Steep turns without yoke?

"Roger Long" wrote in message
...
A friend of mine's IFR instructor showed him something I've never
heard of.
He rolled in 2 - 3 turns of nose up trim on our 172, pushed on a
rudder
pedal, and went into a nice level steep turn without touching the
yoke. I'm
not sure if this is practice for proper turn entry or a way of
entering an
emergency turn partial panel without the danger of over banking.

Can anyone shed further light on this maneuver?

--
Roger Long


Roger;

If he did this EXACTLY as you indicated, I make it a climbing left turn.
Rolling in the trim even leading the rudder a little bit would cause a
positive pitch immediately, then as the rudder was introduced, it would
have to be very gentle to negate any adverse yaw. It would yaw into the
left side ok if done this way, but it looks like the trim would have
become the dominant factor by that time and a climbing left turn would
be the result.
These "maneuvers" were popular back in the early days of private pilot
instrument introduction. There were several "save your life" maneuvers
that were bantered around at that time; supposedly to save your butt if
you got caught over the top, or inadvertently flew yourself into some
bad weather. Frankly, I didn't like any of it then, and I still wouldn't
advocate using it.
This little ditty using the trim would be VERY difficult to get done in
actual instrument conditions; this of course depending on the airplane
being used. But my money would go on the trim and rudder use not being
applied in the exact sequence required to produce a stable level turn.
I'd bet the house on the trim being early and raising the nose on
someone trying this in actual conditions, then the rudder yawing into a
left climbing turn, which could REALLY get somebody who 1. didn't know
enough not to be there to begin with....and 2. not know enough to make a
simple normal instrument coordinated turn....into REAL trouble FAST!!!!
The real answer to these little catch all ditties is for pilots to learn
right from the gitgo, the right way to do things normally, and be able
to control their airplane without all these "gadget turns"...then, have
enough common sense to stay out of these bad weather situations where
they need to use that control. :-))
Dudley