And this is why even safety gurus and other experienced people die in turnback accidents.
Superior pilots use superior judgement (land straight ahead, turn or manoeuvre only to avoid unsuitable terrain or obstacles) to avoid situations where they have to use superior skill (flying steep turns at 5% above stall speed)
Just don’t unless it is SOP to turn back in the type you fly (e.g. a motorglider)
An FI at the school I taught crashed in the turn-back and died. A student at that school landed in some bad terrain and walked away from it.
Guess who of the two had the superior skill…
I take it when you all mention stall speed you are talking of stall speed in the turn and not stall speed straight and level.
In an SEP if the engine fails there is only one way to avoid the stall and that’s to get the nose down.
To identify that an engine has stopped and decide what you are going to do about it, then activate that decision takes time. How long depends on how well practiced you are and how well briefed you are..ie the more automatic the reaction, the quicker it is.
You have one question to answer. “If the engine packs up and the runway is behind me, what am I going to do?” This decision can and should be made on the ground and be part of your briefing before take off. Each airfield, each aircraft and indeed each day will be different.
gallois wrote:
I take it when you all mention stall speed you are talking of stall speed in the turn and not stall speed straight and level.
In the Rogers paper, certainly.
Mike Vaccaro, using his RV-4, has been working on turn-backs and AOA flying for a few years. His latest vid:
… and Paul Bertorelli’s A Final Salute To Spad
Dan wrote:
Mike Vaccaro, using his RV-4, has been working on turn-backs and AOA flying for a few years. His latest vid:
A lot of americano chit chat crap – but whatever eh. Mesmerizing electronic aids utilization in this video – I´m clearly behind on the light aircraft power-curve!
Rehearsal is common sense for a demo such as this “turnback” – personally I would have kept that down to the “unusual/non-normal” procedures (tick, tick, tick) – keep it simple stupid – and assume the normal procedures are just that (no need for rehearsal of those).
I don´t know anything about RV-4 (or any RVs), but why the rapid flap 40 (I assume full?) selection after reaching 45deg bank angle? This would reduce glide distance (bad) (by increasing the drag) on most airplanes. Perhaps it´s to increase the bank angel margin to AoA crit, putting higher load (lift/drag) on the wings for a tighter turn (time)? I´m probably missing something. Curious to understand.
I was looking for an AoA indicator on his machine, which would be one of the most useful tools (instruments) for this “impossible turn” and any other glide situation – especially on the random flying day with variables such as weight, density altitude etc.
They usually install several gopro cameras on these missions, so I will be very surprised if they don’t have lots and lots of video and audio to help understand what happened.
