Unusual attitude recovery advice sought

On Mar 25, 4:24*pm, john smith wrote:
My thoughts are to take care of flying in the following order:

1. airspeed - increasing... pull back on the throttle; decreasing...
push in on the throttle

2. pitch attitude - nose down... pull back on the yoke/stick; nose up...
push forward on the yoke/stick

3. roll attitude - roll left/right to wings level

There are a few different ways that advice could kill you.

What you do about pitching should depend more on airspeed than on
attitude. A stall can occur even if you're pitching down, so your
advice to pull the nose up if it's down can be just the opposite of
what you need to do. Instead, you should pitch down (and advance the
throttle) if your airspeed is too low (but first, check your rate-of-
turn or heading indicator to see if you're in a spin; if so, recover
according to the procedure in your plane's POH).

If your airspeed is too high, DON'T pitch up before checking your bank
angle. If you're in a high-speed spiral dive and you apply back
elevator, you could worsen the spiral and overstress the airplane.
Instead, roll level first (and put the throttle to idle), and see what
happens. If the plane pitches up sharply--which can happen because
you're now at high speed with abruptly less load factor--then you may
not need to apply back elevator at all, and indeed may even need some
forward pressure to prevent too steep an upward pitch.

On Mar 25, 7:29 pm, wrote:
On Mar 25, 4:24 pm, john smith wrote:

My thoughts are to take care of flying in the following order:

1. airspeed - increasing... pull back on the throttle; decreasing...
push in on the throttle

2. pitch attitude - nose down... pull back on the yoke/stick; nose up...
push forward on the yoke/stick

3. roll attitude - roll left/right to wings level

There are a few different ways that advice could kill you.

If your airspeed is too high, DON'T pitch up before checking your bank
angle. If you're in a high-speed spiral dive and you apply back
elevator, you could worsen the spiral and overstress the airplane.
Instead, roll level first (and put the throttle to idle), and see what
happens. If the plane pitches up sharply--which can happen because
you're now at high speed with abruptly less load factor--then you may
not need to apply back elevator at all, and indeed may even need some
forward pressure to prevent too steep an upward pitch.

Absolutely!

Power off
Level the wings
nose to the horizon
power to hold nose on the horizon

I agree with the sequence, but don't forget that the attitude indictor might
be wrong. In fact, an instrument or vacuum failure is a likely cause of
getting into an unusual attitude in the first place.

The IR PTS used to specify that the unusual attitude recovery be done partial
panel, but this was apparently changed in the last revision. I think that
instrument students should be taught to recover from unusual attitudes without
the attitude indicator - use turn coordinator for bank, and airspeed/VSI for
pitch. Once things are under control, then check the AI and see if it agrees.

On an instrument proficiency check, I like to do unusual attitude recovery
near the end. I cover the attitude indicator while the pilot has his eyes
closed, have him recover, then continue on partial panel and do the partial
panel approach. You can only surprise a pilot once with this, but it can be
effective. If a simulator or ground trainer is available and you can fail
instruments, that's much better.

Barry

Yup, One of my favorite "tricks" in UA training it to rotate the "bar" full
up while the student has his head in his lap to see how much reliability the
student has on the AI and can figure out that it has "failed". IOW, can he
do a cross check quickly enough, you know, like before we hit the surface
would be nice. I get an amazing number nail the horizon and take way too
much time still going down before they put it together. The good news is, I
never caught anyone twice.

--
Regards, BobF.
"Barry" wrote in message
. ..
Power off
Level the wings
nose to the horizon
power to hold nose on the horizon

I agree with the sequence, but don't forget that the attitude indictor
might be wrong. In fact, an instrument or vacuum failure is a likely
cause of getting into an unusual attitude in the first place.

The IR PTS used to specify that the unusual attitude recovery be done
partial panel, but this was apparently changed in the last revision. I
think that instrument students should be taught to recover from unusual
attitudes without the attitude indicator - use turn coordinator for bank,
and airspeed/VSI for pitch. Once things are under control, then check the
AI and see if it agrees.

On an instrument proficiency check, I like to do unusual attitude recovery
near the end. I cover the attitude indicator while the pilot has his eyes
closed, have him recover, then continue on partial panel and do the
partial panel approach. You can only surprise a pilot once with this, but
it can be effective. If a simulator or ground trainer is available and
you can fail instruments, that's much better.

Barry