Upset Prevention and Recovery

[alextstone]

7 hours ago, Jerry 5TJ said:

Day One sounds very like the CFI spin training I did this month in a Citabria.  Two flights, about 3 hours, steep turns, wing-overs, spins out of steep turns and level, falling leaf, a flattened spin due to deliberate wrong recovery.   I found it lots of fun.  I had to be reminded when scanning for traffic to look down, too -- our flight path in a spin was just about vertical. 

Looking for traffic in a spin...

[Yetti]

58 minutes ago, PT20J said:

Yes, we’ve all heard some variation of why Ralph Harmon overdesigned it (either he was afraid to be blamed for further wing failures after several failures in early Bonanzas, or the Mooney wing is the way he would have designed the Bonanza wing if Beech had let him). But did you ever think how much useful load the extra structure eats up?

Skip

As much as it is and what it does.   I would guess the beam probably only weighs 100lbs or so.  I am sure someone will be along to correct me soon.

[Hank]

1 hour ago, Yetti said:

As much as it is and what it does.   I would guess the beam probably only weighs 100lbs or so.  I am sure someone will be along to correct me soon.

And it can't be removed, only lightened up some. How much can be removed safely? 20 lbs? 30 lbs?

[jlunseth]

Mission #3 today started with a review of steep turns to an accelerated stall (done in Mission #2), then slipping and skidding turn stalls.  I am going to take back what I said about slipping stalls being benign. They are very rapid and you wind up inverted. You do get a warning (buffet). The only saving grace is that after pushing to break the stall, it is possible if you have your head screwed on straight to do a 180 roll and lose less altitude.  That would not get you out of trouble if you were in the pattern.  The skidding stall is actually more benign, at least it was in the Extra, but there is no warning and no chance to avoid, the plane just does an immediate wingover. Then we did some unusual attitudes, nose low overbanked, overbank to spiral dive, nose high. The strategy, PUSH ROLL POWER STABILIZE works for the nose low attitudes, except that you reduce (rather than increase) power to limit altitude loss and overspeed, then increase power as you pull out, wings level.  In the nose high attitudes they teach a variant, PUSH POWER ROLL STABILIZE, which means to put power in right after the push to keep airspeed up and prevent a stall.  The nose high attitudes we were using in the Extra were, shall I say, really nose high, like 70 degrees. After that we did some control loss exercises, so what happens if you jam a rudder, aileron, or strike a bird and jam the elevator.  In the rudder and aileron jam you would use the other roll control (aileron for rudder jam, rudder for aileron jam) to get into a cross-controlled but stable flight condition.  In the elevator jam you would roll to a bank, which keeps the nose down and gives you time to figure out what to do next.  Lastly, we did a hammerhead.  Level at 120, pitch up to vertical, watch the wing out the left window to see the vertical and to see the upward motion stop, then left rudder over which causes the aircraft to slice left to a nose down, power down and pull out.  Really cool!

We did a ground school on spins, which are the last couple of flight missions.  For incipient spins they teach the PUSH ROLL POWER STABILIZE strategy for an incipient spin, meaning the first turn.  After that a couple of things happen that change the dynamics.  Adding power, ailerons, and elevator become ineffective and may simply flatten the spin or increase it.  The strategy is Power (reduce to idle) Ailerons (to neutral), Rudder opposite the spin, then immediately Elevator pushed forward through neutral (P.A.R.E.). When the rotation stops then Rudder to neutral and smoothly but aggressively pull back on the elevator.  

I have two spin sessions tomorrow, plus one session in a SIM, I will be spun dry.

The instructors are great, the planes are great. After a demo on inverted flight the first day I am now used to hanging upside down so I just let the harness do its job and hold me in my seat. Nothing to it.

Edited January 29, 2020 by jlunseth

[carusoam]

Great pireps, JL!

A shortcut to getting a call sign....

Join the Mooney formation flyers...

When you get qualified as a formator... a call sign is created just for you... 

There is a process that goes with that...

 

Best regards,

-a-

[jlunseth]

5 hours ago, carusoam said:

There is a process that goes with that...

Does it involve a surplusage of beer?

[Hank]

5 hours ago, jlunseth said:

Does it involve a surplusage of beer?

I've never found that condition to apply at a gathering of pilots who were not departing soon . . . .

[carusoam]

I think beer is for the new guys... (my preference...)

Single Malt seems to be the beverage of choice for the more established gentlemen aviators...

The Caravan tent is a great place to see the camaraderie. Imbibing days before flying...

Best regards,

-a-

[jlunseth]

Mission #4 was all of the previous lessons only on instruments, followed by an intro to spins!  It is actually easier to do the stall-break exercises on instrument because the horizon is very defined and therefore the direction to roll is easier to determine.  We did power off and power on stalls, accelerated stall, zoom maneuver to pull .5 G, then slipping and skidding stalls, all with the foggles on.  Once you know the strategy - PUSH ROLL POWER STABILIZE - it is all fairly simple on instruments.  The exceptions are very nose high angles where it is PUSH POWER ROLL STABILIZE. I have always worried a little about this, what if I get in trouble in IMC.  As I said, once you know the drill the recovery is easy.

Following that we did a couple of spin maneuvers.  An incipient spin is a spin still in the first turn.  At that point, which is where all of us should break it, the strategy is PUSH ROLL POWER STABILIZE.  However, once in a developed spin, which is at least one turn (three in the Extra), it does not work.  In a developed spin, a spinning moment develops and addition of some things aggravates the spin.  Power lifts the nose, cause a flattened spin. Aileron increases the speed of the spin to about double.  

Normal category aircraft are not certified to be able to break a fully developed stall.  That’s us.  So we need to get out of it in the first turn, after that we are test pilots.

The formula to break an upright spin is Power (to idle) Ailerons (to neutral) Rudder opposite the spin, Elevator.  The easy way to determine which rudder to step on is to “Go with the flow.” If you are spinning right, the ground or horizon will be flowing left, so step on the left elevator. In an upright spin the elevator should initially be held full back.  The elevator can blanket the rudder because the relative wind is basically straight into the belly of the aircraft, holding the elevator back exposes more rudder and makes the rudder more effective.  But when you come to the “E” part of P.A.R.E. push the elevator forward to break the stall.

The same formula works for an inverted spin, except elevator should by held forward initially, and then moved back past neutral to break the stall.

Once the stall is broken, Rudder to neutral, Elevator to pull out of the resulting dive.

So its P.A.R.E. (Power Aileron Rudder Elevator), then Rudder Elevator again.  Pull out of the dive, then stabilize the aircraft by putting in power and establishing Vy and put it in a climb back to altitude.  Pitch and power set. Airspeed stabilized. Postive rate. Recovery complete.

I also got to fly in an Alsim for about an hour.  Flew a King Air and did all the same maneuvers done in the Extra.  It all worked.

One last mission, full spins and then some aerobatic “play.” We who are about to die salute you.

[Yetti]

Question.   So the course name is Upset Prevention.   And Recovery.    Based on what you are writing it's more about recovery.    Do you feel that after putting the plane into the situation to recover from, that is helping you to prevent the upset in the first place?

[Volare]

An interesting aspect of using an aerobatic airplane to do all these maneuvers is that the inherent stability of a normal aircraft is greatly reduced in these types of aircraft. Things like reduced (or lack of) dihedral and symmetric airfoils make aerobatic aircraft more willing to do things like this, and make demonstrations of the maneuver more extreme. I wonder if this has been discussed in your training? It sounds like there must be some of it if you did some maneuvers in a King Air sim. But as long as you're in a sim, try those slipping and skidding turns again at real traffic pattern altitudes and let us know the results.

[jlunseth]

Last Mission, #5. I am going to do two posts here. First I will post the last mission, and then I will post some takeaways. Mission 5 was first, a review of some of the basic upsets and recoveries, slipping and skidding stalls, an accelerated stall, and some upset recovery checks (close eyes, the instructor puts you in an upset, you recover). Then we did one incipient (one turn) spin and recovery with me on the controls.  Then a developed spin where I was not allowed to recover until the instructor said “Recover.” We did several of those with the instructor putting the aircraft into the spin and letting me choose the strategy and execute it.  The Extra is not supposed to enter into a developed spin for three turns, but I tried the PUSH ROLL POWER STABILIZE strategy on a turn and a half spin and it did not recover, so I switched to the P.A.R.E. strategy and recovered without difficulty.  We then did an inverted spin.  The instructor did a demonstration, and it is a really violent spin.  Hanging from the straps and spinning very fast.  It was difficult to stay oriented.  Unfortunately we then developed some serial headset problems, first with mine then with his, and I did not do a recovery from the inverted spin. At least that is my excuse. The PUSH ROLL POWER STABILIZE formula is called the All-Attitude Upset Recovery Strategy.  Like the AAURS, which worked in anything short of a fully developed spin, the P.A.R.E. strategy worked for every developed spin, at least I hope it did or I must be writing this from the spirit world.  This was a blast! It was fun watching the jackrabbits scatter in the sage brush to get out of the way (actually, we never got close enough to the ground to see any jackrabbits but it makes the story fun).

We debriefed.  Both the instructor and I were pleased with the skills developed in this three day course.  I got a picture, which I will try to post when I get home, a badge (so now I have to get a jacket to go with it I guess), and just had the greatest time with some of the best instructors I have run into. 

[jlunseth]

Takeaways:

1.  More of us private pilots have to do this.  This is some of the best training I have received.

2.  The instructors are all ex-military with umpteen thousand hours in fighters and other aircraft of all kinds.  They are just plain enjoyable men and women (yes “Weeble” I mean you), among the most enjoyable that I have spent time with in an aircraft or training room. Even the corporate guys who “had” to go to this training came out of it grinning.

3. Low level uncoordinated turns are not to be messed with.  At least in the 300XL, the slipping stall, when it happens, is more violent than the skidding stall, it is a split-second inversion where in the skidding stall the plane takes maybe a half second to stall and does not completely invert.  The difference between the two is that the plane does not want to stall in a slip, you have to force it and you get all kinds of warning and resistance from the airframe itself. Ball way left, controls way mushy, nose way high, and then you have to throw in some bank to get the slip stall to happen. The skid gives you virtually no warning.  The stall horn does not go off.  If there is a buffet it is more like an engine shudder of some kind than a stall buffet. What they say here is Ball Low, Good to Go, Ball High You Die. Don’t ever get into a low altitude skid.

4. Any upset that is not a fully developed spin can be recovered using the AAURS. PUSH to unload the wing, ROLL to bring the wings level, Power as dictated by the attitude, Stabilize in a climb at a constant airspeed to get the aircraft away from the ground.

5. You might or might not be able to break a spin.  The Extra, which is certified for spinning, has control surfaces that are larger in proportion to the airfoil than a Normal category aircraft and a rudder that is not blanketed in a spin by the elevator.  It can break any spin or attitude.  Multi’s are not certified to break spins period, and we got to watch some poor stiff in a Queen Aire lose power in one engine in the pattern, invert and spin in(video).  Normal category singles (our Mooneys) are not certified to break a fully developed spin, only an incipient spin.  Don’t get in one in your Mooney, and if you do, immediately use the AAURS to get out.  If the spin develops past one turn, then the PARE is worth trying but you are a test pilot at that point, best of luck. Don’t try the old method of adding power and flying out of a stall, in the wrong situation it just causes a bigger, more unresolvable stall.

6. One of the most valuable things you can learn from this training is how you will react to an upset. In my case, I have never suffered from airsickness, but then I have never been in these kinds of attitudes, so I wondered.  I was surprised to find that my body did just fine, and my spatial recognition and reactive problem solving continued to work.  In pretty much any athletic endeavor, you will find that without practice and training everything moves at light speed and faster than you can react.  With training everything slows down, you are able to see what is happening, diagnose, choose a strategy and if that one does not work choose a different one, and achieve the outcome you want.

7. Is this training valuable?  No. It is invaluable. Would I do it again? in a New York minute.

Thanks, “DQ” and all the rest of you, for a great few days.

 

Edited January 31, 2020 by jlunseth
Numbers 4 & 5 "Stall" changed to "spin" where applicable

[jlunseth]

3 hours ago, Yetti said:

Question.   So the course name is Upset Prevention.   And Recovery.    Based on what you are writing it's more about recovery.    Do you feel that after putting the plane into the situation to recover from, that is helping you to prevent the upset in the first place?

This training was fast and intense.  I can’t possibly do justice to all of it.  But yes, we had several ground schools that covered Upset Prevention and then we would go out and learn what caused the upset condition and how to break it.  For example, they described to us the factors that cause pilots to enter a low level skid. Pilot blows through final, puts in some rudder because the bank is not enough, and gets in a skid. There is no better way to understand the hazard that creates, than to be able to go out and put an airplane in that compromised condition and see how it reacts. About 80% (my opinion) of prevention is recognition of the state of the aircraft.  The other part is easy, drop the nose (PUSH), put in power, stabilize and get your focus back on the aircraft and what it is doing. But we also learned how to escape upset conditions that can’t be anticipated.

[jlunseth]

2 hours ago, Volare said:

An interesting aspect of using an aerobatic airplane to do all these maneuvers is that the inherent stability of a normal aircraft is greatly reduced in these types of aircraft. Things like reduced (or lack of) dihedral and symmetric airfoils make aerobatic aircraft more willing to do things like this, and make demonstrations of the maneuver more extreme. I wonder if this has been discussed in your training? It sounds like there must be some of it if you did some maneuvers in a King Air sim. But as long as you're in a sim, try those slipping and skidding turns again at real traffic pattern altitudes and let us know the results.

The King Air sim was more for fun, they just put the sim in and don’t have a single-engine model so we did the King Air.  They did talk about different wing configurations and how the moments move inward or outward in a slip or skid.  In the sim we did actually try the low level skid and slip turns and I was able to recover, but we had about 2,500 feet to work with.  A major takeaway from this is how violent and sudden both slipping and skidding stalls are, and why they need to be avoided at low altitude. Our Mooneys may be stable, but if we get them in a slip or skid, the stall is not stable, especially not at low altitude.  One of the reasons I sought out this training is that I got the stall horn once, in a classic situation.  Wind from the downwind across the runway, airport was in a valley and the wind down there was different than everywhere else, blew through final, bank did not fix it, probably cranked in a little rudder and got the stall horn thankfully.  My solution was to drop the nose, take out the skidding rudder and have more patience with the aircraft.  It worked out fine. I took the training because I wanted to know what could have happened.......

[jlunseth]

PS to carusoam.  They video’d every flight and gave me a “hero” picture, me and the instructor outside the aircraft.  Every second of the in-flight training and all my screw ups on tape.  What would be most helpful to see?

 

[Hank]

2 hours ago, jlunseth said:

PS to carusoam.  They video’d every flight and gave me a “hero” picture, me and the instructor outside the aircraft.  Every second of the in-flight training and all my screw ups on tape.  What would be most helpful to see?

 

I'd like to see a slip spin and a skid spin, just for the difference. My primary CFI beat the base-to-final spin into my head, if more bank (~30°) won't get me to the runway, I go around and pay more attention the second time.

[jlunseth]

Will do. I have six hours of tape so it will take a little time to put up what you want.

[carusoam]

JL,

five minute of a wooly inverted stall recovery would be perfect!  

Thanks for the great detailed explanation of the things you encountered... and how it relates to some of the flying we do...

Slips/skids/turn to final...

The more you know... the better off you will be...

Best regards,

-a-

[kortopates]

Great thread John and what an awesome experience! Thanks for sharing! 

[MooneyMitch]

10 minutes ago, kortopates said:

Great thread John and what an awesome experience! Thanks for sharing! 

Yep..... we were riding along all the way through.

It all reverts back to my initial flight instruction from a very fine instructor.  Man, he hammered all into me and I retain and think about it with each takeoff and landing still...... low level pattern work, keeping that ball centered and not over banking.  Knowing your aircraft, knowing the numbers, knowing the wind conditions, etc., and what and how it can, and does happen...... in a heartbeat!

 Thank you again for all this.

[jlunseth]

1 hour ago, MooneyMitch said:

Yep..... we were riding along all the way through.

It all reverts back to my initial flight instruction from a very fine instructor.  Man, he hammered all into me and I retain and think about it with each takeoff and landing still...... low level pattern work, keeping that ball centered and not over banking.  Knowing your aircraft, knowing the numbers, knowing the wind conditions, etc., and what and how it can, and does happen...... in a heartbeat!

 Thank you again for all this.

That's pretty much it.  We did one exercise where the instructor had me set the airspeed at about 80 and then we progressed across the plains lifting the nose to a stall, then pushing to recover, then lifting, then pushing, etc.  Could have flown up to Denver doing that. We did quite a few slip and skid stall recoveries, always preceded by a narrative about how we are coming in for a landing, then ATC asks for a 360 for traffic, then something else happens and we are distracted, nose high, banking, ball out low or high, them BAM. It cures you of any tendency to be inattentive in potential stall situations.

Factoids.  All AI's will correctly indicate (more or less) in all attitudes.  There may be precession in an upset, but your AI and mine will indicate correctly through a full loop.  At some point the AI reverses, trying to show you the best way back to a horizontal attitude, and it carries that reversal over the top of the loop, but eventually on the other side of the loop it reverses again, and when you settle to horizontal it will be correct. 

In a spin the ball is unreliable.  Don't try to use the ball to determine spin direction or anything else, if you can see the direction the ground is going, "Go with the flow," that is, step on the rudder in the direction the ground is flowing towards.  If you can't, use the AI the same way.

[Volare]

On 1/30/2020 at 6:47 PM, jlunseth said:

Takeaways:

...

 

I think that in section 5 of this takeaways post, the word "stall" is used several times when it is meant to be the word "spin."

Suggested edit for clarity.

[DanM20C]

On 1/28/2020 at 12:16 PM, jlunseth said:

I gotta get me one. And a handle, no fair that they all have handles and I am just “John.”

If you fly-in to OSH with the Caravan you will get a handle. 

There will be a clinic in Bimidji this spring!  Even if you don't join the caravan the clinics are tons of fun!

Cheers,

Groundhog  aka Dan

 

[jlunseth]

7 hours ago, Volare said:

I think that in section 5 of this takeaways post, the word "stall" is used several times when it is meant to be the word "spin."

Suggested edit for clarity.

You are correct, in 4 & 5 I was talking about incipient and developed spins, not stalls.  Thank you for catching that.  I think my head is still spinning. I made the changes (I hope).  The only thing I didn't change was the statement about flying out of a stall, which can make the stall more difficult to resolve. Example, Air France 447. They may have eventually made it into a spin, I don't know, but it was pulling and attempting to power out of a stall that caused the problem (according to the reports). The right answer is PUSH.