Are you smooth on the controls? Of course you are. No one wants to be known as a rough pilot. If you’ve done some reading ahead in your flight training program, you may have noticed that smooth gets quite a workout in training text discussions of flying skills. Pitch changes, rudder inputs, and power applications all are to be performed smoothly. No surprise then that smooth appears in the practical test standards. One place is the takeoff task for private pilots, which among its other requirements states that the applicant should advance the throttle “smoothly to takeoff power.”
Why is smooth important? No argument that throttle inputs that are, as one dictionary definition renders, “free from difficulties or impediments” desirable. But is the absence of smooth a solid basis for a flunked checkride? Yes, a rough hand on the throttle can turn a takeoff into a skittery affair or cause unnecessary pitching during power changes, but if the maneuver remains within tolerances, should the examiner be able to send you home ticketless?
The case can be made that the examiner should. It’s tempting to think of smoothness as more a matter of style and sophistication than proof of proficiency. However, smoothness is more than just style—it’s a question of safety. For example, a go-around can get ugly or out of control if the throttle is shoved, rather than smoothly advanced to climb power. Stall recoveries can become unnecessarily exciting if yaw from a sudden surge of power induces rotation around the vertical axis. A hasty or panicky push on the throttle to arrest a gliding descent, or commence the go portion of a touch and go, can choke an engine to lifelessness, which an accident included here documents.
In other words, smooth can be a synonym for aware. An example is the case of a Cessna 150 performing a stall recovery on December 5, 2008, at Auxvasse, Missouri. “The pilot departed the local airport with intent of practicing traffic pattern work and basic flight maneuvers. After three touch-and-go maneuvers, the pilot departed the traffic pattern and flew the airplane to the designated practice area. After performing a couple 360-degrees turns and slow flight, the pilot attempted a power-off stall. In order to prepare for the power-off stall, the pilot retarded the throttle and applied the carburetor heat. During the recovery of the power-off stall, the pilot ‘rapidly’ applied engine power, closed the carburetor heat, and the engine lost power. The pilot attempted to restart the engine; however, the restart was unsuccessful. The pilot elected to perform an emergency off-airport landing,” said the National Transportation Safety Board’s online accident summary.
The pilot approached the landing site downwind, fast and high, thereby running out of room for the off-airport landing; he was unhurt. The NTSB summary added this statement to the file: “According to a designated pilot examiner, the rapid throttle application can result in engine flooding and subsequent engine failure.” Probable accident cause: “The pilot’s improper engine recovery procedures after a power-off stall which resulted in a loss of engine power. Contributing factors were the pilot’s improper off-field landing procedures, and the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.”
Engine recovery procedures took their toll again on December 16, 2008, in Preston, Idaho, when the pilot of a Cessna 140 tailwheel aircraft tried to correct a bounced landing. The remedy was correct, but its application didn’t deliver the goods. The NTSB’s brief accident report contained the pilot’s own best guess as to what went wrong. “After landing hard and bouncing, the pilot elected to apply full power and go around. The pilot said there was no response from the engine when he pushed the throttle full in, ‘...possibly because I advanced the throttle too quickly.’ The airplane drifted left, exited the runway, and impacted shallow snow on the shoulder of the runway pavement before nosing over and coming to rest inverted. The pilot did not report experiencing any flight control or mechanical anomalies with the airplane prior to the accident.”
Probable accident cause: “The pilot’s misjudged flare and improper recovery from a bounced landing, which resulted in a loss of control and subsequent nose over.”
Are you now sold on the idea that smooth is more than just glitzy flying? A pilot who has the presence of mind under duress to bring power up calmly and deliberately will get the desired performance when he or she needs it. It takes practice and focus to overcome panicky impulses. Learning that lesson is cheap insurance against those chain-of-events accidents that might have been avoided at various stages; no bounced landing means no go-around; no go-around means no sudden throttle input and, subsequently, no flooded engine.
If this seems to you like a worthwhile area for further work, there’s a slow-flight drill you can adapt to improve your throttle-management technique and give you better feel for your aircraft’s response to power changes. While in level flight at an airspeed within the white arc (flap operating range), try adding a notch of flaps, then promptly reduce the power just enough to keep the pitch attitude from changing as the angle of attack increases. Note the changing throttle travel required as you go from one flap setting to another, or from zero flaps to full flaps. Leave the trim alone during the exercise. Next, try retracting flaps and adding enough power to keep the pitch from oscillating. Your instructor can make the exercise more dynamic by controlling the flaps while you work the throttle. The CFI makes random configuration changes; you respond promptly and smoothly with the corresponding throttle inputs. Altitude should remain constant throughout.
One objective as you work through this busy drill is to demonstrate your ability to work the throttle smoothly to neutralize the pitch changes that reconfiguring induces. But the broader point is to practice thinking about the timing and smoothness of power changes for any flight condition. During this drill, throttle inputs will be minor compared to those called for in go-arounds or stall recoveries, but the idea of not overreacting is the same. A bonus benefit of this work is that it raises awareness of another hazard of abrupt throttle inputs: the potential for severe pitching-up of the nose, with possible loss of control or a power-on stall, as during the transition from a glide to a full-power climb during a go-around.
Smooth piloting isn’t style over substance—it’s style and substance. And safety.
Dan Namowitz is an aviation writer and flight instructor. A pilot since 1985 and an instructor since 1990, he resides in Maine.
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