When getting my flight instructor certificate renewed by way of a check ride, my curiosity was aroused as I worked through lazy eights and chandelles. "Why," I thought, "am I doing this?" For the life of me, I couldn't figure the role of these maneuvers in air commerce. One reason I knew I was doing them is that they are contained in one of the Federal Aviation Administration's booklets called "Practical Test Standards." These publications spell out what we must do on check rides as well as how skillfully we must do the maneuvers.
After thinking about this and all the things we are required to do for the various certificates and ratings, I concluded that most of the things we do are indeed useful. The trouble is that we don't often realize why they are useful. The result is that check rides become trained-seal acts.
For lazy eights and chandelles, for example, the FAA lists 11 and nine objectives, respectively. Holy things like "coordination of flight controls" are objectives. What is missing is the real objective of both maneuvers: to make certain that the pilot understands and can manage energy. Making the peanut butter and jelly come out even at the end of a chandelle means the pilot was aware of the bleeding off of energy throughout the maneuver. Doing the perfect lazy eight, whether the new way with shallow banks or the old way with steep banks, requires that the pilot know what is going on with the airplane from moment to moment throughout the maneuver. The amount of energy remaining is a constant concern. That is what many maneuvers are about, and it is something that a lot of pilots don't grasp, even when they have a certificate that is fat with words.
Steep turns of 45 degrees bank are interesting, too, whether done visually or by reference to instruments. They involve some energy management, but despite the fact that they are turns, the main objective is to manage energy as well as to learn something about pitch control. We don't do things in normal flying that require steep turns, but the maneuver can do a lot to sharpen normal flying as well as to teach us something about one of the darker corners of flying.
The steep turn that teaches the most lessons is the one where the power is not increased for the turn and the trim is not changed. That is not the FAA way — it apparently considers the steep turn as more of a maneuver than a learning experience, and on a check ride, you had better do it its way. If you don't increase power, though, you learn more about the bleeding off of energy as the effective weight of the airplane increases with G loading. It can be seen right there on the airspeed indicator. We know that the stalling speed increases with bank angle, and we can see the airspeed decrease. The energy is being used, and the margin is deteriorating.
If you don't change trim, you learn one of the real danger signals in flying — if you are holding a lot of back pressure, you are bleeding off energy, and if you carry this far enough, the airplane will stall. Couple this with the aileron used to combat the overbanking tendency of the airplane, and you see the true warning signal of an impending spin. Lots of back pressure and aileron opposite the turn will do it every time in a lot of airplanes.
In a steep turn where the airplane is not trimmed, you also learn something about the pitch stability of the airplane. If you have to use a lot of force to maintain level flight, the airplane is quite stable. If it is a fingertip affair, the airplane is not so stable.
You learn something of your piloting skills in a steep turn, too. Nobody expects the first one to be perfect, but after a few, a pilot should be able to roll smoothly to the desired angle of bank, select the pitch attitude that will maintain level flight, and complete and then roll out of the turn with only minor corrections and altitude variations. You might think I am kidding, but a pilot who can't fly a good steep turn probably does a poor job of maintaining altitude when droning along on a trip.
A steep turn also serves to improve a pilot's skill at spatial orientation. It is not nearly as good as some of the basic aerobatic maneuvers for this, but it does test the pilot's ability to keep up with things in a fairly rapidly changing event and do a precise job of rolling out on a heading.
The lessons learned in some maneuvers have to be used carefully. For example, learning to fly at a critically slow airspeed may plant the seed for a future disaster. It may be okay to fly right on the ragged edge above 1,500 feet, but that does not mean that it will work at 300 feet when the chips are down. Many an airplane has fallen victim to wind shear when flown low and on the edge.
The lessons learned from stalls also have to be put into context. The pilot's operating handbook may give a minimum altitude loss for a stall, and we may go out and practice stalls and lose only a few hundred feet. A stall at low altitude is a different animal, though, and what worked up high may be far from enough.
Stalls as they are done in heavier airplanes are more in tune with the real world. There, at the first indication of a stall, whether aerodynamic or from a stickshaker, the recovery is initiated. If a pilot were to get an airplane too slow at low altitude, this is the maneuver that should be initiated. Fly the airplane on into the stall, and given a combination of turbulence and wind shear, a successful recovery might not be possible.
Spins are not required for anything other than the flight instructor certificate, but they are the natural maneuver to discuss after stalls. The debate on whether or not they should be taught has raged for years. It is my personal opinion that students should not be soloed until spins have been demonstrated to them and they are competent in recoveries. It matters not whether anyone ever learns how to do one, only that they know how to undo one.
Spin demonstrations serve another important purpose. If a pilot understands the consequences of poor attitude control and uncoordinated flight at the stall, the pilot is likely to work harder at maintaining a pitch attitude that results in a safe airspeed as well as at maintaining coordinated flight. Neither stalls nor spins would be necessary in a perfect world where every pilot always had the ball centered and the airspeed nailed on a safe value; unfortunately, it is not a perfect world.
The only objective given for ground reference maneuvers that makes sense is "to determine that the applicant divides attention between airplane control and ground track, and maintains coordinated flight." This can be done in normal traffic pattern flying, and the only other real effect of ground reference maneuvers is to irritate people on the ground with relatively low flying.
Some things in the little book on the check ride are nothing more than a joke. Night flying, for example, is one of general aviation's most critical safety areas. Just using the available accident information, which is sketchy at best, we can see that the safety record at night is many times worse than in the day. How many times? At least 10, maybe 20. The problem relates more to weather than anything else, yet there is not one word in the little book about testing a pilot's knowledge of the changed relationship with weather when the sun sets. It has often been noted that the FAA has scant knowledge of what is actually done in and with small airplanes. This is a clear example of the result.
An excellent requirement deals with allowed errors. Many pilots feel that the arbitrary setting of limits is artificial, but it is not. Someone once said that the word discipline should be banished from flying, as it has been in modern child-rearing. If you don't set some standards by which you judge your performance, though, you probably are not going to fly with any precision.
Most of us would probably flunk a private pilot check ride on every flight if we were to be judged by the standards for that certificate. Plus or minus 100 feet is the general altitude requirement. The heading goes for a plus or minus 10 degrees in most areas, and on climbs and approaches, the airspeed is to be held within 5 knots of the reference speed. Landings are to be at or within 500 feet beyond a specified point.
One thing that is not specified, and that results in some pretty raunchy flying, is that the attitude of the airplane be maintained within certain parameters. The emphasis on holding airspeed leads many pilots to "chase" the airspeed with considerable variations in power and attitude on final approach. This goes back to something else that should at least be demonstrated along with spins. In a light airplane, a pilot should be able to climb or fly an approach within plus or minus 5 knots of the desired reference speed without reference to the airspeed indicator. That is what basic flying is all about, to be able to sense what is going on without reference to anything other than the power setting and the attitude of the airplane. Some instructors cover the panel and have pilots fly approaches without any instrument reference. Those students are the ones who likely fly the most precise approaches.
For landing, the FAA book's objective is to touch down smoothly at approximately the stalling speed of the airplane. The "smoothly" part is a matter of judgment. On the other, how many pilots do you know who go for a full-stall landing in tricycle-gear airplanes every time? To verify the "not many" answer, all you have to do is go to the airport on a busy day and watch people land.
Perhaps the emphasis would better be put on having the airplane in a proper landing attitude at touchdown. That would mean, in a tricycle, having the nosewheel well clear of the runway when the main wheels touch. Full-stall landings don't work well in some of the heavier singles, and in a crosswind, a slightly higher touchdown speed means better controllability. The landing attitude is all-important, though, because touching on the nosewheel first, or on all three wheels at the same time, can lead to a porpoise. Where pilots ground loop conventional-gear airplanes with some regularity, they break nosewheels off tricycles with about the same regularity.
Go-arounds are given as a maneuver, and these are important, more so downstream than in training where they are practiced regularly. In the real world, we fly few if any actual go-around maneuvers. The result is a significant serious-accident problem on real live go-arounds. The message is that they should be practiced at altitude a couple of times a year in each airplane that we fly.
A recent event at Asheville, North Carolina, made me wonder about how we can hope to cover everything with objectives and standards. The airport there is surrounded by mountains, and Runway 34, on which I was landing, is uphill. I have been landing there since the airport was built, though, so I am familiar with most of the crazy things the wind does.
On final, the attitude of the airplane was correct, and the speed was close to the desired 78 knots for final. The surface wind was given as 8 knots, right down the runway. Something was not right, though, and it took me a moment or two to decide what was out of place. Then I realized that the ground was moving by very slowly. It looked more like a Cub approach than a 210 approach. The wind shear bell in my mind rang, and I started adding power just before the airplane had a big sinking spell. Soon after I landed, the surface wind kicked up to almost 30 knots to match the low-level wind aloft.
The FAA requires that a private pilot read and interpret wind shear reports, but this day, I had gotten no wind shear report. The main message here is that flying with as little risk as possible means going beyond the FAA's requirements for our flying. There are a lot of things out there just waiting for the pilot who barely passes muster.
Those books on standards are good, though, and every pilot should have the ones covering the certificates and ratings held. That way, you know the minimum that is expected of you, and you can tell on every flight whether or not you passed the check ride. They are available at airport counters, in catalogs, and from the AOPA Air Safety Foundation.
