Breaking the "elevator for altitude" habit
- Thread starter shdw
- Start date
The big problem I see with you shdw in regards to experience, is that you don't know yet what you don't know, since the experience isn't there to have seen much. What you're taking personally is simply a fact that book knowledge can't replace experience...at best its a complement. Don't take that as an attack, but as simply a fact. Regardless of what equations you can spew out, etc, the fact that you'll (for example) come out and tell Hacker how he should fly his F-15 and that he's doing it wrong is complete and utter arrogance of the worst kind. If you can't see that as a negative attribute, I don't know what to tell you. Time is relevant, my friend, ESPECIALLY quality of flight time......that is, droning around vs actually doing/practicing something when airborne, though something should always be learned on any flight. I have over 7000 hours of many different kind of experience in many different arenas, are you going to tell me that with your 500 hrs you're somehow on par experience-wise? Of course not. That doesn't make you a bad person or a dummy or anything nor does it make me some great person; it's simply a factual statement of my experience vs yours in aviation. Could I learn something from you? I'm sure I could. Yes, I know a little about this and that, which I apply to my accident analyses I research in the Tech Topics section, but there's still stuff for me to learn. And vice versa is true too. Point is, DO NOT dismiss hours or experience offhand and think they can be easily replaced with book knowledge. BOTH are needed as a balance, as I said before. Your previous teaching background is all well and good, but you do have to admit where you stand experience-wise, and it's not too high right now, though it's building-up there and progressing with the more and more you accomplish. And that's good.
There is NO only, my friend. It depends. It always depends. There's no one right answer. I know thats not what you want to hear, because (and not a slam here) your mind comes from "the land of absolutes". You need to learn that sometimes, things do depend....especially in aviation. There are some absolutes, but they are few. Right seat time is fine, left seat time is better. They both are good at gaining experience in their own ways. What you're lacking shdw is the experience in aviation....that comes from hours....to have a large bag of situational awareness. That bag-o-SA comes from time in the seat, teaching or flying, and experiencing the good and the bad......being successful and having a great flight, or having the flight that nearly kills you. Where you're at is a good staring and continuation point (we all have to start somewhere), but recognize what your limitations are.......thats something I don't think you do, since you want to spend the majority of time arguing with people in the quest for absolutes. I will give you that you do admit that there times you're right and times you're wrong, so its good that you recognize that. That kind of humbleness will go a long way. Even me, with my hours and experience and amount of overall SA.....I haven't seen or done it all, and I can get bitten in the ass easily and not even see it coming, if all the factors are right to make that happen. I'm not immune to anything.
You don't want to be a puppet.....that's all well and good. But why do you insist on going to the opposite extreme and trying to reinvent the wheel? That's just as bad. 100 year old ideas? Who are you with your little experience to know yet what works and what doesn't ....why are you knocking concepts before you've even tried them? (try them first!
) And why do you think there's only one way to do business? There isn't my friend. There are multiple techniques that can be done to accomplish a procedure. Don't be inflexible.....inflexibility will kill you. It is the one thing, next to low SA, that will put you in a square corner in a bad situation faster than nearly anything else in aviation. Keep an open mind and survive.What I'm telling you is coming from a good amount of having been there and done that in aviation, and being both successful and nearly killing myself at many junctures along the way...whether by my own hand or outside factors, and whether by errors of commission or ommission. You can take my advice to the bank, or you can chuck it in the trash, your choice. Just remember, experience does count, and book knowledge only complements it, since knowledge is always good. You're just starting out, speaking big picture. My advice to you is to listen more and learn, rather than try to rip apart everything and anything that doesn't fall within what you perceive to be correct. Because you might find out you were wrong, at the worst possible time....
Fly safe.
The big problem I see with you shdw in regards to experience, is that you don't know yet what you don't know, since the experience isn't there to have seen much. What you're taking personally is simply a fact that book knowledge can't replace experience...at best its a complement. Don't take that as an attack, but as simply a fact. Regardless of what equations you can spew out, etc, the fact that you'll (for example) come out and tell Hacker how he should fly his F-15 and that he's doing it wrong is complete and utter arrogance of the worst kind. If you can't see that as a negative attribute, I don't know what to tell you. Time is relevant, my friend, ESPECIALLY quality of flight time......that is, droning around vs actually doing/practicing something when airborne, though something should always be learned on any flight. I have over 7000 hours of many different kind of experience in many different arenas, are you going to tell me that with your 500 hrs you're somehow on par experience-wise? Of course not. That doesn't make you a bad person or a dummy or anything nor does it make me some great person; it's simply a factual statement of my experience vs yours in aviation. Could I learn something from you? I'm sure I could. Yes, I know a little about this and that, which I apply to my accident analyses I research in the Tech Topics section, but there's still stuff for me to learn. And vice versa is true too. Point is, DO NOT dismiss hours or experience offhand and think they can be easily replaced with book knowledge. BOTH are needed as a balance, as I said before. Your previous teaching background is all well and good, but you do have to admit where you stand experience-wise, and it's not too high right now, though it's building-up there and progressing with the more and more you accomplish. And that's good.
There is NO only, my friend. It depends. It always depends. There's no one right answer. I know thats not what you want to hear, because (and not a slam here) your mind comes from "the land of absolutes". You need to learn that sometimes, things do depend....especially in aviation. There are some absolutes, but they are few. Right seat time is fine, left seat time is better. They both are good at gaining experience in their own ways. What you're lacking shdw is the experience in aviation....that comes from hours....to have a large bag of situational awareness. That bag-o-SA comes from time in the seat, teaching or flying, and experiencing the good and the bad......being successful and having a great flight, or having the flight that nearly kills you. Where you're at is a good staring and continuation point (we all have to start somewhere), but recognize what your limitations are.......thats something I don't think you do, since you want to spend the majority of time arguing with people in the quest for absolutes. I will give you that you do admit that there times you're right and times you're wrong, so its good that you recognize that. That kind of humbleness will go a long way. Even me, with my hours and experience and amount of overall SA.....I haven't seen or done it all, and I can get bitten in the ass easily and not even see it coming, if all the factors are right to make that happen. I'm not immune to anything.
You don't want to be a puppet.....that's all well and good. But why do you insist on going to the opposite extreme and trying to reinvent the wheel? That's just as bad. 100 year old ideas? Who are you with your little experience to know yet what works and what doesn't ....why are you knocking concepts before you've even tried them? (try them first!
What I'm telling you is coming from a good amount of having been there and done that in aviation, and being both successful and nearly killing myself at many junctures along the way...whether by my own hand or outside factors, and whether by errors of commission or ommission. You can take my advice to the bank, or you can chuck it in the trash, your choice. Just remember, experience does count, and book knowledge only complements it, since knowledge is always good. You're just starting out, speaking big picture. My advice to you is to listen more and learn, rather than try to rip apart everything and anything that doesn't fall within what you perceive to be correct. Because you might find out you were wrong, at the worst possible time....
Fly safe.
:clap::clap::clap: Take a bow Mike.
jrh
Well-Known Member
Whether or not that's intuitive is irrelevant...the job of the instructor is to train the intuition, not to accept the intuition that exists. The intuition needs to conform to physical reality and with relentless pressure from the instructor, it can and will. If you offer them any escape route to avoid this difficult paradigm shift, a student will take it, because it's mentally less demanding. Any wishy-washiness on the part of the instructor will be detected by the student and he'll realize, consciously or unconsciously, that he can win the battle by ignoring it. Children and dogs do the same thing.
I don't see how any of this has to do with escape routes, wishy-washiness, or battles. I just teach. And I don't teach "pitch controls airspeed" all the time because I don't think it makes sense all the time. An instructor can provide "relentless pressure" as much as they want, but if the idea doesn't make sense to the student, it doesn't do anyone any good.
See the explanations I gave above for how I teach normal and simulated emergency approaches. Neither is unsafe, neither is wrong, yet nowhere do I say "pitch = airspeed" because I think that phrase complicates the idea for a lot of people. Deakin's article is an example of that.
I know AoA = airspeed, but I've never once heard an instructor talking about this topic in those terms (aside from on this forum). The reality is that the concept is commonly referred to using "pitch." That might be wrong, but it's the way it is. Deakin was simply addressing this commonly over-used and over-applied phrase. He and I both think the whole saying is stupid.
Maybe I haven't been clear enough. I have no problem with what Shdw is trying to do. I have no disagreement with the physics involved.
What I was trying to say is that I believe once he has more experience teaching flying he'll come to see more of the subtleties and exceptions that no FOI book or training manual can ever cover. A lot of times when I read his posts it seems as though he has a very black and white view on the "proper" way to prevent stall/spin accidents through training. It's as though we can find a magic method that will make every pilot have a thorough, correct understanding of the topic and have them react correctly under pressure, every time.
I'm only saying it's not that simple, and the longer he teaches, the more I think he'll see that.
Here we go, and I don't take your response as a personal attack but a misguided one.
I never told him his procedure was wrong and I never meant to imply it either. I even specifically said this in post #124 first paragraph. All I claimed was that his procedure, whether he realize it or not, is still controlling the aircraft the same way we discussed, he is operating within the bounds of physical law just like every other pilot.
Of course not, my experience doesn't go beyond the realm of piston singles and I know that. Correct me if I am wrong though but the discussion here is regarding teaching a pilot who has zero hours up to his private license in a piston single engine aircraft. The experience needed to do this lies in VFR single engine piston experience not in that of any other aircraft in any other realm.
I would even venture to say that experience beyond small aircraft and basic VFR only clouds and/or causes confusion when teaching a brand new pilot. I will get back to this later.
There may not be absolutes throughout much of aviation, but we can get the basic training for a private pilot down to a decent solid method and make it fairly absolute. In fact, this already exists, the PTS is our list of absolutes. The methods used to teach to those standards vary, which for some reason I though I discussed here but actually did in another thread: http://forums.jetcareers.com/1235974-post21.html
This is a poor assumption, I am actually surprised a little by this. I have tried them, I spent the first 200 hours teaching right out of the Jepp syllabus/my colleges syllabus. The result was getting a few guys through their solo and hating what I saw in my post solo students, stupid rudimentary errors. The method teaches by means of showing maneuver after maneuver with very little time spent linking it all together or teaching just basic flight operations (only about 2-3 hours on pure basics).
During those first basic flights so much information between preflight, checklists, and takeoff procedures are thrown at the student that by the time they are airborne their brain is already beyond its capacity to learn for the flight block.
I have spent the last 100 hours now on new ideas and concepts which I can't reveal but the outcome I believe is much better than the current. In fact I have one student who was taught the old way by me who I asked if he would let me take him back and show him a couple of these new ideas. The result is he actually flies the plane now instead of just operates it. He enjoyed the method so much that he has spent another 10 hours redoing all his basics with me per his request.
I think you missed my point, the wheel IMO needs reinvention, it needs a teachers design not a pilots design and the FAA obviously agrees or they wouldn't be studying it. We are trying to teach basic VFR pilots whose primary goal needs to be understanding and being able to operate an aircraft within the bounds of physical law. To this end I don't see that currently and I am basing this on those first 200 hours and somewhere in the range of 10 post solo stage checks and a few BFRs I have conducted. This whole thread reflects one of the major faults I am referring to, pilots crashing on a weekly basis because they stalled the airplane, an airplane that without their erroneous inputs would never stall. The airplane doesn't stall, the unknowing pilot makes it stall, maybe this isn't true in some of your aircraft but it holds true in any basic trainer and piston I have flown.
As promised back to the clouded judgment from extra experience. A fellow co-worker of mine teaches the takeoff like this: roll onto the runway and apply full power, check instruments in the green, airspeed alive, and scan between the instruments and outside till a rotate speed of 55 and then rotate, climb out again scanning airspeed/outside so you don't stall. Now I have had 3 of his students and they spend about 50/50 with their head inside vs outside on a typical rollout and climb out, this pattern stays true for the rest of the flight. What does the FAA say about this? The FAA says we should teach VFR primarily with reference to the instruments, 90 percent outside.
This instructor is a 2,500 hour pilot with almost 1000 dual given and another 1000 in 121/135 ops and loves instruments so it is no surprise he is teaching such a takeoff procedure. Many here might be thinking well what is wrong with that. What is wrong is it is a visual license and there is absolutely no need to teach a takeoff to a visual pilot with a rotate speed, that is teaching instrument reliance.
Instead I teach the takeoff as follows: taxi out and apply full power just the same, take a second to verify engine instruments, another second to verify airspeed alive (see its working), then eyes outside straight down the runway, as speed builds start to apply gradual back pressure bringing the glare shield to the horizon and when the airplane is ready it will fly, once airborne a sanity check of the ASI to ensure you are at a safe operating speed and then outside for the remainder of the climb setting a pitch attitude. I encourage anyone reading this to try this method and watch how much smoother the takeoff is and especially how much easier it is for a lower time, and even a higher time, pilot to perform than the one explained earlier.
The difference here might be subtle, but it applies through every single maneuver and every single action that I saw with the old method of flying. I won't explain or go into any details on it as it completely compromise many months of hard work on my part. I will say this, there is a better way, you will see.
Disclaimer: Not claiming my way is perfect as it is only in its infancy and ever evolving but I feel it has great growth potential and am very excited to share that with everyone here sometime soon.
Short summary: When it comes to teaching a private pilot the basics of flight the experience needed by the CFI needs to be with the basics of flight. A thorough understanding of basic concepts and straight forward VFR flight, experience beyond that only clouds the picture. It leaves the higher time pilot often forgetting the true basics because they haven't been thought about in years, it doesn't make them a bad pilot.
Some of the smartest and most experienced people in the world, in all fields including aviation, couldn't teach the basics of their field accurately to a 5th grade level, this doesn't mean they don't know their field. Everyone has likely had a professor like this in college.
I never told him his procedure was wrong and I never meant to imply it either. I even specifically said this in post #124 first paragraph. All I claimed was that his procedure, whether he realize it or not, is still controlling the aircraft the same way we discussed, he is operating within the bounds of physical law just like every other pilot.
Of course not, my experience doesn't go beyond the realm of piston singles and I know that. Correct me if I am wrong though but the discussion here is regarding teaching a pilot who has zero hours up to his private license in a piston single engine aircraft. The experience needed to do this lies in VFR single engine piston experience not in that of any other aircraft in any other realm.
I would even venture to say that experience beyond small aircraft and basic VFR only clouds and/or causes confusion when teaching a brand new pilot. I will get back to this later.
There may not be absolutes throughout much of aviation, but we can get the basic training for a private pilot down to a decent solid method and make it fairly absolute. In fact, this already exists, the PTS is our list of absolutes. The methods used to teach to those standards vary, which for some reason I though I discussed here but actually did in another thread: http://forums.jetcareers.com/1235974-post21.html
This is a poor assumption, I am actually surprised a little by this. I have tried them, I spent the first 200 hours teaching right out of the Jepp syllabus/my colleges syllabus. The result was getting a few guys through their solo and hating what I saw in my post solo students, stupid rudimentary errors. The method teaches by means of showing maneuver after maneuver with very little time spent linking it all together or teaching just basic flight operations (only about 2-3 hours on pure basics).
During those first basic flights so much information between preflight, checklists, and takeoff procedures are thrown at the student that by the time they are airborne their brain is already beyond its capacity to learn for the flight block.
I have spent the last 100 hours now on new ideas and concepts which I can't reveal but the outcome I believe is much better than the current. In fact I have one student who was taught the old way by me who I asked if he would let me take him back and show him a couple of these new ideas. The result is he actually flies the plane now instead of just operates it. He enjoyed the method so much that he has spent another 10 hours redoing all his basics with me per his request.
I think you missed my point, the wheel IMO needs reinvention, it needs a teachers design not a pilots design and the FAA obviously agrees or they wouldn't be studying it. We are trying to teach basic VFR pilots whose primary goal needs to be understanding and being able to operate an aircraft within the bounds of physical law. To this end I don't see that currently and I am basing this on those first 200 hours and somewhere in the range of 10 post solo stage checks and a few BFRs I have conducted. This whole thread reflects one of the major faults I am referring to, pilots crashing on a weekly basis because they stalled the airplane, an airplane that without their erroneous inputs would never stall. The airplane doesn't stall, the unknowing pilot makes it stall, maybe this isn't true in some of your aircraft but it holds true in any basic trainer and piston I have flown.
As promised back to the clouded judgment from extra experience. A fellow co-worker of mine teaches the takeoff like this: roll onto the runway and apply full power, check instruments in the green, airspeed alive, and scan between the instruments and outside till a rotate speed of 55 and then rotate, climb out again scanning airspeed/outside so you don't stall. Now I have had 3 of his students and they spend about 50/50 with their head inside vs outside on a typical rollout and climb out, this pattern stays true for the rest of the flight. What does the FAA say about this? The FAA says we should teach VFR primarily with reference to the instruments, 90 percent outside.
This instructor is a 2,500 hour pilot with almost 1000 dual given and another 1000 in 121/135 ops and loves instruments so it is no surprise he is teaching such a takeoff procedure. Many here might be thinking well what is wrong with that. What is wrong is it is a visual license and there is absolutely no need to teach a takeoff to a visual pilot with a rotate speed, that is teaching instrument reliance.
Instead I teach the takeoff as follows: taxi out and apply full power just the same, take a second to verify engine instruments, another second to verify airspeed alive (see its working), then eyes outside straight down the runway, as speed builds start to apply gradual back pressure bringing the glare shield to the horizon and when the airplane is ready it will fly, once airborne a sanity check of the ASI to ensure you are at a safe operating speed and then outside for the remainder of the climb setting a pitch attitude. I encourage anyone reading this to try this method and watch how much smoother the takeoff is and especially how much easier it is for a lower time, and even a higher time, pilot to perform than the one explained earlier.
The difference here might be subtle, but it applies through every single maneuver and every single action that I saw with the old method of flying. I won't explain or go into any details on it as it completely compromise many months of hard work on my part. I will say this, there is a better way, you will see.
Disclaimer: Not claiming my way is perfect as it is only in its infancy and ever evolving but I feel it has great growth potential and am very excited to share that with everyone here sometime soon.
Short summary: When it comes to teaching a private pilot the basics of flight the experience needed by the CFI needs to be with the basics of flight. A thorough understanding of basic concepts and straight forward VFR flight, experience beyond that only clouds the picture. It leaves the higher time pilot often forgetting the true basics because they haven't been thought about in years, it doesn't make them a bad pilot.
Some of the smartest and most experienced people in the world, in all fields including aviation, couldn't teach the basics of their field accurately to a 5th grade level, this doesn't mean they don't know their field. Everyone has likely had a professor like this in college.
tgrayson
New Member
Well, it's true all the time, assuming you swap "AoA" for "pitch". And it's your job to make it make sense to the student, if teaching is your goal. If you need to distort reality to ensure that it makes sense to the student, are you really teaching? If you really didn't understand, that's one thing, but when you seem to understand and then deliberately teach it incorrectly, that's another, which I find puzzling.
Deakin's scenario does perplex people, which is why it's a great opportunity to show the difference between pitch and AoA. Perplexing situations provide a great learning experience.
Can you explain why AoA controls the airpspeed in Deakin's situation? If you can, why don't you? And if you can't, why don't you spend time figuring it out?
It doesn't strike me as your normal style to conform to industry practice regardless of its merit. Striving for excellence will always put you in the minority and you have to be willing to accept the flak that accompanies it.
After rereading and thinking about this again a bit longer maybe this is a better approach:
Mike, can you give some examples where training beyond that of visual flying in a single engine piston aircraft would prove helpful to a person teaching just private pilots. What does hard IFR, jet flying, CRM, or any other large variety of experiences that you have give you an edge? Mind you I don't have a II either so all I teach is primary students and one commercial student who I didn't want but was given, this is by choice. I don't want a II till I feel that I have a better understanding, with lack of a better word, a mastery of teaching visual training.
Mike, can you give some examples where training beyond that of visual flying in a single engine piston aircraft would prove helpful to a person teaching just private pilots. What does hard IFR, jet flying, CRM, or any other large variety of experiences that you have give you an edge? Mind you I don't have a II either so all I teach is primary students and one commercial student who I didn't want but was given, this is by choice. I don't want a II till I feel that I have a better understanding, with lack of a better word, a mastery of teaching visual training.
jrh
Well-Known Member
Shdw: Come back and read this thread after you've taught for a couple thousand hours. Seriously.
I've been flying and teaching in piston singles for 95% of my experience to this point and I learn something new on a regular basis. When I started flying in the mountains, I learned. When I started teaching out of a grass strip, I learned. When I started flying tailwheels, I learned. When I started flying skydivers, I learned. When I started flying high performance singles, I learned. I've taught high school students, college students, young professionals, and middle aged pilots. I've worked for a college, at a flying club, as an independent instructor, and for a small FBO-style flight school.
Every step of the way I've noticed new details that I hadn't considered before. Sometimes it was how to physically fly the plane better. Sometimes it was how to communicate better. Sometimes it was how to evaluate better. To say an instructor can have basic VFR flying/teaching figured out in 500 hours is a joke. There are so many subtle points and nuances with flying it's unbelievable.
What has all my experience taught me? That it never ends. There's always something more to learn. It's impossible to reach a point where I can sit back and say, "Ahhhh, now I got it. Sweet. It's all figured out. There's nowhere else to go from here."
I don't know what else to say.
I've been flying and teaching in piston singles for 95% of my experience to this point and I learn something new on a regular basis. When I started flying in the mountains, I learned. When I started teaching out of a grass strip, I learned. When I started flying tailwheels, I learned. When I started flying skydivers, I learned. When I started flying high performance singles, I learned. I've taught high school students, college students, young professionals, and middle aged pilots. I've worked for a college, at a flying club, as an independent instructor, and for a small FBO-style flight school.
Every step of the way I've noticed new details that I hadn't considered before. Sometimes it was how to physically fly the plane better. Sometimes it was how to communicate better. Sometimes it was how to evaluate better. To say an instructor can have basic VFR flying/teaching figured out in 500 hours is a joke. There are so many subtle points and nuances with flying it's unbelievable.
What has all my experience taught me? That it never ends. There's always something more to learn. It's impossible to reach a point where I can sit back and say, "Ahhhh, now I got it. Sweet. It's all figured out. There's nowhere else to go from here."
I don't know what else to say.
tgrayson
New Member
I think you're confused. I told Hacker how he DID fly his airplane, regardless of how he thought about it. And when he described his technique, he showed that I was correct. Arrogance? Only to the degree that I know that physics works the same for everyone, and if someone tells me differently, I know they are mistaken.
It aggravates all of us to realize that our intuitions about the world are often wrong and really need to take a back seat to the relevant theory; the real arrogance is to think otherwise.
I am beginning to realize this. I now teach AOA since this discussion instead of pitch. It is amazing how such a simple word difference can completely change the outcome of a students perception.
It helps understand what trim and the elevator really do as well since I have always taught that they control AOA. The correlation between the two I think is easier to see when teaching AOA for speed instead of pitch, maybe that is nit picky but perfection is perfection. My student correlated (5 hours) on his own yesterday after an AOA for speed power for altitude lesson by asking me "so if trim and elevator control AOA then it controls speed right?" We shall see if this holds true for some of my other students, he was my first experiment after redesigning that lesson based on this thread.
jrh
Well-Known Member
I think this is a difficult discussion to have via the interwebs. If you could ride along on some of my flights you'd see I'm not distorting anything or teaching incorrectly.
Deakin's not perplexing anyone, he's only commenting on a debate that has needlessly perplexed pilots for years.
Yes, I can, but that's not the point. I'm talking about the clearest way to teach.
Agreed.
Jrh: "Not claiming my way is perfect as it is only in its infancy and ever evolving." Meaning my ideas and thoughts are also ever evolving and to discredit my ideas and beliefs based on experience alone without any other merit is just as arrogant as someone saying they know it all.
My issue with experience, as discussed in this thread, is that it has been made to seem like experience beyond that of single engine pistons is necessary to improve teaching of a primary student. I fail to see the correlation of such a statement. Your examples almost exclusively are involved with teaching which I think provides a great benefit to learning to teach better.
Referring to the merit sentence, this has yet to be answered: "I challenge anyone here to give me a scenario where AOA for airspeed and power for altitude will kill a pilot." Proving this statement wrong through an actual scenario would certainly crush anything I have argued throughout this post but it won't happen because it isn't rooted in any pilot idea. It is rooted in physical law.
My issue with experience, as discussed in this thread, is that it has been made to seem like experience beyond that of single engine pistons is necessary to improve teaching of a primary student. I fail to see the correlation of such a statement. Your examples almost exclusively are involved with teaching which I think provides a great benefit to learning to teach better.
Referring to the merit sentence, this has yet to be answered: "I challenge anyone here to give me a scenario where AOA for airspeed and power for altitude will kill a pilot." Proving this statement wrong through an actual scenario would certainly crush anything I have argued throughout this post but it won't happen because it isn't rooted in any pilot idea. It is rooted in physical law.
jrh
Well-Known Member
I'm not discrediting your ideas, I'm discrediting what seems to be your approach. Your factual information is solid. Your belief that pilots will be saved from stall/spin accidents by having a better understanding of this whole AoA/airspeed idea is what I think is flawed, and my only basis for me saying that is my experience. My experience teaching many different pilots, in different planes, in different scenarios, is that they need a lot more than a solid academic understanding to get them out of trouble.
You know the saying that no knowledge is wasted? As in, any knowledge a person gains will be useful to them at some point, somewhere down the line? Well, no experience is wasted either.
Thanks, that's what I was trying to get at.
Here's one scenario: Nose-low unusual attitude recoveries. The pilot sees the airspeed increasing and altitude decreasing. He thinks, "Crap! Get the airspeed under control! Need to increase AoA...Pull back! Get the altitude under control! Full throttle!" *Poof* Wings fold up, plane plummets.
Granted, more physics have to be applied to this scenario, but my point is that this is *not* a simple rule that will always save a pilot like you're expecting it to.
dasleben
That's just, like, your opinion, man
I'm sorry, but you don't see the correlation because you don't have the experience to see it yet. I just recently took a student pilot through his first solo and into cross countries (on a part-time basis), and let me tell you: I felt much more comfortable and much more able to effectively teach the student once I'd flown 121 and 135 for a period of time. It doesn't matter if you haven't been flying single-pistons in an instructional capacity for some time: the bag of tricks you amass from just being up in the air flying airplanes goes a long way toward improving your instructional technique.
Again, it probably wouldn't in a light piston aircraft. However, in an aircraft with aft-mounted engines for example, adding thrust pitches the nose down, and quite strongly. MikeD hit the nail on the head: there are very few absolutes. There are always exceptions to the rule. You need to be flexible, and realize that "power for altitude" can kill a pilot depending on the aircraft type.
Yes, I realize that the main focus of this thread is a primary student in a light piston single. But, we can't just narrowly focus ourselves on only that one single tiny facet of aviation if we want to better ourselves as pilots.
jrh said:
This was more referring to others here who as soon as I mention something jump down my throat about having 500 hours and completely ignore anything else said. You thankfully are smarter than that.
AOA is what causes a stall, I can't figure out how you can claim a better understanding of this concept isn't beneficial. I don't mean purely academic either, I am saying both academic and practical through experimentation.
Your scenario is in regards to unusual attitudes which implies an unusual situation needing an unusual method of recovery as you even admitted was different. The situation in question refers to avoiding stall/spin situations in everyday normal flight. You obviously can't apply one method to every single situation encountered in flight and I don't mean to be arguing that. But you can apply methods to specific phases, in this case any normal flight scenario, to provide help in keeping a student safe.
dasleben said:
Any examples?
subpilot
Squawking 7600
Why is this thread on page 8??? :banghead:
You fly an airplane with a combination of pitch and power. They both affect AOA and if you change one then you will have to change the other too. If you are at 150kt and want to slow to 110kt you are going to either:
1. pull back on the yoke, initially the plane wants to climb so you reduce throttle and trim as you slow down, or
2. reduce throttle, the plane starts to descend so you then pull back on the yoke and trim.
Both methods did the same actions but in different orders. You rarely move only one control if you are only changing one parameter. It is a combination of pitch and power that gives you that AOA value.
You fly an airplane with a combination of pitch and power. They both affect AOA and if you change one then you will have to change the other too. If you are at 150kt and want to slow to 110kt you are going to either:
1. pull back on the yoke, initially the plane wants to climb so you reduce throttle and trim as you slow down, or
2. reduce throttle, the plane starts to descend so you then pull back on the yoke and trim.
Both methods did the same actions but in different orders. You rarely move only one control if you are only changing one parameter. It is a combination of pitch and power that gives you that AOA value.
R
Roger, Roger
Guest
tgrayson
New Member
Not fundamentally true. Thrust, as long as it acts through the CG, produces no change in AoA and hence cannot change airspeed in steady flight. There may be some secondary effects, such as having the thrustline passing above or below the CG, or with a propeller slipstream impinging on the horizontal stabilizer, that will retrim the airplane to a different AoA, but that doesn't change the basic relationship. Saying that you normally need to adjust the yoke and throttle is a useless observation because it doesn't teach the learning pilot how to make those changes. It's rather like telling a new car driver that he needs some steering wheel and brake to accomplish a turn in an automobile, but not telling him what these controls do.
The above has been covered in the previous 8 pages, so it looks like we're starting over.
Douglas
Old School KSUX
Maybe in your case, but not in the cases I've seen. Part time instructors are patient, but instructor type knowledge is really lacking from what I have seen.
Now wouldn't that be dependent on the the vertical location of the thrust line in relation to the CG and not fore or aft position?
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tgrayson
New Member
Yes, but I suspect that rear mounted engines typically have a thrustline above the CG. Even if their vertical placement doesn't produce this effect, sometimes they are canted to be more aligned with the relative wind around the fuselage.