Flightchops learns some important stuff during his biannual flight review

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DHenriques_
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Re: Flightchops learns some important stuff during his biannual flight review

Post by DHenriques_ »

MkIV Hvd wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 20:24
DHenriquesA2A wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 18:53
Excellent post! I've enclosed a link to an article I did recently on just these issues.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8ZDK ... HF0SklVa28

Dudley Henriques
Thanks very much for posting the link, Dudley!
My pleasure. Hope it helps the cause.

pjc747
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Re: Flightchops learns some important stuff during his biannual flight review

Post by pjc747 »

Medtner wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 05:24 What a fantastic video! I learned lots in a manner of minutes.

Such a strange thing to see - that the airline pilots and GA pilots have completely different answers to basic questions. It reveals that there really is a difference between being a pro and a recreational pilot, much though there shouldn't be.
But the issue with this is neither side is right or wrong. Transport airplanes are different from light GA planes, plain and simple. Placing an arbitrary number on what speed we won't maneuver below is incredibly dangerous for GA flight. An understanding of how the airplanes flies slow is essential to the safe operation these aircraft. Placing an arbitrary floor on airspeed to be flown causes pilots to fly the plane too fast, and fear low speed operations. Now, knowing how to react with an engine failure at Vx is one thing, which is why a Vx climb should only be saved for rare instances when it is needed, because not every airplane has sufficient elevator to recover from such a condition. But I can only see this minimum speed thing as a way to arbitrarily build greater fear into pilots, and compound this false idea that low airspeed by its nature is dangerous.
Stearmandriver wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 18:41 On the other hand though, the root cause of many stall/spin accidents is rote focus on airspeed numbers, and less understanding or awareness of actual wing performance. Airspeed and wing performance correlate, but airspeed is not a direct indication of performance. For that, we'd need an AoA indicator, and the fact that new airplanes have them and good affordable aftermarket add ons are hitting the market is fantastic. If you have an AoA indicator, airspeed numbers become irrelevant.
If you need an instrument to tell you your angle of attack in these kind of airplanes, you shouldn't be flying.
Last edited by pjc747 on 22 Sep 2019, 22:16, edited 1 time in total.

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DHenriques_
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Re: Flightchops learns some important stuff during his biannual flight review

Post by DHenriques_ »

Stearmandriver wrote: 22 Sep 2019, 18:41 On the other hand though, the root cause of many stall/spin accidents is rote focus on airspeed numbers, and less understanding or awareness of actual wing performance. Airspeed and wing performance correlate, but airspeed is not a direct indication of performance. For that, we'd need an AoA indicator, and the fact that new airplanes have them and good affordable aftermarket add ons are hitting the market is fantastic. If you have an AoA indicator, airspeed numbers become irrelevant.
If you need an instrument to tell you your angle of attack in these kind of airplanes, you shouldn't be flying.
The problem with stall isn't AOA indicators OR airspeed indicators ,its genesis can be found deep in the basic skill set building block where "feel" and "sound" of the airplane are sadly lacking in today's training curriculum.

It's fine to have all the goodies in place and I will tell all of you emphatically that given a choice of a single instrument to have in my aircraft to help me manage my wing it would certainly be an AOA indicator. That would give me not only stall information but exact data for climb, glide, approach, and literally everything I needed to know about my plane's areas of optimum performance.
The REAL problem concerning stall as taught today is over reliance on instrumentation and stall warning devices as opposed to feeling and listening to what the airplane is telling you. Of course this takes into account that with heavy aircraft such as airliners, instrumentation becomes more of a critical factor as the ability to "feel" and "listen" to the aircraft becomes less pronounced as CLmax is approached.
Dudley Henriques

Stearmandriver
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Re: Flightchops learns some important stuff during his biannual flight review

Post by Stearmandriver »

Great article Dudley, thanks for sharing. That's exactly what I was trying to say. I know I feel like the turning point in my career, when I really became a pilot, was when I went to work for my mentor, and learned acro and got into some old airplanes. What you detailed is exactly where I think we'd ideally go: to a training standard that emphasizes aircraft feel, an intuitive understanding of how your wing is performing in any state of energy or load. But...
If you need an instrument to tell you your angle of attack in these kind of airplanes, you shouldn't be flying.
That sounds great, but it's probably not realistic. The ideal pilot would have the instinctive feel we're talking about, but can every pilot be the "ideal" pilot? In reality, when you examine a group of people who do any common activity, you find that some perform above average, some are below average, and most are by definition... average. So, the above average pilots have this instinctive feel, maybe the average pilots have it to a lesser extent, and maybe the below average folks have it even less or not at all. It's just not realistic to think that every pilot can or will invest the time and money into the necessary amount of training to reach that level, and maybe some aren't capable of reaching it at all. Is leaving them behind, as threats to themselves and their passengers, the best option? I mean, they're licensed pilots. They're GOING to fly.

This is where AoA gauges come in. I've never even gotten to use one in a GA plane, but I think they're one of the best safety enhancements GA has ever seen. They dumb all this "instinctive feel" mumbo jumbo down into a simple, color coded picture that's always in your peripheral vision and is always telling you exactly what your wing is doing, in real time. ANYONE can maintain a safe energy state in every condition with one of these, and referencing it during training maneuvers is going to help a pilot of any level reach that instinctive feel even quicker. There's no downside to these things at all.

Something else I thought of that bugs me about the original video's "defined maneuvering speed" is that he's advocating conditioning pilots to fly a speed that seems 10-15kts above L/D max, after an engine failure. The amount of potential glide distance sacrificed is obviously dependent on aircraft and altitude... but is this a great idea?

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DHenriques_
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Re: Flightchops learns some important stuff during his biannual flight review

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If you need an instrument to tell you your angle of attack in these kind of airplanes, you shouldn't be flying.


I just want all involved to be clear that this quote was NOT made by me. Reading it as it was inserted into text directed to me might give the impression I had said this and I did not. This was a quote by someone else in this thread.

Just to be clear...................

Thank you.
Dudley Henriques

Stearmandriver
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Re: Flightchops learns some important stuff during his biannual flight review

Post by Stearmandriver »

You're right and I'm sorry. It does look that way and I didn't mean for it to, I was just trying to respond to different but related posts at once.

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DHenriques_
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Re: Flightchops learns some important stuff during his biannual flight review

Post by DHenriques_ »

Stearmandriver wrote: 23 Sep 2019, 15:27 You're right and I'm sorry. It does look that way and I didn't mean for it to, I was just trying to respond to different but related posts at once.
No problem at all. Just a misunderstanding I wanted clear up for those reading the post. It's easy for these things to happen when the thread gets long and involves multiple people all posting on the same thing. I've done it myself. :-))
Thanks for helping me clear it up for people.
Dudley Henriques

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