Lower The Nose

[Trey Kule]

CWE posted:  I would guess that more pilots who read this forum are highly unlikely to ever fly an airline category airplane because they are general aviation pilots or student pilots, so they really have no need to think about how to fly an airline category airplane.


That is an interesting conclusion.  Do no student pilots ever go on to fly airline category aircraft?


In any event, one of the things I bumped into was that pilots are taught “ minimum loss of altitude from a stall”


i think this is a very poor teaching point to emphasize as there is a tendency to not lower the nose....or lower it just a little bit... or to raise it before the aircraft is completely unstalled.  And , rather unfortunately , the venerable old 172 is so forgiving it allows them to get away with it.


“ lower the nose”. Should be one of the IAs.....but lets face it....the real goal is to not stall the plane in the first place.  And, if you are intentionally stalling at a safe altitude, why the rush to get the nose back up “ to minimize altude loss”


I see this over and over in stalling twins with CPL licensed pilots.  They simply do not understand the dynamics of stall recovery.

I still recall the post be an instructor on another site claining you did not have to lower the nose on a light twin as you could power through the stall....this is a pilot that is teaching...

[Chuck Ellsworth]

[quote][font=Verdana]I still recall the post be an instructor on another site claining you did not have to lower the nose on a light twin as you could power through the stall....this is a pilot that is teaching...[/font][/quote][font=Verdana]


That is something so bizarre and potentially fatal that person should not be allowed to teach period in my opinion. [/font]

[Slick Goodlin]

[quote author=Chuck Ellsworth link=topic=8723.msg24046#msg24046 date=1532026735]
Which is more important, preventing the airplane from stalling or preventing the airplane from yawing?
[/quote]
The goal is to prevent a loss of control, whatever axis that may be on.

[quote author=Chuck Ellsworth link=topic=8723.msg24049#msg24049 date=1532046992][quote][font=Verdana][font=verdana]I still recall the post be an instructor on another site claining you did not have to lower the nose on a light twin as you could power through the stall....this is a pilot that is teaching...[/font][/font][/quote][font=Verdana][font=verdana]


That is something so bizarre and potentially fatal that person should not be allowed to teach period in my opinion. [/font][/font][/quote][font=Verdana]
The official guidance of the FAA, TC, and probably ICAO agrees with you.  Air France 447 and Colgan-Flight-whatever (you know the one) forced a review of stall recovery and approach to stall recovery techniques.  The official word now is to lower the nose in the initial steps of the recovery [i]no matter what[/i] and examiners have been instructed to not stress minimizing altitude loss at all costs.[/font]

[Chuck Ellsworth]

The puzzling thing about this is it is so basic, if they do not understand the basics how in hell are they allowed to teach?


I still hold the opinion that given the undeniable evidence there are a lot of substandard people out there teaching flying the government should mandate automatic angle of attack protection so the airplane can prevent accidents due to substandard pilot skills.

[Colonel]

An incredibly skilled pilot can power out of the stall,
walking the aircraft right at CLmax and full power. 

Sean Tucker, Skip Stewart, Rob Holland, I've seen my
father effortlessly do it many times.

But if the pilot was so fucking hot, [b]he wouldn't have
fucked up and stalled in the first place[/b], so he needs to
lower the nose and get some margin on the AOA which
he obviously can't control in the first place.

LOWER THE NOSE

It's like a turnback to the runway after engine failure.  Sure,
the aircraft can do it, if it's flown properly, but let's face it,
that's just not going to happen with 99.9% of today's pilots,
so it's not a good idea for them.

It is not exactly a secret that the flight envelope (see Vg diagram)
for almost any pilot is much smaller than that of the aircraft.

It is a rare pilot that can actually fly all around just inside the
entire border of a Vg diagram.  You can probably count them
in Canada on the fingers of one hand.

[Slick Goodlin]

Speaking of lowering the nose to solve your problems...
[youtube][font=Verdana][size=78%][url=[/url][/size][/font][font=Verdana][/size][/font][/youtube][font=Verdana][/font]

[anofly]

lower the nose ,and use rudder to pick up the wing, ? ....

[Chuck Ellsworth]

[quote]lower the nose ,and use rudder to pick up the wing, ? ....[/quote]


No.


Don't hold the tail wheel on the ground and allow it to get airborne in the stalled attitude.

[anofly]

so they shoulda pickd up the tail, thenlet her fly off?

[Colonel]

Right.  You want to accelerate to a safe speed in a multi-engine
aircraft before taking off.  You do that by reducing your AOA to
avoid developing lift, and in a taildragger, that requires that you
raise the tail to a level attitude and accelerate, for a normal (or
crosswind) takeoff with the mains planted solidly on the runway.

Taking off from a three point attitude in a taildragger can be
done (eg soft field) but as you can see, it has it's perils.  Even
in a single engine taildragger, you have to be careful to not
climb out of ground effect - LOWER THE NOSE - and accelerate
to a safe speed, before you start to climb.

If the single engine taildragger is enormously powerful, you
can take off from the three point attitude as a normal procedure.

Gerry Younger taught this in the metal 2-blade prop Pitts S-2A.

I remember teaching some guys to fly a Christen Eagle (very
similar to S-2A) and they could not conquer the pitch-yaw
coupling which was divergent for them ... the combination of
the metal blade prop and spring gear really screwed them up ...
so I said what the heck, just take off in a three point attitude,
and the aircraft accelerates fast enough that you don't have to
bother leveling off in ground effect.  I don't much like being
blind forward in the takeoff run - dangerous as hell - but running
off the side of the runway isn't much of an improvement.

tl;dr taildraggers with wooden or composite props are much
easier to handle on the ground.  Spring gear, not so much.