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  • #16
    Originally posted by Evan View Post
    And yet he doesn't pull up and stall.
    Evan, please stop it. And that's from who is probably the most extremist "don't stall" activist in the world: myself.

    For every single example of a pilot that managed not to stall in an extreme situation, I can bring you one example of one who did.

    And you my argue that the difference is in the training of ones and others, to what I will challenge: How do you know?

    Stalls are never ever practiced in a real life or death situation where the pilot is invaded by panic and adrenaline which may help him act irrationally. It's a very well known psycho-physiological condition that even the law takes into account if you kill someone while under strong emotional stress, fear, or a state of mental confusion (and you don't need to be a mentally ill person to suffer this acute mental condition under extreme situations).

    On the other hand, the 99.99% of the time that a pilot is acting as such and not practicing stalls, he pulls up to increase lift and pushes down to reduce it, so I'd say that it's a quite natural conditioned automated response by a person that is impaired from acting rationally.

    Again, I am ALL for stall training, bot theoretical and practical (I have the theory that when the theory is perfectly well understood and incorporated as something obvious, the practice comes more naturally with less need of a rational process). And not only that, I am an advocate of practicing maneuvering at the limit of the stall warning, something that is NOT done anywhere (but in SMRFS del Sur, as you saw in a previous post where I described the program), which I'd argue is more important than recovery from stall and stall proximity.

    But I am very conscious that, while that has the potential to increase the chance that a given pilot will not stall on the D day, it is no guarantee.

    The best pilot can become basically a rock when under strong emotional stress, and there is no safe way to practice that or to tell who will act how under such condition.

    I, for one, dared to go against one of the most basic pilot rules and say that AF and Colgan would have never happened to me. But put me in a situation where I'm trying to extract every bit of performance when chances that I am going to day even if I manage to do it great, and I give no guarantee of how I will react. I hope that I will crash under control and "die like a man" if that's my fate, but I would not be totally surprised if I just freeze or do something totally irrational. I don't know and I don't know how can I know in advance.

    If I am ever going to stall a plane, I am much more likely to do it while trying to avoid a car or a tree in the last second rather than when turning base to final (typical GA accident), pulling relentlessly up when ground contact is not of immediate concern (AF, Colgan), or trying to keep the FL with the speed below best climb and diminishing (Pinnacle). In THOSE cases I absolutely blame the pilots (and their instructors).

    --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
    --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

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    • #17
      Originally posted by Evan View Post
      And yet he doesn't pull up and stall.
      Which begs the question- why after months of training (and recurrent training) on how to operate an A330 and it's many computer-assisted systems, does a pilot forget that pulling up (especially a 6 minute relentless pull up) is a fairly good way to stall any airplane and cause it to loose 35,000 feet of altitude? Especially when this is taught in a Cessna 150 in the first hour or two of flight school, and repeated ad nauseum I guess until you become an ATP? (Gray font is somewhat speculative)
      Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

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      • #18
        Originally posted by Gabriel View Post
        ...If I am ever going to stall a plane, I am much more likely to do it while trying to avoid a car or a tree in the last second rather than when turning base to final (typical GA accident)...
        Be careful here...

        Yeah, typically bad technique...

        ...BUT ALSO...

        Murphy's law, fate is the hunter, momentary inattention, feeling a bit too comfortable and a dangerously-overly-high level of confidence in this particular statement.

        Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

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        • #19
          Originally posted by 3WE View Post
          Be careful here...

          Yeah, typically bad technique...

          ...BUT ALSO...

          Murphy's law, fate is the hunter, momentary inattention, feeling a bet too comfortable and a dangerously-overly-high level of confidence in this particular statement.

          Yes, that can happen to me, but then I will relentlessly LOWER the nose at the first sign buffet or stall horn.

          Unless ground contact is of immediate concern, lowering the nose too much is of no concern to me.

          --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
          --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

          Comment


          • #20
            Originally posted by gabriel View Post
            yes, that can happen to me, but then i will relentlessly lower the nose at the first sign buffet or stall horn.

            Unless ground contact is if immediate concern, lowering the nose too much is of no concern to me.
            NO!!!!! YOU ARE TOTALLY WRONG!!!!! THERE IS NO REASON TO MAKE AN EXTREME DIVE!!!!! JUST FIREWALL THE THROTTLES AND GO TO A HEALTHY CLIMB ATTITUDE!!!!!

            (Actually, your answer was outstanding!)
            Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

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            • #21
              Originally posted by 3WE View Post
              NO!!!!! YOU ARE TOTALLY WRONG!!!!! THERE IS NO REASON TO MAKE AN EXTREME DIVE!!!!! JUST FIREWALL THE THROTTLES AND GO TO A HEALTHY CLIMB ATTITUDE!!!!!

              (Actually, your answer was outstanding!)
              I know what you meant, but this cannot be overstated:

              IF GROUND PROXIMITY IS NOT OF IMMEDIATE CONCERN:
              First and foremost, reduce AoA AT LEAST as needed to extinguish all and every sign of proximity to stall (and at most... well, just don''t overstress or stall the plane in negative Gs).
              Then take care of hair splitting details like leveling the wings, adding power, and establishing the desired flight path.

              IF GROUND PROXIMITY IS OF IMMEDIATE CONCERN:
              Well, these hair splitting details become important.
              Reduce AoA AT LEAST AND AT MOST as needed to extinguish all the signs of stall.
              Immediately followed by firewalling the throttle and leveling the wings, while you keep the AoA just in the boundary of the signs of stall.
              Here is where things can get really scary. You are about to die if you perform sub-perfect, and probably even if you perform perfect too. Now, with this in mind, take it cool and do all these things perfectly and at the same time, just as you practiced many times in your PPL, the last time many months ago, and always with at least 2000ft between you and the nearest piece of solid matter and with an instructor in the right seat. Piece of cake. NOT!

              --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
              --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

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              • #22
                Originally posted by Gabriel View Post
                IF GROUND PROXIMITY IS OF IMMEDIATE CONCERN:
                Well, these hair splitting details become important.
                Reduce AoA AT LEAST AND AT MOST as needed to extinguish all the signs of stall.
                I think IF TREE PROXIMITY IS OF GRAVE CONCERN: Maintain but do not increase AoA and be prepared to lower it as needed to extinguish the onset of an actual stall. Stall warning is entry into the dangerous AoA regime but beneath you is the dangerous regime of trees. If you are still flying (and not decelerating) at that point, planting it there might be your only way out.

                But ok, I concede that this particular jackass was prepared for a very stressful situation in advance and the Colgan and AF447 events were a shock transition from fat and dumb to shit and fan. The shock factor seems to be the thing that evaporates or cross-wires procedural training in some individuals.

                However...

                Originally posted by 3WE
                Which begs the question- why after months of training (and recurrent training) on how to operate an A330 and it's many computer-assisted systems, does a pilot forget that pulling up (especially a 6 minute relentless pull up) is a fairly good way to stall any airplane and cause it to loose 35,000 feet of altitude?
                I think this is also due to the Gabrielian theory that stall is taught only as an upset procedure without a strong understanding of the aerodynamics involved. I theorize that a pilot can be taught intuitively not to stall if he intuitively equates pulling up at stall warning with going down like a rock. I do not think many flight schools consider it necessary to foster this basic intuition and I think it should be a requirement for even a PPL.

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                • #23
                  Originally posted by Evan View Post
                  ...I do not think many flight schools consider it necessary to foster this basic intuition and I think it should be a requirement for even a PPL...
                  Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

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                  • #24
                    Actually I think Evan's point may be correct in reference to flight training done in a certain time period.

                    My understanding is that in the past, say 20-30 years ago, in primary flight training pilots were taught to *never* stall the aircraft and that was that. If you stalled you were a horrible awful person and deserved to die. Okay maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration but the general idea was that if you used the correct techniques at all times the a/c would never stall, thus they drilled into people that they must always fly using correct techniques and didn't spend time discussing what happened in the event the plane actually did stall.

                    By the time I did my flight training, which was about 10 years ago, that had changed. My training put a lot of emphasis on avoiding stalls, but also a lot on knowing how to tell when the a/c had stalled and what to do about it.

                    Re teaching the aerodynamics of the stall, I think a *basic* understanding is helpful but in-depth knowledge of Bernoulli's and Newton's laws and how lift is generated is not necessarily of much value. IMHO what a pilot needs to know is that above a certain AoA the wing stops functioning as a wing, and that to prevent a stall you should never exceed that AoA, and to recover from a stall you must reduce the AoA below the critical level. Followed by *how* to reduce the AoA.
                    Be alert! America needs more lerts.

                    Eric Law

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                    • #25
                      Originally posted by ATLcrew View Post
                      At the beginning of the video, the pilot states that he intends to use "every inch" of runway, but then peels off with at least a few hundred feet left.
                      First a joke: the Bonanza guys or the 747 guys?

                      And specifically to your comment: Indeed.

                      1) Maybe the pilot was exaggerating and said inches when it was a couple of hundred feet on the charts.

                      2) As Gabriel alluded to, they also seemed to use a not-so-good technique for an obstacle clearance takeoff. It looks like an early, "back-of-the-drag-curve" liftoff.

                      In fact, that's an area that I found to be weakly covered in the light plane world. When an instructor asked me to demonstrate a "short field takeoff" (italics for a reason) he usually meant full up elevator, early rotation and lifting off with the the stall warning going, a transition to healthier airspeed and then a climb out between maximum rate and maximum angle.

                      These guys sort of do this procedure with an early liftoff and a stall warning.

                      In fact there's really four procedures...Short field vs. Hard surface and Obstacle vs. no Obstacle, and my experience was that instructors were imprecise in their language and just wanted you to demonstrate bits of each, and I'm not so sure we didn't see bits of each procedure here.

                      A hard-surface-obstacle-clearance takeoff (which they should have done and I'm using better terminology) is an elevator-'neutral', minimum lift, minimum drag roll with a crisp rotation as you reach maximum angle of climb speed. The stall warning generally does not sound, and this might have taken a little bit more runway for our Bonanza boys.

                      (Gabriel alluded to this earlier).

                      By the way, this forum has totally missed the all important question here. Were those pilots doctors?
                      Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

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                      • #26
                        Originally posted by elaw View Post
                        Actually I think Evan's point may be correct in reference to flight training done in a certain time period...

                        My understanding is that in the past, say 20-30 years ago, in primary flight training pilots were taught to *never* stall the aircraft and that was that. If you stalled you were a horrible awful person and deserved to die. Okay maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration...
                        Not exactly...(and while you exaggerated- it nicely highlighted the point)

                        I got my PPL in 1979 so I know about 20-30 years ago . I swear that 50% of my "lessons" involved a stall (or five). Every single BFR and aircraft check out up until 10 years ago included a stall...(That's my last time doing a check out). In fact, the BFRs and check outs usually involved both takeoff-departure (clean, full power) stalls, approach-landing (flaps, no power) stalls and generally full stalls- maybe an occasional incipient recovery.

                        There was probably ONE check out where we only did an incipient stall.

                        ...that being said, what I did read on some aviation fora at www.internet.com was that "professional flight training schools" based on advice from airlines, trained pilots fairly exclusively on the "incipient-approach-to-stall" maneuver where you add full power, go to a healthy climb attitude and waste none of your precious altitude above the trees...

                        There was almost never a full stall nor any training to even think about lowering the nose. In fact, I recall a CRJ pilot giving me the classic ATP-PPL butt chewing that
                        "I was told vehemently not to lower the nose, because swept wing aircraft quickly develop rapid sink rates"
                        AND, it was said that the incipient-full-power-max climb procedure was the only one done on the rare occasion that they had sim time to do something other than engine cuts within 1 knot of V1 on recurrent training.

                        So, it might seem that the professional pilots were trained to never even think about lowering the nose...and I think THIS may be the "never stall or you deserve to die" training you speak of...at the professional level, not the light plane level.

                        All that being said- there's a very strong and valid argument that you should almost never ever ever ever ever ever ever get close to a stall situation in the first place (so no real need to be able to recover from one, right?) The training is better spent on stall avoidance than stall recovery, right?

                        So,

                        1) I think our beloved CRJ pilot was correct
                        2) I think that avoidance probably is more important than recovery
                        BUT
                        3) I also think that absolutes and near-absolutes are generally wrong...

                        ...Because, in spite of all of this wasted drivel, we almost never have perfectly good airliners (plural) stalling out of the sky, except when we do.
                        Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

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                        • #27
                          And your quote illustrates the problem well:
                          He was told vehemently not to lower the nose, because swept wing aircraft quickly develop rapid sink rate
                          ...which is absolutely true!

                          It just leaves out the part that in a stall if you don't lower the nose, your swept wing aircraft could quickly develop an even higher sink rate.
                          Be alert! America needs more lerts.

                          Eric Law

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Originally posted by 3WE
                            There was almost never a full stall nor any training to even think about lowering the nose.
                            Because...

                            There was almost never a full stall nor any training to even think about lowering the angle-of-attack? I'm guessing that stall procedure focused on reducing speed to stall warning and then increasing power to recover. Were there any in-depth textbook studies about aerodynamics, AoA/coefficient of lift curves, airflow delamination, etc.? I think there is a better chance of developing an intuitive response when the concepts behind the phenomena are clearly understood.

                            Maybe a good fundamental lesson is to tell pilots to think of the aircraft as a helium balloon and the yoke as a valve lever. When you pull back, you open the valve and inflate the balloon. When you push forward you close it and when you push a bit more you deflate it. Obviously, more gas in the balloon will produce more lift but too much will burst it. Stall warning is the 'balloon about to pop' warning. Sinking your (fast moving) balloon into terrain is not something you want to do, but popping it should be your greatest fear.

                            I want pilots to have that sense of the impending 'pop' you get when you inflate a balloon to its limit.

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                            • #29
                              Guys,

                              I agree with many things that you all say, but I also disagree with so many others that I don't have time to respond now. Be prepared for a long post later.

                              But one thing is ceetain: we are in different channels.

                              You should all come and take the theoretical and practical class on stalls at SMRFS del Sur. And it's not an ad. I won't charge for it.

                              --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
                              --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Originally posted by Evan View Post
                                ...Were there any in-depth textbook studies about aerodynamics, AoA/coefficient of lift curves, airflow delamination, etc.? I think there is a better chance of developing an intuitive response when the concepts behind the phenomena are clearly understood...
                                Read all the textbooks you want and tell me if these statements are false:

                                Edit to add numbers for Evan.

                                1) At about 16 degrees AOA, a stall occurs on most all wings because the smooth airflow separates from the top of the wing from the sharp curve.

                                2) This means a significant loss in lift and oftentimes a loss of roll control.

                                3) Pulling up relentlessly is bad, 4) a. airspeed control is a big help (b. but not everything), 5) stalls should be avoided and 6) in extreme cases, you might need some nose-down input...

                                I've read lots of other theoretical stuff (books and Gabe both), but what else do they need to know to make a difference in not stalling an airliner?
                                Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

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