Energy management

[MikeD]

You can’t properly manage energy in the way you’re talking without an AOA gauge. Match that with an E-M diagram (if it exists) and then you can talk about max performing your airplane.

Anything else is a healthy approximation at best, and at worst an old wives tale. #onstep


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These airline bubbas worried about their corner velocity?

 

[Richman]

I try to turn the lights out when I leave a room. That's as far as my energy management goes.

 

[Flyinthrew]

These airline bubbas worried about their corner velocity?

Yeah, I guess they’re not looking for turn rate/radius stuff. Mighta gone a little far with that reference, but I do want to beat people about the head and neck when they try to discuss Va.


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[Autothrust Blue]

Or when NorCal/SoCal approach asks if you have the airport in sight while at 10k abeam the numbers.

*Devious chuckle*
*Disconnect A/P*

“Full dive on the stern planes, 20 degree down!”

 

[Autothrust Blue]

Anything with FADEC has some sort of approach idle, which is generally higher than normal flight and/or ground idle, where the spool time is pretty negligible. No worse than a pt6 anyways. Not Garret fast, but meh. If you're sitting sideways, YOU are the voice activated fadec.

As flight engineer, you are the “low energy warning.”

 

[Soul Brotha']

Don’t get into coffin corner, stall or over speed the plane. Energy management explained.

 

[Stinger]

Is there a good discussion on the topic anywhere?

Yep, over on backcountrypilot.org there's some users that talk about it all the time. The most notable is contactflying. Here's the main thread for it: Contact Flying w/contact flying. - Backcountry Pilot
And if you want to know even more, just go way back in his post history and work your way forward. Or do this search on Google: "energy management theory site:backcountrypilot.org"

 

[Finny]

This is why I miss the King Air... 250 to the marker, 400-600lbs of torque a side, props forward, dirty her up as the speeds hit, grease her on in! Easy peasy!

 

[milleR]

The hardest part about energy management in a TP is remembering to arrest your descent as you approach the threshold.

 

[BravoHotel]

Yep, over on backcountrypilot.org there's some users that talk about it all the time. The most notable is contactflying. Here's the main thread for it: Contact Flying w/contact flying. - Backcountry Pilot
And if you want to know even more, just go way back in his post history and work your way forward. Or do this search on Google: "energy management theory site:backcountrypilot.org"

Thankyou.

 

[Pilot Fighter]

https://www.amazon.com/Fighter-Combat-Maneuvering-Robert-Shaw/dp/0870210599

Live it, love it, learn it. AFAICT, no one has come up with anything better, since. It's on Messiah Shelf next to "Stick and Rudder" and "Fate is the Hunter".

Read it, then watch a demonstration team like Lima Lima or the Snowbirds - those folks manage energy.

 

[thevideographer]

Can we talk about how nobody is teaching new hires these days that you don't jockey the throttles back and forth all the way down final in a jet trying to correct for every +-5kt gust?

 

[nibake]

Is there a good discussion on the topic anywhere?

idk about a good discussion but it seems to be the most popular of airshow catchphrases.

 

[mrivc211]

Is there a good discussion on the topic anywhere?

It’s aaaaalllllllllllll about energy management


One good example of lack of knowledge about energy management is regional pilots stalling jets at high altitude by flying in VS mode with their heads down in a newspaper on climb out in the 20’s-30’s. Then trying to cover it up by applying max power thinking they can power out of the maneuver. There’s lots and lots of examples of energy management in all types of aircraft. In that case, you ain’t gonna recover in less than 8-10,000’ altitude loss with your angle of attack dramatically lowered. If you try to cheat energy management you’re just going to make a bad situation worse

 

[inigo88]

Get a glider rating. I'm dead serious. Those guys have energy management down to an academic science. On your checkride you will do an "impossible turn" with a rope break at 200 ft AGL on the departure leg, teardrop around and land downwind. There are no go-arounds. And due to the limited amount of hours required for an add-on, it can be done fairly inexpensively. Get a glider rating.

FAA Glider Flying Handbook (check out Aerodynamics and Performance):
https://www.faa.gov/regulations_pol...raft/glider_handbook/media/faa-h-8083-13a.pdf

 

[inigo88]

More broadly, energy management is referring to energy in the physics definition of the word:
Energy - Wikipedia

Energy can neither be created or destroyed (2nd law of thermodynamics) but only change form. The classic physics example is a ball at rest on the top of a hill. This ball has high Potential Energy (energy due to the height of the object) but no Kinetic Energy (energy due to the speed of the object). Once you roll the ball down the hill, you've converted all that Potential Energy into Kinetic Energy, because you changed a ball with no speed but some height into a ball with no height but some speed.

It sounds trivial but it's actually intimately related to flying, especially gliders (who have to gain potential energy by finding thermals or other types of lift) and helicopter pilots (who have to be ready to autorotate at any time and respect height-velocity diagrams as part of their normal flying).

Like what was previously mentioned in this thread, the RJ crew not paying attention as their speed bleeds off in V/S mode isn't respecting conservation of energy: They don't have enough Kinetic energy (airspeed) to convert to the potential energy (altitude) they want to reach.

Likewise neither is the crew who descends too early and has to use extra fuel to get to the destination, or the controller who slam dunks somebody and gets the classic "I can slow down or go down, pick one" response.

Spoilers, early gear and flap extension, S-turns and slips and jamming the props full forward are all clever ways of bleeding off excess energy. But the real payoff seems to be becoming in tune enough with the energy state of the airplane and thinking far enough ahead that you don't have to use any of it.

My glider instructor was a retired B744 CA, and said he used to bet the FOs drinks at the hotel bar that he could fly top of descent to the outer marker without touching the power levers. By the sound of it he got a lot of free drinks!

 

[ASpilot2be]

I wish more airplanes had acceleration carrots. Now that I have one in the HUD, it's really been a useful tool.

 

[z987k]

More broadly, energy management is referring to energy in the physics definition of the word:
Energy - Wikipedia

Energy can neither be created or destroyed (2nd law of thermodynamics) but only change form. The classic physics example is a ball at rest on the top of a hill. This ball has high Potential Energy (energy due to the height of the object) but no Kinetic Energy (energy due to the speed of the object). Once you roll the ball down the hill, you've converted all that Potential Energy into Kinetic Energy, because you changed a ball with no speed but some height into a ball with no height but some speed.

It sounds trivial but it's actually intimately related to flying, especially gliders (who have to gain potential energy by finding thermals or other types of lift) and helicopter pilots (who have to be ready to autorotate at any time and respect height-velocity diagrams as part of their normal flying).

Like what was previously mentioned in this thread, the RJ crew not paying attention as their speed bleeds off in V/S mode isn't respecting conservation of energy: They don't have enough Kinetic energy (airspeed) to convert to the potential energy (altitude) they want to reach.

Likewise neither is the crew who descends too early and has to use extra fuel to get to the destination, or the controller who slam dunks somebody and gets the classic "I can slow down or go down, pick one" response.

Spoilers, early gear and flap extension, S-turns and slips and jamming the props full forward are all clever ways of bleeding off excess energy. But the real payoff seems to be becoming in tune enough with the energy state of the airplane and thinking far enough ahead that you don't have to use any of it.

My glider instructor was a retired B744 CA, and said he used to bet the FOs drinks at the hotel bar that he could fly top of descent to the outer marker without touching the power levers. By the sound of it he got a lot of free drinks!

He never flew a 744NG, certainly never a 748 and if I were a betting man I'd put money on only having flown a 742 and/or 741.
I'd also bet he hasn't the slightest clue what an rnav arrival looks like or has ever flown in most of asia.

 

[inigo88]

He never flew a 744NG, certainly never a 748 and if I were a betting man I'd put money on only having flown a 742 and/or 741.
I'd also bet he hasn't the slightest clue what an rnav arrival looks like or has ever flown in most of asia.

I'm really not qualified to comment, other than that he would have been pre-RNAV arrival days. I doubt that bets like these are very practical in today's part 121 procedural and ATC environment, but I still thought it was cool he tried.

 

[Nark]

I'm really not qualified to comment, other than that he would have been pre-RNAV arrival days. I doubt that bets like these are very practical in today's part 121 procedural and ATC environment, but I still thought it was cool he tried.

Happened a lot ‘back in the day.

Ol Zack here has fallen into the trap on Jetcareers: we do it one way, therefor anyone who doesn’t do it that way is either wrong, lying or unsafe.