Pilotage

Mark R. Twombly is a writer and editor who has been flying for 35 years. He lives in Florida.

Unless you fly aerobatics, you probably are what Don Wylie characterizes as a "1 G, level flight, 30 degree bank, sky is up, ground is down" pilot. Wylie believes that describes the majority of us who fly airplanes. It is his contention that we are ill-equipped to handle the extreme attitudes, excessive angles of attack, high-G forces, mental confusion, and disorienting visuals that can follow an encounter with wake or clear-air turbulence, microburst, wind shear, icing, flight control or instrument malfunctions, spatial disorientation, and other such nastiness.

Although in the past I have been upside down in various aerobatic aircraft, for much of the past decade my flying has been dedicated to keeping the shiny side up. And always there is the voice in the back of my head asking, "What if ...."

Then I met Wylie, the president and chief pilot of Aviation Safety Training (AST) ( www.aviationsafetytraining.com) and tireless proponent of training to recover from unusual attitudes. I was intrigued, so much so that one morning last year I found myself reporting for AST's Upset Recovery Training class.

Thanks to Wylie's fighter-pilot background (he is a decorated former Air Force pilot and veteran of 251 F-4 Phantom missions in Vietnam), AST's facility at Houston's David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport has a snappy military flavor. Three immaculate Beech T-34s in military livery stand at attention on the hangar floor. Military memorabilia and grainy photos of muscular F-4s in action decorate the walls, and instructors and students wear flight suits and helmets on training missions. It all serves to add authenticity and excitement to the objective of learning how to cope with high-pucker-factor situations.

School began with a classroom session in which Wylie used model airplanes, video, and graphics to review and explain the aerodynamic factors involved in controlled and uncontrolled flight. The point he wanted to drive home is that the lift vector — the amount and direction of lift — is dependent on angle of attack (the relationship of wing chord to relative wind) and the velocity of airflow over the wing, not pitch attitude (nose position relative to the horizon). Moral: A wing can develop lift in any pitch or bank attitude and, therefore, an airplane is controllable in any pitch or bank attitude.

That's one of the keys AST uses to teach quick recovery from an upset. Another is use of rudder. Every aerobatic pilot learns to use the rudder for pitch control when necessary, but it's an unnatural act for Wylie's stereotypical level-flight pilot.

Positive, forceful use of the rudder to point the nose away from the ground is one item in AST's bag of recovery tricks that can be summarized in the mantra, Push-Power-Rudder-Roll. Push means momentarily applying forward pressure on the yoke or stick to keep the wing flying by reducing G loading and angle of attack. Power means increasing power to add to the margin against an aerodynamic stall. Rudder means applying so-called "top" rudder to pitch the nose toward the sky ("Step on the sky," Wylie says), and Roll means using ailerons in combination with top rudder to roll back to wings level. It's not so much a sequence as it is nearly simultaneous actions.

Push-Power-Rudder-Roll is demonstrated and practiced in the flying portion of the AST program. It can be done in AST's tasty T-34s, or in the student's airplane. I was fortunate enough to do both.

Wylie and I spent about three hours in a T-34 on my first visit, and I saw almost as much of the Texas landscape out the top of the canopy as I did the Texas sky. During the flights Wylie followed a specific, page-long curriculum to demonstrate aerodynamic principles and practice upset recovery techniques.

I returned earlier this year in my Twin Comanche to see how well a "1 G, level flight, 30 degree bank, sky is up, ground is down" airplane responds to Push-Power-Rudder-Roll. The two-word answer is, it works.

Obviously we were not able to replicate the full aerobatic maneuvering possible in the T-34, but we did perform AST's lift management techniques, as well as practice unloading the wings in high-G situations and controlling angle of attack. We also practiced Push-Power-Rudder-Roll upset recovery.

All of it was eyeopening, but for me the take-home message was delivered when Wylie said I had 400 feet to recover from a final approach speed, wake turbulence-induced diving roll or else impact the imaginary ground. I was back to straight and level in a little more than 200 feet. That, my friends, instills confidence.

So did an exercise in which Wylie said my right throttle was stuck and I no longer had control of the elevator or ailerons. "Now," he said, "land at that airport behind us." With his coaching I used left throttle, gear, flaps, pitch trim, and rudder to maintain positive control, turn, and descend. I also learned that reducing rpm on the struck-throttle engine helped to significantly increase the descent rate.

The final weapon in my war chest was the mixture control. I could use it just before landing to kill the stuck engine. Wylie didn't let the exercise get that far, but he waited until I was on short final and had the runway made before "restoring" the stuck throttle and ineffective yoke.

I may always be a 1-G pilot, but now I feel equipped to handle a situation well outside my comfort zone. And that is a very comforting feeling.