GeeBee

The things I appreciate about the German language, very literal and very phonetic. 

It is doable, a lot of taildragger pilots land with limited forward visibility unless they do a wheel landing. My PA-18 had three inch extended gear and tundra tires, so forward visibility in a three point was very limited.

4 hours ago, jaylw314 said:

You'd have to extend that into no freezing temps and clouds at your planned altitudes the entire trip if you want to know there will be no icing.

You can go into freezing temps but you need to avoid moisture. How do you think airlines do a “no ice” dispatch when say an anti-ice valve fails and it has to be deferred per the MEL?
 

My point is and remains, in a Non FIKI airplane an inadvertent ice encounter will not be problematic upon arrival if the landing temp is above freezing. Your defroster can clear the windshield in sufficient time for landing. If your landing temp is below freezing in a Non Fiki airplane, an inadvertent ice encounter is a serious situation because you may not shed the ice on the airframe or be able to see to land. Thus your tolerance for an inadvertent encounter is near zero if the landing temp is below freezing. You need to do an absolute “no ice” dispatch in that case.
 

Boeing for instance sets the landing temp for complete ice shed at 46 and not 32 because the airplane will descend and arrive so fast it will not have time to thaw the ice on unprotected surfaces. This is known as the “enroute icing penalty” and if I remember is about 13,000 pound penalty on a 737. Light planes of course have more time to thaw.

If you dispatch into probable icing conditions in an airplane without FIKI, and your landing temp is below freezing you made a bad dispatch decision. If I am going in a light plane without FIKI, and the landing airport is below freezing, I want to know I will be no ice all the way.

12 hours ago, jlunseth said:

Well, there are some things mixed up here.  It is correct that there is no such thing as TKS with a hot prop.  A hot prop is electrical warming boots on.the prop.  TKS uses a “slinger” system, tubes that squirt TKS fluid onto the prop. The TKS system uses boots with grooves to direct the flow of the deicing fluid out over the prop if I recall correctly, but they are not hot boots.  If you have TKS you can’t have hot boots, you have TKS boots.  One or the other. There is no STC that I know of for a hot windshield on a Mooney.  I had a friend who had one on a Malibu, but I don’t know of one for a Mooney.  It pretty much wrecks your aerodynamic shape, it is a second plate that goes on the outside of the windshield in front of the pilot.  

It is correct that certified FIKI TKS requires “dual everything.” The 231 does not have dual alternators or batteries, and TKS can be fitted to a 231 for north of 70k, but it is for flight into inadvertent icing only, not Flight Into Known Icing.  

Somewhere southeast of Des Moines at about 22k I flew for about ten seconds through the very top of a cloud.  The aircraft was slammed with ice, including the windshield.  There was not much in terms of buildup because the duration was so short, but it was clear ice, all over everywhere. If I had been in those conditions for minutes instead of seconds I hate to think what the outcome would have been.  I immediately diverted out of the conditions.  The defroster was no help.  I have also picked up ice during a summer descent that left pretty quickly as I got to lower altitudes, but again, the defroster was no help.  Don’t depend on your defroster for de-icing and don’t expect that if you get into icing, there can only be a little bit.  In a wringing wet cloud top you can get fire hosed.

Your defroster is of no help at altitude, but what about when you were on approach? You should not depend on it, but I have yet to fly in any conditions in a light plane were I could not clear the windshield with a defroster by the time I was on approach. Now I have opaqued some windshields on jets, with all the windshield heat in the world,  but those are not conditions I would put a light airplane.  IOW if you can't clear the windshield with defrost in a light plane by the time you are on approach, you made a bad dispatch decision.

2 hours ago, ArtVandelay said:

I thought the no FIKI restriction was because no dual batteries or dual TKS pumps or some other redundancy the long bodies have. In other words, the TKS functionality and effectiveness was identical.

Partly. I talked to the CAV folks, who are very nice and very helpful by the way. TKS FIKI requires the full panoply of items. Dual batteries, dual alternators, dual pumps, dual windshield pumps and a TKS prop system. If you had a hot prop they would remove it.

Now would an airplane with a TKS system without dual everything and a hot prop be just as effective? As long as everything works, most likely. I've flown a lot of very effective hot props. 

The reality is in one case you are looking for a "parachute" and in another you are looking to expand the legal dispatch envelope.

You can talk to your local prop shop about getting a hot prop. They should have the product and the STC for it. 

As far as I know there is no STC for an alcohol windshield only. It is usually part of a TKS package. 

There is no FIKI with a hot prop for Mooney's, only inadvertent protection. To have FIKI you must have a TKS feed on the prop and even then it is only for the long bodies.

In reality in 30,000 hours of flying including daily runs to Lake Tahoe for 6 years I have yet to find icing that stuck to the windshield all the way to landing. Even on measly little single engine Cessna's. You can usually get enough defroster heat and enough temp rise down low to clear the windshield. 

A hot prop would be a good idea if you are a regular IFR traveler. At least you can keep thrust on it while you look for a way out which often times is a climb.

That is because there is no halfway. You can get a heated prop from BFG, but a heated prop is not part of the CAV system. They use a TKS prop. You can't buy just a TKS prop or a TKS windshield from them. Their system is designed for full TKS and the plumbing and pumps reflect that. The windshield comes off the windshield pumps and the prop comes off the main system pumps. At that point, after you have installed all those pumps, the leading edges is chump change.

Your fuel economy will be better at low RPMs because each cylinder has more time to extract the BTU value of the fuel provided. While BMEP will be higher, your engine can take it. That said, there is a Continental SB not to go below 2300.

Min maneuvering speeds for various flap positions, vref, min clean speed, stall speed are all weight dependent, based upon the weight entered in the FMC. The tape is also g dependent. I had an F/O (ex fighter type)in the sim decide to come out of an over bank by kicking the rudder over and go nose low. As the airplane dived, he pulled up the speed brakes (stall speed increase) I watched the red zipper at the low end jump up. Then he started to pull g's to recover. The low end red zipper increased more. At Vne he started to pull up except the g loading increased the stall speed. The red low end zipper met the high Vne and the entire airspeed range was in the red. So there we were, at Vne with the stick shaker activated, the entire airspeed indicator in the red zipper. So yeah, the markings change with weight, g loading and even altitude if the envelope so dictates. 

I said "your only way out is to drop the boards and exceed Vne". He did that and it took 15,000' but he got it stabilized. Real world, I would guess we might have shed some parts off the airframe.

"Point being, if you have thoughts of going around, it's probably the right thought, go around"

The way I think of it is a go around is an admission of good judgement, not of failure.

Never allow unattended fueling of your airplane.

I also just noticed you said “upset recovery in normal law”. The airplane should not be upsettable in normal law. It can only happen in alternate law or below. Slamming the throttles forward and stick full aft in normal law is terrain warning procedure. It will simple climb at minimum speed in normal law.

I don't know who told you that but it was wrong before 447 and it is wrong after. You slam the thrust levers full forward on a set of under slung engines and I will guarantee secondary and tertiary stalls and the stick full aft will aggravate that further. It is true that recovery training now is more aggressive, i.e. get light in the seat, but it has always been taught nose down, feed in partial power, control the pitch up, continue increasing power while maintaining pitch stability.

After Boeing screwed up the elevators on the 737NG (yes, they messed up that 737 too) we had to fly a full stall profile on them after they got new tail feathers. Flaps up at FL410, Full flaps at 10K and 20K. We had the new AOA indicators on the PFD and I can report they are rock solid accurate. Airplane broke every time at the red tick. The problem with airspeed tapes is they quite often are GIGO because they are based upon ZFW or GW data entered in the FMC. More than once I have been at min maneuvering fir a given flap position or on final at Vref+5 only to notice the AoA saying something different. Subsequent load audit reveals the airplane heavier than the garbage fed into the box. AoA does not lie. It is how the Navy nails the 2 wire.

Upgraded mine. No reason why you cannot fly an approved LNAV/ VNAV procedure with SBAS. Not only is the guidance solid, my S-tec flies the GP really nicely.

G loading can be biased in the display, 99.99% of the time, AoA is highly reliable in a transport aicraft.

At the rate the airplane was descending at FL270 there was insufficient time for the stab trim to roll to a nose down position such that it and the elevator in combination could recover the airplane. 

There are a three things at play here. First the Airbus stab trim system. You don't "trim off pressure" in an Airbus. In fact you feel no pressure, there is no control pressure feedback. If you pull back or push forward on the stick, the elevator moves, then the stab trim follows and trims until the elevator is faired with the stab. You do not have a stab trim switch on stick. It is all automatic. When Jaque Jet Jock started yanking 15 degrees nose up at high altitude he got the stab trim full nose up, to the stops. Second, the Airbus trim wheel is small, by design. It is small so that should all that quadruple redundant fly by wire stuff quit, you can still fly the airplane with the stab trim, BUT your inputs need to be small and precise. I've practiced it a couple times in the sim. You are lucky to get it on pavement let alone the touchdown zone of 10,000' slab. The reality is such a failure is one quarter the chance of both engines quitting over water. The fastest way to roll the trim forward is automatic electric actuation. Third issue. For fuel economy, fuel is transferred in cruise, starting around 25,000 feet on climb out to the fuel tank in the stab, which holds about 11,000 pounds. At cruise I have seen a CG as far aft as 39.5% of MAC. So if you stall the airplane at high altitude, you are going to need a lot of pitch authority to get the nose down.

If at the first indication of stall they had executed standard upset recover, push, roll, power, stabilize the loss off control would have been survivable. They did not believe the stall warning because their airspeed was invalid......except stall warning come from the AOA sensor, not airspeed. Which is why I am a big advocate for true AOA indicators in all airplanes.

" I am sure AF447 crew had good chance to catch it in low altitudes: they had a serviceable engine & aircraft allway to the ground..."

Nope. Airplane was lost out of FL270. I don't know how many times I have to say it. The stab trim was too far up to allow for the nose to be pushed down even with full down elevator. The Airbus stab trims automatically to elevator position. The elevator was up so long the stab was trimmed full nose up. If at Fl280 the elevator had been reversed to full nose down, the airplane would have been recoverable with just a few thousand feet to spare.

As to engine recovery at altitude, even if the fires stay lit, in general the average twin spool engine in the middle 30's requires 20 to 30 seconds to accelerate from idle to full power. In that time you only have pitch to recover the speed if your speed is inadequate.

The problem for foreign carriers is they produce ab-initio trained "wunder kind" who have barely enough time to occupy the seat, let alone the savy to handle to handle challenging situations. Such was the case here. Not to worry, it is coming to a US airline near you.

Around 2008 my carrier was hiring hot and heavy and we found some new hires being assigned a low seniority base on transoceanic equipment. Once they completed 75 hours they were off low time restrictions and could be paired together. I asked the boss if he was comfortable with the Captain going on break with two guys with less than 75 hours handling the flight deck He told me they were qualified and I had to take my mandated break. Well..... thank God it was not me but.....two wunder kind in charge of a 767 had a low oil pressure light come on. One ex-Navy, the other 5000 hour civilian started an immediate divert to BIKF. Trouble was, pressure gauge and oil temp was just fine. Captain non plussed. 

These two AF pilots were wunder kind, and while they had the time, they passed the minimal training, they were incapable of hand flying an airplane in the dark over an ocean.

The bottom line to AF 447 is the pilot could not attitude instrument fly for squat. I had the scenario sprung on me several times in the sim both before and after 447. You don’t go yanking back beyond 7.5 at those altitudes. Put the dang. Airplane at 2.5 up, set the power at 92% GE, 84 P&W and sit on it. If you don’t know what pitch attitude to use, drop down the FPV and put it on the horizon. 
 

We can sit here and discuss the qualities ir lack there of with regard to automation and different implementation of it but it is an absurd argument if you cannot attitude instrument fly the airplane. Af447 is a poor example to cite for automation, because the at the controls was unqualified to start with.

1.4 is based upon a  bank overshoot. The avocation is to fly minimum 1.4 while maneuvering then slow to 1.3 for landing when pattern maneuvering is complete. 1.4 allows up to a 55 degree bank in the event the pilot overbanks the turn onto final. The concept is based upon "minimum maneuvering speed used in transports.

I've come to the conclusion you don't know what you are talking about with respect to Airbus. AF 447 did not turn on pitot heat on the way down. The Airbus high probe heat is continuous from engine start to shut down. You have to make an affirmative selection to OFF, which would trigger an ECAM warning of OFF and there was no such ECAM. They did turn on WING ANTI -ICE, which was appropriate. There is NO indication in the CVR or FDR that the pitot heat was switched off or on, only that the data was invalid from the pitot.

In Paris it was indeed a demonstration that the airplane would not stall. The pilot flew the airplane with the stick full aft showing it would not stall, except it will sink with insufficient power (being on the backside of the curve) and when it sank below 100' RA Normal law removes stall protections because the airplane must land at some point. So as the demonstration went through 100' it stalled because the airplane reverted to direct control. Any Airbus pilot who has landed in a crosswind can tell you this fact because you cannot slip the airplane until direct control is established.

1 hour ago, Blue on Top said:

1.  In 3 words, more available performance.  As I mentioned previously, each airplane is different and each design has different reasons for different systems.  For an airliner that only flies out of few, paved, runways that are much longer than is required, sure, don't let them stall …. but then the pilots won't … better not go there.  You may remember an accident at the Paris Airshow with an A320 that those pilots might disagree with you.  Again, full automation is coming.  Pilots rely on systems to fly the airplane way to much the way it is now.

2. I ordered the book.  I've read the actual transcripts and reviewed the actual cockpit data.  I'm looking forward to reading your friend's book.

3. The training should not be on how to turn the autopilot on and use the FMS.  It should be on what happens when the automation fails and why the automation failed.  Had AF447 crew known that AOA and airspeed are totally independent, would they have still ignored the stick shakers?  They knew some things as they turned the pitot heaters on during the descent.

Bottom line:  I'm looking forward to reading the book.   AND finding a solution(s) that doesn't allow accidents like this.

So tell me how the Paris Airshow accident happened.

Might want to take a look at this from an instructor I know. I would note he talks about a friend of his killed at KFFC in a stall spin after engine failure. Now he was not only well trained, he was a CFI-I

Why would you go to a stall regime when you just lost an engine? Should you instead go to “lost engine regime”?