The instructors flying these fantasy flights are mostly well qualified
pilots. The issue is the entry into the cockpits of the business
equation. Instead of a normal instructor/student scenario on these
flights, you have a "customer" up front and a pilot in back who has a
vested interest in seeing that the "customer" gets maximum bang for his
buck. This is NOT a good situation as the customer begins
"experimenting" with ACM on another airplane in 3 dimensional space
flying an airplane that is as slippery as an eel nose low. Invariably,
these "customers" will end up going deep nose low on the right side of
the envelope as they attempt to get that little "extra" needed for a
tracking solution on the camera sight.
The "instructors" on these fantasy flights are unfortunately always
fighting the same decision; how far to let the "customer" go into a nose
low rolling pullout before taking over the airplane. It's a fairly well
known factor of this type of work that the "customers" DON'T LIKE IT
when you take the airplane away from them. It takes away from the
psychological high they take away from the experience.
It's a two sided coin, and all the pilots who engage in the fantasy
business are aware of it. Most handle it well, and manage to keep the
"customer" out of trouble while at the same time not being obvious about
how they are doing this. Trust me.....this is an ART FORM!! :-)
The use of the T34 for these flights was a bad choice in the beginning
and in my opinion will remain a bad choice. Because the airplane is so
slippery nose low, the error margins relating to over g in a rolling
pullout are just too narrow for this type of work, and the business
equation being present in the rear cockpit can be deadly in this
airplane.
Just my opinion.
Dudley Henriques
International Fighter Pilots Fellowship
Commercial Pilot/CFI Retired
for email; take out the trash


I agree with this, having been there and done that in the instructor roll.
While working at Air Combat for my brief stint, we limited the G to around 4 to
help with the rolling G problem and my standards were to take the airplane if
it was going to go into that situation (it rarely does, if you know how to talk
the customer away from it). Walter Mitty be damned.
When I did it in the T-6 (about 2% of the flights I did in that airplane), it
was more of a typical student/instructor relationship with more of a realistic
briefing in the begining. I never had a problem with the rolling pullout
scenario in the T-6.




-John
*You are nothing until you have flown a Douglas, Lockheed, Grumman or North
American*