Richard Harrington Summerby (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} the_richard) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} finnigans_rpg, |
"Pet peeve of mine," Rich replied. "Been flying unteathered since I was five, racing since I was six. Still had a ruddy difficult time with the crap brooms at school, and trying to do manuvers the way flying was taught there. Can only imagine what a mess it was for firsties who had never even seen someone fly a broom, let alone ridden one. Another stupid pureblood tradition, no doubt. 'Of course everybody knows about brooms and flying and Quidditch.' As if Quidditch is all there is about flying. Didn't matter who it turned off on flying."
He rode silently as Lucy felt her way through flying a precision course at speed. As he mentioned earlier, she was a good natural broom rider, just untrained in the finer points. There were no side trips off the course or into the trees or ground, and she hadn't piled into any of the corner poles or crossing gates.
"Practice and more practice," he said with a smile in his voice. "First and foremost, this broom is heavy, underpowered, and wants to skid through turns. The main thing I can tell from your flying style is that you're not used to thinking in three dimensions. Automobiles only go up and down when the road does. You're treating each pole or gate as a destination and not a waypoint; not planning far enough ahead. Also not using thrust in multiple directions at the same time. Give me control."
Rich slowed the broom way down as he swung around to the far end of pit row at about twenty feet up. "Trick here is to spot in the direction you are heading like a ballerina or gymnast." He put the broom into a slow flat spin without changing the direction they were traveling. "I'm keeping thrust in our line of travel no matter which way the broom is facing." They did that for a half-dozen or so spins when he went on, "If this next makes you airsick, sing out and I'll stop." With that he added a slow right-hand roll into the mix, so they were rolling and spinning at the same time, all while holding altitude and traveling slowly down pit row. "Thrust is always in the same direction no matter how turned around we are. Lift is always up."
"Then there's this." As they came up to his pit stall, Rich let the broom come around more or less facing the way they'd been traveling and used combined thrust to cancel all the rotations. Then, pulling the nose of the broom up, he used rearward and upward thrust together rather than braking to bring them to a stop and drop them to mounting height. "When I take a corner, I'm over on my side so I'm using forward flight and pulling the broomstick up in front to make the turn, and using upward lift sideways to stay close to the pole, and sideways thrust up to keep us at altitude. You've been crabbing up and around and it slows you down. Hop off and grab that old Nimbus 2000 off the rack, give it a try solo. It tops out about 120, so you'll have to remember to do some braking if you go wide open on the straights."