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You guys must be way better pilots than I
ever imagined and with reflexes of a cat and vision of a hawk. By the time
I see a bird, know that we are on a collision course, I barely have time to duck
my head as it flashes by, let alone take meaningful evasive maneuvers with an
aircraft weighing over a ton.
By meaningful maneuvers, I mean actually
climbing/diving/turning to AVOID the bird, and not inadvertently changing
altitudes just to run into it. A big flock of 15 pound honkers? Maybe, but
for an individual bird....like I say, I must be way behind the curve for bird
detection and avoidance.
Chuck Jensen
Luke,
RE: Birds don't always dive.
Grayhawk
In a message dated 10/6/2008 9:30:02 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
lalcorn@natca.net writes:
I will not disagree with your statements. I am
only posing questions to make people think. I can refute and support
every claim that you stated. The problem is I read emails where people
are talking in absolutes. There are no absolutes in aviation.
I dodge turkey vultures quite frequently in
Florida,
in a helicopter at low altitude, and every single time for the past 10
years, they dive away. When you say low altitude, what is low, 100,
50, 1000ft? Not saying they can not climb, maybe they did not read the
documented observation you speak of. I’ve not personally seen a bird
climb out of the way of rapidly approaching aircraft. I’ve witnessed
them fold their wings and dive like a missile. I don’t have to ask
Bill, I avoid them every time I fly. Now in a helicopter, I can roll
much faster than climb, so we bank out of the way, but some pilots do not
like to bank over 30 degrees, so they instinctively climb. Lancair’s
can climb remarkably faster than any bird. If you want to descend,
keep on doing what you do.
Tell the pilot of a bonanza I saw, was coming over
the threshold, controller told him to go around because the controller saw
that his gear was not down at the last minute. When the pilot applied
power, the nose pitched up, tail hit the runway and the aircraft cart
wheeled and blew up. Unfortunately, you can’t ask him, because he’s
dead, and I watched it happen from 100 yards away as I was waiting to take
the runway.
Wind shear, I agree completely yet you state is so
simply and it is not. Does everyone keep their speed up and have a
good grasp of the weather pattern and winds around them? Hence why we
have accidents and that is all I am trying to say.
Speaking in absolutes as though every pilot knows
how to react to every situation is simply not true. We all learn
through mistakes, if we make it. I want to express that saying, “I
will not fly the airplane below a 110 knots”, except in the flair, is not a
good training method or going to save yourself from a stall. Knowing
how the aircraft feels approaching a stall and how to recover before
entering the stall in these situations is paramount to not entering the
stall.
As pilot
in command, you have control over real flight. In PP 2, you are
not quite correct. At low altitudes, birds climb (this is a documented
observation) -- BTW, Ask Bill.
PP3, You should
know your plane's slow speed handling characteristics and you can tell the
controller that you "cannot comply" and request a go-around. No one
here has ever suggested that you shouldn't know and practice slow speed
flight, you need not stall. After all, the 320/360 emergency gear
extension procedure requires that you slow to 87
KIAS.
PP4 - How about
wind shear - keep your speed up and remember that it is not against the
rules to push the stick forward even when near to the
ground.
It is clear to me
that one must learn not to try and fix every problem by pulling back on the
blessed stick.
In a message dated
10/5/2008 3:41:56 P.M. Central Daylight Time, lalcorn@natca.net
writes:
I would like to
add to this discussion on stalls and slow flight handling of
aircraft. One thing I see discussed by pilots is that, they do not
need to practice stalls or slow flight because they know the speeds and
simply stay faster than those speeds close to the "slow realm" of flight,
which I would infer is also the region of reverse command and just
above. This is a great safety idea in ideal conditions, your
familiar airport, standard traffic patterns, no controllers, etc.
Unfortunately real flight is nothing like this.
One good
example is bird avoidance. The proper method of avoiding birds is to
climb and turn, since birds will typically dive away. So you are on
a downwind, gear extended, flaps slightly out, and there is a 10lb turkey
vulture and you pull and turn. Sounds close to an accelerated stall,
doesn't it. If you do not know what your plane feels like at slower
speeds, how will you know how hard to pull or when to recover. Add
this during a base to final, and you have a stall spin accident. How
many of these accelerated stall base to final crashes have happened in the
last year alone?
Next example is when you add those pesky
controllers trying to fit your 120 knot aircraft behind a 150 in the
downwind at an airport with a 3500 foot runway. They ask you to
slow, you do the best you can, but still eating this guys lunch.
Your busy configuring etc, then the tower controller sees its not going to
work and orders a go around when you are crossing the threshold with full
flaps and gear hanging out, starting to round out. Do not think they
won't do that either. Especially with the new generation of
controllers being hired off the street, many are not familiar with
aircraft characteristics and are only concerned about having an
error. How many of the "don't practice slow flight/stalls" practice
full landing configured go-arounds at high rates of descent. Again,
knowing your aircraft's slow handling characteristics might help
here.
How about wind shear? I've been in clear VFR days in
florida
and catch the outflow from a storm 20 miles away while in the downwind and
loose 25 knots in an instant with a nice downdraft. What is your
natural instinct when you encounter a large sink close to the
ground? Pull back now that you are only 6 knots above
stall?
I could go on and on with examples, but just things to think
about.
Previously stated "The initial training for a Lancair needs
to include exposure to the stall to assess the speed at which it is likely
to occur. That assessed, continued testing of that seems superfluous given
the mind set should be clearly engraved to avoid the area whereby such a
condition of flight occurs".
How can you simply avoid these
regions of flight given the examples I have just stated?
Luke
Alcorn
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