Ready for takeoff on a Saturday morning practice session, the pilot of the Piper PA-28 Cherokee taxied onto the runway and advanced the throttle, eager to shoot some takeoffs and landings, as well as try out a portable GPS unit after replacing a faulty antenna.
“On takeoff roll and rotation, the antenna fell off the instrument panel,” the pilot recounted. “I automatically reached for it and started messing with it.”
What kind of accident ensued? Perhaps the aircraft departed the runway (most likely to the left from p-factor). Maybe it rolled off the end of a short runway. Grazing treetops during a delayed climbout happens from time to time, as does nosing over after a tardy attempt to abort on the remaining pavement.
Answer: None of the above. The pilot recognized the insidious influence of distraction before it could truly take hold.
“So I forced myself to leave it be until I had departed the pattern and leveled out. I didn’t mess with it again until I got on the ground,” the pilot said.
The high task saturation level of a takeoff run makes anything unexpected even more of a challenge for a pilot to cope with; ask any multiengine pilot who has practiced simulated engine failures at rotation (requiring a quick decision whether to continue the departure on one engine or abort the takeoff).
Even in a low-powered, single-engine aircraft, the intensity of focus a pilot must apply to the task at hand is most vulnerable to upset just before and during rotation. Unfortunately, that same period tends to be the time when certain problems make themselves known. Doors pop open; a deficient airspeed indicator may begin to behave erratically; a loud, vibrating nosewheel shimmy may develop.
Rotation is when any failure to correct for p-factor with right rudder pressure may become troublesome, the loss of directional control aggravated by the reduced resistance of wheels gripping pavement.
If your aircraft is mistrimmed or has an out-of-balance center of gravity (especially aft), rotation may deliver a nasty surprise, which you will discover through the aircraft’s sudden and probably excessive motion around the pitch (lateral) axis.
In some fatal cases, rotation or during the initial climb is when an unsecured pilot seat has slid backward on its rails, putting the controls out of reach—or causing a pilot to yank the aircraft up into an accidental departure stall. A sloppy preflight may go undetected until a pilot attempts to rotate, but is prevented from doing so by a control lock left in place.
The surprise factor conspires with the pilot’s high workload to erode the ability to respond properly. In some cases—as with that loose GPS antenna—it may simply mean having the presence of mind to not respond at all until safely away from the ground and leveled off in cruise.
Sometimes the powerful effects exerted on an aircraft at rotation by p-factor can be underestimated. Combining the left-turning tendency of a single with a specialized takeoff technique—for example, one that combines a ground run and rotation into a single operation, such as a soft-field takeoff—may present a novice with special directional control problems.
That happened when a student pilot tried to coax a Jabiru USA J170-SP into a soft-field takeoff, where “as the nosewheel lifted off the runway, the airplane veered to the left. The student pilot tried to correct the left turn by applying right rudder and aileron but was unsuccessful. The airplane departed the runway surface and came to rest, nose down, on a parallel taxiway. The airplane sustained substantial damage to the engine, nosewheel area, both wings, and the fuselage,” according to the NTSB report. The NTSB assigned probable cause as the student pilot’s “loss of directional control during takeoff, which resulted in a runway excursion.”
You never know what hidden problems an aircraft might drop into your lap—the moment of rotation is when you may find out.
Related Articles
