IDAHO FATALITY

On Aug 23, 1:50*am, John Cochrane
wrote:
You can have a student with
great coordination and glidepath control at altitude, and who can
explain everything perfectly on oral quizzing. Then, things get a
little tight in the pattern, like he's too close and too low. His
attention gets focused elsewhere and stress goes up, and next thing
you know the yaw string is right over to the side on base to final and
he wants to pull the stick back.

That's another one which I've asked about here before, but no one has
ever answered.

Around here we have ridges and students are very likely to have quite
a bit of practice at doing well-banked coordinated turns while a lot
closer to the ground than normal base-to-final turns, in the presence
of considerable wind drift, groundspeed higher than airspeed
(approaching the ridge from upwind) etc.

Is there correlation between screwed-up base to final turns and
flatland fliers?

On Aug 22, 8:34*pm, Bruce Hoult wrote:
On Aug 23, 1:50*am, John Cochrane
wrote:

You can have a student with
great coordination and glidepath control at altitude, and who can
explain everything perfectly on oral quizzing. Then, things get a
little tight in the pattern, like he's too close and too low. His
attention gets focused elsewhere and stress goes up, and next thing
you know the yaw string is right over to the side on base to final and
he wants to pull the stick back.

That's another one which I've asked about here before, but no one has
ever answered.

Around here we have ridges and students are very likely to have quite
a bit of practice at doing well-banked coordinated turns while a lot
closer to the ground than normal base-to-final turns, in the presence
of considerable wind drift, groundspeed higher than airspeed
(approaching the ridge from upwind) etc.

Is there correlation between screwed-up base to final turns and
flatland fliers?

Quite possibly. Mountain pilots know they can't trust the horizon so
they learn to control pitch attitude with airspeed and bank with rate
of turn. Mountain flying requires a bit of instrument skills. I've
ridden with pilots who were trying to keep their wings parallel to
sloping ground and point their nose at mountain peaks. Airports like
Leadville and Teluride in Colorado are notorious for inducing false
attitude illusions.

Taking this a bit further into the technical - I've set up turn-to-
final stall/spin scenarios while practicing stalls at altitude. The
result is almost always a wing drop followed by a spiral dive. The
glider is designed to resist spinning so it recovers from the
incipient spin on it's own it the first eighth of a turn leading to a
spiral dive.

If the student applies spin recovery control inputs in a spiral dive,
it gets VERY "interesting". This has led me to wonder if some so
called "stall/spin" accidents are really mis-handled spiral dive
recoveries. Maybe we should take a careful look at what we are
teaching.

On Tuesday, August 23, 2011 12:32:43 PM UTC-4, Bill D wrote:
If the student applies spin recovery control inputs in a spiral dive,
it gets VERY "interesting". This has led me to wonder if some so
called "stall/spin" accidents are really mis-handled spiral dive
recoveries. Maybe we should take a careful look at what we are
teaching.

That's how an Eta was destroyed during spin testing IIRC...

On Aug 24, 4:32*am, Bill D wrote:
On Aug 22, 8:34*pm, Bruce Hoult wrote:





On Aug 23, 1:50*am, John Cochrane
wrote:

You can have a student with
great coordination and glidepath control at altitude, and who can
explain everything perfectly on oral quizzing. Then, things get a
little tight in the pattern, like he's too close and too low. His
attention gets focused elsewhere and stress goes up, and next thing
you know the yaw string is right over to the side on base to final and
he wants to pull the stick back.

That's another one which I've asked about here before, but no one has
ever answered.

Around here we have ridges and students are very likely to have quite
a bit of practice at doing well-banked coordinated turns while a lot
closer to the ground than normal base-to-final turns, in the presence
of considerable wind drift, groundspeed higher than airspeed
(approaching the ridge from upwind) etc.

Is there correlation between screwed-up base to final turns and
flatland fliers?

Quite possibly. *Mountain pilots know they can't trust the horizon so
they learn to control pitch attitude with airspeed and bank with rate
of turn. *Mountain flying requires a bit of instrument skills.

Hmm. I don't think that's true, at least for me.

You don't need an actual horizon, all you need is something far enough
away that if it moves in the canopy it's because the aircraft attitude
changed. It doesn't even have to be straight ahead -- well out to the
side is fine.

Even with a true horizon available, you're only using the horizon for
short term attitude stability and cross-referencing it to something
else (wind noise, control feel, airspeed indicator) to calibrate what
attitude you should be holding.

I've had the very interesting experience of flying with a friend doing
overnight freight runs in small turboprops (e.g. Cessna Caravan). When
you're ostensibly flying on instruments and using the artificial
horizon for attitude control, it's quite astounding how much
difference there is between having even two or three external points
of light from stars or farmhouses and not having them. When you're
deep in IMC in the middle of nowhere you are working very very hard.
When you have even the slightest external references that you may not
even be consciously aware of it gets 10x easier.

Your theory sounds more appropriate for people flying in severe haze
or cloud.