Insights

Do You See What I See?

I start the flight portion of an airplane checkout with stalls. These maneuvers immediately reveal how the pilot was trained, and poor performance is often the case.

Power-on stall is an ambiguous term - referring to its use in the FAA's Practical Test Standards - for what was previously called a departure stall. Normally, I would ask the pilot for a power-on stall during a climbing turn, but I remain silent, knowing that he will attempt a constant-heading stall because "it feels safer."

When asked to perform the stall, he gets a death grip on the yoke, looks at the flight instruments, and starts to add power. Unfortunately, I must remind him that my life will be in jeopardy if he does not start with clearing turns to ensure that we don't get ramrodded by another heads-down airplane driver.

Initially, the pitch attitude decreases as he stares at the flight instruments. I tell him, "You won't stall unless you increase the pitch attitude."

As he attempts to do this, the nose yaws slowly to the left, and at the stall the airplane rolls abruptly to the left, which scares the pilot. During and after his recovery - made with extreme aileron input and little, if any, rudder input - it becomes quite obvious that stalls are not to his liking. That's too bad. He was taught to play blind man's bluff, and both he and his instructor are the big losers.

I tell him that I recognized his fear of stalls because of his instrument fixation, improper control use, nervousness, and perspiration; I ask if he would like to eliminate the problem. Needless to say, the answer is yes.

To start I make certain that we are well above 1,500 feet above ground level, and I tell him that he has the rudder pedals, I have the control yoke, and he must maintain our heading using the rudder. I then ask if he wants to continue playing blind man's bluff or learn to fly properly. He wants to fly properly, so I tell him to keep his eyes outside the cockpit. The flight instruments are off limits. To maintain heading, he must evaluate the movement of the Earth's surface in relation to the cockpit framework; he must look through the lower left-hand corner of the windshield when we're in a nose-high attitude.

Next, I enter a gentle, power-off, flaps-up stall, and I keep the airplane stalled while he maintains heading using smooth rudder inputs whenever a wing starts to rise. Whenever a roll is not the result of flight control input, a pilot's immediate reaction should be to step on the rising wing with rudder input followed by aileron input. In a severe case such as a wake vortex encounter, full rudder displacement will be required.

When the pilot masters this exercise, I have him make shallow-banked left and right turns using the rudder. When he admits to the effectiveness of the rudder during the stall, I quickly rotate the control yoke back and forth between full left and right aileron inputs to demonstrate the relative ineffectiveness of the ailerons at slow speed.

We return to the power-on stall, and I cover up the flight instruments. Power is reduced and a slight nose-high attitude is established in order to quickly decrease airspeed. Approaching liftoff speed, full power is applied, and using the wing for pitch-attitude reference, the best-rate-of-climb attitude is selected, followed by the best-angle-of-climb attitude.

Obviously the airplane will fly at those attitudes, so he must select an attitude where the airplane will stall. Once again, the nose starts to yaw left as pitch attitude increases, but this time - because he's looking outside the cockpit - he recognizes the yaw and corrects the error with rudder input.

The stall horn's warning, the buffet, and the stall itself now occur, but since the yaw is correct - zero in a constant-heading stall - the stall is docile and recovery is immediate when the pitch attitude is decreased. If a wing starts to rise, it is held down with rudder input - the ultimate solution for spin avoidance, which is a primary flight training objective.

Don't play blind man's bluff in an airplane. Yes, the attitude indicator tells you what the airplane is doing and the other flight instruments tell you what the airplane has done, but it's what you see outside the cockpit that tells you what the airplane is going to do. That's the secret for proper confidence and proper performance when flying in visual conditions.

Ralph Butcher, a retired United Airlines captain, is the chief flight instructor at a California flight school. He has been flying for 43 years and has 25,000 flight hours in fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft. Visit his Web site ( www.skyroamers.com ).