with the center of the runway.
8. This windsock is the zero line and should not be flown behind.

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The reader now has enough information to answer the opening question in the first paragraph: why some pilots can fly bullet-straight lines and others can’t. The person who knows where the ground checkpoints are located relative to the airplane’s desired position is the obvious answer to the question.

I anticipate that there will be some who might be thinking, "This doesn’t apply to me because I don’t want to be an aerobatic pilot." My response is that controlling your airplane with spatial awareness is basic airmanship that any beginner pilot should be capable of doing.

Recommendations for Flight Instructors

My comments about flight instruction are not criticisms of the wonderful people who selflessly give of their time to train others. The comments are observations.

The following training elements are for students, instructors, and anyone who was never taught spatial awareness skills. The following training tips are offered so that flight instructors can easily incorporate these skill elements into their training syllabus. This training will help improve the quality of flight proficiency, regardless of what type of airplane the modeler flies, whether it is gas, glow, electric, or a glider.

RC flight instructors can teach students to become more spatially aware by requiring pilots to fly prescribed figures relative to the ground using ground checkpoints for position awareness rather than just flying the figures at altitude and letting the wind blow the airplane in, out, or downwind.

The following training figures are perfect to teach spatial awareness, wind correction angles, and soft focus:

• Figure 8s with intersection facing in and away from the pilot. Performing true right and left circles and not oblong circles because of wind drift. I emphasize this because pilots are sometimes proficient in making turns in one direction, but, when the wind blows from the other direction, they don’t feel comfortable turning, landing, or taking off in the opposite direction. This is easily solved through training.
• Left and right rectangle patterns.

Remind the student to check the ground reference points while performing maneuvers. This will force pilots to open their peripheral vision and be aware of their location relative to where they should be. The ground position checkpoints should be pointed out to the trainee before takeoff, with a review of what to expect regarding drift corrections and how to compensate for the drift relative to the ground.

With instructor coaching, the student will learn how the bank angle has to vary in wind to accurately scribe the appropriate patterns over the ground. This is done by adjusting bank angles to correct for drift. The bank angle is increased when making a downwind turn and decreased when turning into the wind.

Aerobatic Pilots Can Increase Their Scores by Using Soft Focus

Increasing your score on each maneuver by only a half point times the K factor often makes the difference between a first- and fourth-place finish because of the small point spread of the top competitors.

To improve scores, a soft focus with peripheral vision will help avoid the following:

• Left, right, in-out drift, and level flight that moves up and down.
• Vertical top and bottom lines that are not vertical or level and obvious wind drift require visible corrections that the judges can see.

Soft focus allows aerobatic pilots to use boundary poles, reference landmarks, clouds in the background, telephone poles, fencing, ground irregularities, windsocks, trees, and other features on the field that help establish visual awareness of the airplane’s location, attitude, and altitude.

Are these clear, sharp, and in-focus images all the time? No, but they are sufficiently visible to be effective points of reference to know precisely where you are at all times. You can correct mistakes when they are small rather than when the corrections are obvious, resulting in maneuver downgrades.

How I Used Soft Focus in Competition

While flying the district Pattern Masters Championships in Waco, Texas, three judges awarded me perfect 10s on the Horizontal Square 8 with a crosswind blowing in (see Diagram B). This Horizontal Square 8 has eight sides with 16 locations—more if you count the entry and exit headings—where stealthy wind corrections can be made to maintain the desired track without the judges seeing the drift correction to compensate for the crosswind. The background scenery had many reference points in my field of view by using a soft focus to align and fly precise maneuvers.

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When I landed and picked up my score sheets from the judges, all three commented that my center droplines and the end uplines were identical and the corners were of equal radius. While I was flying, my peripheral vision saw all three judges holding their thumbs up to mark my center droplines.

For spatial reference, I used the telephone pole out in the pasture, roughly a half mile away, as the marker to line up the intersection downlines. Puffy clouds were used for top heights, and the tree line and boundary poles for my left and right uplines. You can’t see all of those features when using tunnel vision.

Summary

This narrative will help readers become more aware and proficient if the information is internalized and applied. A soft focus allows any pilot to see the airplane’s position relative to key reference points on the field. Readers already know how to use hard and soft focus, but not all apply it while flying.

Concentration and commitment will initially be required to keep from defaulting to the long-term habit of hard focus. After a while, soft focus will become your new default. The best news is that you will do it without effort and see the entire painting rather than just the leaf. That’s when effortless flying really becomes fun. You simply have to make the decision to do it.

Fly safely.