Indeed, mostly dumb advice. One needs to get to a safe flying speed and a climbout at Vx is right on the margin of that.
However it is possible that in this case the pilot just forgot to apply rudder.
boscomantico wrote:
quivers when I see how many pilots put achieving „pitch up“ as an immediate priority on a go-around
People are not taught how to fly, they are taught to drive. Nose up to go up not realizing that to actually go up you have to add power and reduce drag mainly by increasing speed which is nose down. This guy has some great stuff for improving the safety of how you control your plane: https://www.youtube.com/@JimAlsipMCFI/videos
Langewiesche:
Calling it “elevator” killed a lot of pilots. “Flipper” would be better, to de-emphasize the ingrained perceived relation of pitch up to go up. Power is what makes a plane go up. The elevator just orients the plane along an axis. As we sadly see so often, an airplane can very rapidly go down fully pitched up.
These accidents are proportionally highly related to the fact that Cirrus markets to rich people (in other words generic non-pilots). They buy the airplane thinking it’s the do all – be all – modern safest and best plane available, while being ignorant (and not educated by those earning big money with them) about the fact that you can’t have it all, ever. A big, comfortable, heavy, fixed gear plane cruising at 200kts isn’t going to be as nimble and forgiving as a fat wing C172. Instead, all arguments are washed away with “it has a chute, it is safe”. Looking at it this way, CAPS killed a lot more people than it saved.
And I say this as someone who appreciates Cirrus, likes to fly them and is happy that they sell a lot of them.
I just feel sad about this pilot who lost his life and his grieving family. Flying is serious business, always.
Anyone in a similar situation (new pilot + lots of money) who wants honest advice without honey talk feel free to reach out to me!
Snoopy wrote:
Calling it “elevator” killed a lot of pilots. “Flipper” would be better
That’s a really good point, haven’t even considered the name.
For me the guy that I linked I like very much the term load and unload. And he says to always unload before you roll. The way most of the teaching is done today student pilots rarely get to actually feel more than 1G and so have no appreciation for wing loading and unloading. Steep turn is probably the only maneuver and there the emphasis is on keeping altitude not wing loading. People are even taught to trim away the back pressure to execute the steep turn more easily, again robbing the student pilot of learning stick and rudder flying skills. Probably they can get that only after doing some aerobatic training nowadays.
Just to put another point. This guy on the surface seems to be doing the right thing by getting familiar with a new aircraft by flying some circuits with touch and goes.
The question is “was he learning from the touch and goes or were they simply a means to an end?” ie the avoidance of stopping and backtracking.
I would have hoped he had already done some familiarisation on the aircraft with an instructor who knew the aircraft well. And we all have to go solo, sometime.
Is there any pilot who can claim, never to have bounced an aircraft or to have found the aircraft drifting off the centre line either on take off or landing roll out?
IMO those who call for practicing touch and goes and go arounds on a regular basis are bang on.
Those who suggest tail wheel experience also have a good point. It teaches good rudder use as well as keeping relaxed feet.
It also emphasises the need for aileron control on the runway.
I also agree that stalls are much better practiced using pitch to come out of the stall. Eg Stall, nose down, pick up speed to rotation speed or Vy, start bringing the nose up and stall again, or if you need to regain altitude add power as you change to either level pitch or pitch up.
I don’t necessarily agree that when on final one should add power before pulling the nose up.
IMO one shouldn’t be prescriptive about this. It will depend how you prefer to fly final approach, the aircraft, and the altitude at which you might start the go around.
Many instructors teach power for altitude and pitch for speed but I remember John Farley (test pilot on the Harrier and many other military aircraft) teaching “point the nose where you want to land and use power to keep ground speed.”
I like this method better, if the aircraft allows for it, because you can not stall as angle of attack will be small if not negative.
For a go round, if you apply power before changing pitch your inertia might well power you into the ground.
Most French instructors teach a go round as "begin bringing the nose up staying above Vy, then apply power, then immediately begin removing the drag, starting with going from full flap to take off flap…
With practice this should become automatic and works for most aircraft, IMHO.
In the case in question the aircraft bounced a couple of times, he was probably still above rotation speed when he applied full power. What we don’t know is how far down the runway it was before he applied full power or if there were obstacles at the end of the runway that would need clearing (perhaps Fernando can advise). We also don’t know whether he tried to keep his speed above Vy using pitch or whether he couldn’t do so or whether he didn’t even consider it, as it was not part of his experience.
If there were no obstacles in the immediate vicinity to the left, a yaw to the left due to applying power would not have been a problem as long as he kept wings level and speed above Vy. I write Vy but Vx would do but is less of a margin.
The other thing not mentioned is wind direction and speed. This too would make a difference in so many ways.
So for me one shouldn’t be prescriptive and one should practice until the flying bit is done automatically and immediately.
If this thread has promoted some pilots to practice areas of flight which are not becoming automatic, regularly, it’s a good thing. But just like we read euroga when we have time, IMO it should also use other pilot’s experience to consider or reconsider honing our decision making process. Eg “Is full power and go round following a second bounce the right thing to do in all circumstances?” and if not when do you make this decision?
gallois wrote:
I don’t necessarily agree that when on final one should add power before pulling the nose up.
IMO one shouldn’t be prescriptive about this. It will depend how you prefer to fly final approach, the aircraft, and the altitude at which you might start the go around.
Many instructors teach power for altitude and pitch for speed but I remember John Farley (test pilot on the Harrier and many other military aircraft) teaching “point the nose where you want to land and use power to keep ground speed.”
I like this method better, if the aircraft allows for it, because you can not stall as angle of attack will be small if not negative.
For a go round, if you apply power before changing pitch your inertia might well power you into the ground.
Most French instructors teach a go round as "begin bringing the nose up staying above Vy, then apply power, then immediately begin removing the drag, starting with going from full flap to take off flap…
Actually this exactly here is the wrong mental approach to flying. For a go around, adding power first is exactly what must be done. It must be done. Why? Because that is how you arrest the descent. Because planes go up when you add power. Not when you pitch up. When you pitch up you increase AoA and you trade speed for altitude until you run out of the kinetic energy you had, slow down and stall. In a go around scenario the worst possible thing you can do is get slow down low.
I agree with the French school for landings. Power for altitude and pitch for speed should not be used for consistent precise and controlled landings. What John Farley says is exactly how landings should be accomplished. I found this guy who put it all together into a technique which he calls the Jacobson flare: https://youtu.be/cv3ZSHjt8fs?si=HO4aU653ULAOBZWu I use this technique to great effect and I recommend it to anyone who would listen.
But while this is how landings should be done, when teaching fundamentals of flying, which must be mastered first, and might be neglected by teaching landings via the French school or the Jacobson flare first, one must use pitch for speed and power for altitude and get it to be an instinct that that is how planes fly. Because that is how planes fly!
I’m sorry gallois but what you describe for a go around is very likely how this guy killed himself.
hazek wrote:
T&Gs are awesome fun and can potentially help you avoid what happened here to this pilot.
I agree. However, there is one big difference, at least the way I’ve learnt, which is that on a T&G you select flaps take off before applying full power. That makes one heck of a difference in pitch up. But yes, to be proficient in T&G’s certainly help in such situations, as also the flaps movement is trained.
Peter wrote:
I used to hate T&Gs.
Then your instructor did not teach them adequately. On a long enough runway they are a non-event. Touchdown, flaps take off, power on and lift off at Vr (which most of the time means pretty much immediately.)
If you do a GA in full landing configuration, lots of planes need quite a hefty forward push, associated with forward trim, which is counter-intuitive as you actually need to rotate the airplane into climb configuration. So the instinct is pull, when in many cases you need to push. And that is not really a thing limited to 300 hp or so airplanes: The old C150 with 40° flaps was a handful if you set full power with landing config. It scared the crap out of me once I had to do that and made me very much aware of this tendency, even though I was high enough so it wasn’t actually dangerous. I’ve seen similar pull ups which were recovered also with benign airplanes like C172’s.
I’ve heard of Cirrus pilots that large pitch changes do require pro-active trimming. Not sure if that is true, but it could be a factor here if pushing alone is not enough to get the plane’s nose down to accumulate speed.
I read about “methods” and “do this before that…”. I’m not in harmony with such thinking. Just fly the plane! You’ve got two hand, and two feet, and possibly an electric trim switch under your thumb. Primary flight controls, power and possibly pitch trim can all be operated simultaneously. You do need to fly the plane, you don’t need to complete one control input before initiating the next. Smooth……
My introduction to smooth flying came at a few hundred hours, when I was invited to fly right seat in a corporate Piper Cheyenne. My very prudent Captain would (as appropriate) remind me that the people in the back were paying for the ride, give them a smooth one! That meant smooth transitions from any flight regime to the next. How little G change can we give the people in the back throughout an entire flight?
So presuming that stalls are not intended, and the objective is a smooth, safe flight, transition from any maneuver to the next should be in the middle of the sky – not too low or high, not too pitch high, or slamming power on, smooth, ease it in, allow the plane to accelerate, decelerate, yaw or roll as you intend. Though you might expect the next phase of flight, even after you provide the control inputs, it’ll take a moment for the plane to get there, because it probably involved the need to accelerate something to get the change.
Anticipate, apply intended control input, monitor for desired effect, correct as maybe required. Don’t just pull/push, and hope that your expensive technology will keep you out of trouble!
