FLYING LESSONS for May 26, 2016

Transcription

1 FLYING LESSONS for May 26, 2016 FLYING LESSONS uses the past week s mishap reports to consider what might have contributed to accidents, so you can make better decisions if you face similar circumstances. In almost all cases design characteristics of a specific make and model airplane have little direct bearing on the possible causes of aircraft accidents, so apply these FLYING LESSONS to any airplane you fly. Verify all technical information before applying it to your aircraft or operation, with manufacturers data and recommendations taking precedence. You are pilot in command, and are ultimately responsible for the decisions you make. FLYING LESSONS is an independent product of MASTERY FLIGHT TRAINING, INC. This week s LESSONS: Pursue Mastery of Flight There s always so much material, unfortunately, for FLYING LESSONS every week. I also get a great deal of very informative input from readers, and this week I ll launch right into the Debrief. Lest you think this weekly report makes me too jaded or even afraid, however, or that I don t love flying at least as much as the next pilot, I ll leave you with this thought from me for your contemplation and perhaps your comments as well: Adventure and risk management are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the greatest flying adventures are exercises in superior risk management. Putting a new spin on an old saying: Plan your flight, then monitor your flight, and change your plan as needed. Seek your flying adventure, because adventure done right is Mastery of Flight. Comments? Questions? Let us learn from you, at mastery.flight.training@cox.net See Debrief: Readers write about recent FLYING LESSONS: Reader and corporate pilot Stu Spindel writes about last week s LESSONS: 2016 Mastery Flight Training, Inc. All rights reserved. 1

2 My mantra [for a control check] is "Left turn, right aileron down. Right turn, left aileron down." As I go from left to right, I have the controls full aft. I look at the glare shield for any sign of movement to be certain the mechanism has not interfered with a wire bundle. Your Australian adventure [as passenger in a Tiger Moth who should have been a little more vocal] points to the importance of a thorough brief. Always safer when both occupants are on the same page. Thank you, Stu. Good point about watching the glareshield for movement as well. Past airline pilot Derman German adds: I just read the latest FLYING LESSONS about the C-130 [with] jammed controls. This reminded me of a similar situation with a TransAmerica (TIA) C-130 at Tinker AFB back in 1987 or so. The flight control lock was a bar that was placed between the control yoke and the foot rest on the co-pilot s side. Whether the control lock was not removed during the pre-flight check, or the checklist was not run, no one knows. As the aircraft accelerated through rotate speed, the captain pulled back on the yoke, the aircraft rotated and the control lock fell to the floor in front of the control yoke, holding the yoke in the aft position. The aircraft continued to nose up until it stalled and fell off to the left and crashed. I always felt that if the aircraft had been put into a 45 degree angle to the right soon enough, that the co-pilot might have been able to pull the lock bar out, because the bank would have compensated for the extreme nose-up attitude flying straight ahead. The crew, according to the cockpit voice recorder, apparently knew the problem but was unable to do anything to correct it. When I do my pre-flights, single-engine aircraft, I remove the control lock when doing the initial cockpit check. Then, while doing the external check, I move the aileron, check the yoke movement and the position of the opposite aileron. This way I can hear and feel if there is any binding in the control cables. I do the same with the elevator and check the yoke movement. I move the rudder to listen/feel the cables, and then do another rudder and brake check from inside the cockpit. Thank you for some excellent reading. You re welcome, Derman. I do the same, and look at the control yoke position also to ensure it moves as it should in response to what I do with the flight controls externally. Former Air Force instructor and frequent Debrief John Scherer comments: Hi Tom, great weekly LESSON. I particularly liked your description of the engine failure in the Tiger Moth. I agree with you that when you get in the cockpit of a general aviation airplane and you re a CFI/II, you have a higher professional standard. I am always careful about whom I will administer a [Flight Review] or IPC to. Keep up the good work. I m less choosy about who I instruct; in my employment I have a responsibility to our members, and more importantly the chancier pilots are the ones who need good instruction the most. But I appreciate your viewpoint as well. Thanks, John. Gold Seal instructor Alan Davis also comments on the Flight Controls Free and Correct LESSON: There IS an answer to the "if you can see" dilemma. Control movement is critical enough to safe operation that "if you cannot see" the actual controls, then a control check should be done with someone on the ground verifying control movement before start or taxi. Some might say that there are control indicators in the panel that display control movement, but those can also be wrong. If YOU can't see it, then someone else should/must! Another good idea, Alan. Thank you. Aerobatics instructor Anthony Johnstone continues: Good stuff [last] week, as always. I am sure you have seen this DHC4 video. It happened at Gimli, Manitoba, where I used to fly into for maintenance work. The back story is that the aircraft had been converted from piston to turboprop engines. Apparently the Caribou has a control lock which would automatically disengage when the throttles were advanced beyond a certain manifold pressure. When the turbine swap was done, somehow this did not get into the system. End result is pretty dramatic...[a] simple flight control "stir" would have prevented this. See Mastery Flight Training, Inc. All rights reserved. 2

3 Wow, Tony. Indeed, the ubiquitous but oft-forgotten Flight Controls Free and Correct is never optional. Thanks for passing alone this incredible reminder. Tony continues: I had an interesting experience a few years ago doing a flight review in a Cessna 140. I had done the original checkout for the pilot and was familiar with the airplane. When we got in for the flight, he pointed out proudly the new comm radio he had just installed. Prior to takeoff, what looked like a full, free, and correct control sweep was done. After some maneuvers, steep turns, slow flight, etc, he asked me if we could do a spin. I talked him through the entry, but despite a couple of efforts, he couldn't get a clean stall break and the aircraft would not spin. I took control to try it, coming up to the stall the yoke didn't feel like it was fully back, I gave a bigger pull and there was a loud "clunk", the yoke came back about another inch and stuck. I pushed hard, it clunked back forward and seemed to move normally. The owner looked a bit thoughtful and said he wondered if it was catching on the bracket he had used to install the radio. We landed uneventfully without me having to demonstrate whether or not I could land the airplane using the trim tab and a jammed elevator. On the ground, we found the radio bracket was indeed catching the yoke. The travel was "almost full", and would probably not have been noticeable if we hadn't wanted to spin the airplane. So I guess the lesson here is know what full travel actually looks like in your airplane, and make sure it really happens before you go flying. Training is learning from the experience of others. Thank you for training us on this, Tony. Reader Michael Szczepanski takes us back a few weeks to the discussion of traffic avoidance when departing IFR form a nontowered airport (the Piaggio vs. Citation LESSONS): There is more to how ADS-B works. It would have helped immensely in your example. Assuming everyone was equipped, the Citation would be transmitting its position continuously. The Piaggio would have been able to directly receive this transmission, no rebroadcast would have been necessary. The Piaggio crew could have seen the traffic on whatever cockpit display they chose - installed avionics, ipad, etc. The Piaggio would also have been sending its ground position and the Citation would have received that - not important in this example, but still a good thing. I ve sat on my back porch many times with my Stratus watching the ADS-B traffic move around the area. That s the beauty of ADS-B for traffic - no ground-based system intervention is required. You can directly receive the transmitted positions of nearby equipped aircraft. You only need line-of-sight to a tower for rebroadcast traffic (those with transponders but no ADS-B-out) and weather. Similarly, if they had TCAS they could have seen the Citation inbound, the system would be actively interrogating their transponder. Thanks for your insights, Michael. That s part of the point: if everyone was equipped there would be warnings. Receiving a warning of the Citation inbound on the approach, the Piaggio pilot may have delayed. More likely he at least would have been prompted to look for the potentially conflicting traffic. You re right, if everyone has ADS-B In that works except that all receivers would also have to be dual-channel, because high-altitude and low-altitude airplanes in the United States will operate on different and incompatible frequency bands that only display on either screen when line-of-sight from a ground transmission station or if the aircraft s ADS-B In is a dual-channel receiver. And at least some (probably large) percentage of the lightplanes that will be ADS-B compliant after January 1, 2020 will have only the lowest-requirement ADS-B Out. Even with this great technology we ll have to visually clear for traffic. A reader who wishes to remain anonymous (the Air Force in me says I need an acronym for that: ARWWRA gotta love a palindrome) warns: [Readers responding to] your latest articles have been heavily mentioning ADS-B reliance on visualizing traffic. I sometimes feel like I am a one-man band on this but the reliance on electronics in the cockpit worries me. It is like distracted driving, only in this case it is distracted flying. I have seen several of my friends with more complex aircraft fly with their heads down in the cockpit looking at screens. As a non-electric vintage aircraft owner I can assure you I will not have ADS-B Out, and probably not In, either. Cockpit clutter is very real when you are dealing with a very small two-place aircraft and battery life is a big issue, too. I fly out of Class C with a transponder waiver and I assume will be doing the same without ADS-B Mastery Flight Training, Inc. All rights reserved. 3

4 There will be hundreds, if not thousands, of aircraft [whose owners] will not equip with ADS-B out. These are the aircraft our readers will need to see with their eyeballs and not their screens. As a reminder to your readers here is the information regarding ADS-B when it comes to non-electric aircraft: On January 1, 2020, when operating in the airspace designated in 14 CFR (outlined below) you must be equipped with ADS-B Out avionics that meet the performance requirements of 14 CFR Aircraft not complying with the requirements may be denied access to this airspace. Under the rule, ADS-B Out performance will be required to operate in: 1. Class A, B, and C. 2. Class E airspace within the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia at and above 10,000 feet MSL, excluding the airspace at and below 2,500 feet above the surface. 3. Class E airspace at and above 3,000 feet MSL over the Gulf of Mexico from the coastline of the United States out to 12 nautical miles. 4. Around those airports identified in 14 CFR part 91, Appendix D. The ADS-B Out rule does not apply in the airspace defined in items 1 and 2 above for any aircraft that was not originally certificated with an electrical system or that has not subsequently been certified with such a system installed, including balloons and gliders. Thanks for your time. Keep up the great work! Thank you. I m not certain you ll still be able to get a waiver in the post-2020 world, but I suspect the recreational flying lobby will try to make that happen. Your main point is true now, just as it was with the Piaggio and the Citation and it will be after 2020: ADS-B advises when another equipped airplane is nearby, but it s still up to the pilot to use that warning to help acquire the target aircraft visually and then avoid it visually. Further, pilots of ADS-B equipped airplanes will always have to visually clear for traffic, because now and after 2020 with extremely few exceptions there is always the chance a non-ads-b equipped aircraft is operating legally near ADS-B equipped aircraft. It s somewhat analogous to NEXRAD weather data uplink: it s not designed to allow a pilot to fly closer to thunderstorms, its designed to make it easier to stay the proper distance away from thunderstorms. The rules of aerodynamics and airplane stresses did not changes with addition of more information on a cockpit screen. The basic rules of traffic avoidance will not change as a result of ADS-B either. The ARWWRA who last week described his experience as a passenger in an airplane flown below approach minimums to a landing, the note that prompted my description of my Tiger Moth experience and my conclusion that even when just a passenger I should brief my pilot that I ll speak up if I see any unsafe or forgotten action, wrote in reply: Thank you for that thorough and thoughtful response. Thank you also for guiding me to that conclusion. I had not, in fact, come to it on my own; but now that you've articulated it so eloquently, I'm kicking myself, because it should have been self-evident. The weak link in my near-accident chain did not happen at the end of the flight - it happened at the start, when I did not provide the briefing you suggest. In my response I had discussed some specific checklist steps, and a recommended order, for sealing with an engine failure in flight calling to check Air (carburetor heat), Fuel (slector and mixture) and Ignition (magneto switches), in that order. The anonymous reader added: I teach a slightly different version of Fuel, Induction, Air, because of my observation that it's usually fuel. (I also teach that old-but-often-valuable tip - If you've just done something, Undo it). So I teach to focus on fuel, and when the pilot is certain that fuel is not the problem, to proceed with Spark. In this regard, I try to ensure that they really understand what the magneto key (or switches) do - I know a pilot who, confronted with a rough-running engine, switched to the Left mag, at which point the engine quit; so he switched to the Right mag, and it ran smoothly. Then, almost unbelievably, he switched back to Both Mastery Flight Training, Inc. All rights reserved. 4

5 believing that "surely, even if one mag is bad, two must still be better than one". He is lucky that his engine continued to run at all. On most of the airplanes I instruct in, Air is the least likely problem, and even if it is the cause of an issue, many models leave the pilot with no remedy (e.g. a Turbo with an automatic Alternate Air door). Your first point bears repeating, with a little expansion: pilots need to really understand what all the switches and controls do. I teach "air" first for carbureted engines. Carburetor ice is statistically a likely cause, but more importantly if the engine has stopped altogether there isn't much residual heat in the exhaust. You need to apply carb heat right away if it is to do any good. In fuel injected engines I teach Fuel, Ignition, Air in that order because (at least in most of the planes I fly) alternate air activates automatically with a manual backup as a last-ditch effort, so air should have taken care of itself. Specifically in most Bonanzas the procedure I ve taught since 1990 is: Fuel - switch tanks Fuel - full rich; lean as required Fuel - auxiliary pump Ignition - magnetos Air - alternate air Again, it s all about knowing how the systems work, what the common failure modes are, and what to do about them. Thanks, reader. --- I still have a big backlog of Debriefing items I ll get to as the weeks go on along with the comments I m sure this week s LESSONS will generate. Thanks to everyone who provides such great insight into FLYING LESSONS Weekly. What do you think? Let us learn from you, at mastery.flight.training@cox.net Some day, I may thwart death because of this advice. You have potentially saved my life! - Mike Radomsky, founder and Past President of the Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association Please help me cover the costs of providing FLYING LESSONS through the secure PayPal donations button at Thank you, generous supporters. Share the skies with master aviators. Forward FLYING LESSONS to a friend Pursue Mastery of Flight. Thomas P. Turner, M.S. Aviation Safety, Three-time Master CFI Flight Instructor Hall of Fame 2010 National FAA Safety Team Representative of the Year 2008 FAA Central Region CFI of the Year FLYING LESSONS is 2016 Mastery Flight Training, Inc. For more information see or contact mastery.flight.training@cox.net Mastery Flight Training, Inc. All rights reserved. 5