The law of the roller coaster, ala Stick and Rudder, will keep the wing alive through all maneuvering flight. This includes everything from shallow correctional turns, through medium banked turns, all the way to gun runs and back and forth crop dusting and the canyon turn. Other than during flight solely by reference to instruments, this energy management turn is the safest turn. It's default VFR use would significantly decrease general aviation fatalities.

Bringing the law of the roller coaster (airspeed is altitude and altitude is airspeed) back into default use would be as big a sea change as flight by reference to instruments back when Doolittle proved the safety of that. Extinguishing sound and feel stimuli improved the safety of flight solely by reference to instruments but degraded maneuvering flight skills. While of entirely different orientation, both skill sets are safe in their intended applications. Situational awareness changes from VMC to IMC and back to VMC. Given enough altitude to recover from inadvertent stall while VMC, we can safely integrate the two skill sets. Below that altitude we are much safer using maneuvering flight techniques. While Ag has safely integrated an instrument procedural track through a heads up light bar, that procedural track is not guaranteed obstruction free. Maneuvering flight techniques, rather than integrated instrument techniques, prevail.

I wonder why pilots are more comfortable with the zoom up wings level portion of the energy management turn rather than the natural pitch down portion? Could the mind be associating the natural pitch down, when the bank is applied, with stall? Pitch down, aided by rudder, is keeping the wing alive. Stall is falling with a dead wing. We instructors need to indoctrinate more "Pitch down is good! No worries!"

Contact, I think you've (perhaps inadvertently) exposed the reason the FAA doesn't want primary students to be taught energy management turns... The FAA – and frankly, most sources of flight instruction information – seem to always assume that the Private certificate is just a "stepping stone" to Instrument, Commercial, and perhaps ATP ratings. I am constantly being bombarded with "why don't you have your fixed-wing Instrument rating?" questions. (I have Commercial-Instrument-Helicopter, but only Commercial-ASEL.) The answer is "I don't particularly enjoy flying on instruments, and since I fly for the pure enjoyment of it, I'd rather not make it a chore..."

But IF you DO make the assumption that "all private pilots will get instrument ratings" and with understanding of the law of primacy, the FAA's position becomes (perhaps) a bit more logical. I still agree with you that it's short-sighted, and that it raises the danger levels in maneuvering flight (which, by definition, is NEVER done in IMC).

Agreed, Jim. They have done a good job both with elimination of problematic sounds and feelings, kinetic stuff for vertigo reduction. They have done a good job teaching corporate/airline pilots primacy useful stuff. They have done a good job preparing a small percentage of the total number of pilots for their mission.

We don't know how many of IMC fatalities were actual maneuvering flight fatalities after breaking out, but again good statistics.

I did a tour in Germany and taught public high school 14 years here and am familiar with the comparison. I think the FAA might do well to adopt the German system of early identification of career track. I think we need a low altitude orientation syllabus for most students and the current high altitude orientation syllabus for potential corporate and airline pilots. Old mostly retired non corportate/airline background instructors could be given most of the former and the big airline prep schools could cover the latter as currently done. As in Germany, redirection after beginning one track should be possible. Redirection is very prevalent in many career tracks here already.

I wasn't with Billy Howell at Ag Flight long because I was suffering badly in the back of Cubs when I returned to him after surgery for a ruptured disk. I did, however, develop a dual track program for him. We taught safe maneuvering flight techniques and zero electronics cross country in all tailwheel airplanes without radios. We gave three or so hours prep in his one C-150 to prepare for the PPL flight test, and the required complex hours in his one Comanche for the CPL. Thus the 25 hours in Super Cub Ag dual was mostly a refresher with field work the only new techniques.

Little of the normal flight school curriculum applies to low altitude work including pattern work. Accident statistics bear this out. Ag, while primarily tailwheel aircraft have the fewest per capita ground loops. Part of that is getting the airplane down straight which is a rudder trick and not an aileron or coordination trick. Ag pilots would not use coordinated turns in the field, so lots of iterations of rudder only correction of alignment with the crop row or localizer on the light bar outside the cockpit.

As far as energy management turns using the law of the roller coaster goes, Ag provides thousands per day.

It doesn't hurt that the ag pilot is doing 20-30-40-50-60 landings a day and gets pretty good at it fairly fast compared to the guy who buys a 185 with a ppl and 100 hours and then uses it to go cross country rather than doing landings where he can stop when the wind starts howling.
Statistics are just that statistics not the whole story.

Tim

Good point Tim. The recreational and even business user of the 185 generally has good insurance and spaces accidents out enough to keep good insurance. The airplane operator, on the other hand, needs enough hours to pay for the airplane and even profit a bit. He will most likely not be using/providing a tailwheel airplane except for the Ag operator. It takes a really heavy nose gear to handle the weight of the hopper up front and putting the hopper in back is hard on airplanes and pilots.

The law of primacy helps the Ag operator who makes sure as many of his pilots as possible were trained in tailwheel first using safe maneuvering flight techniques. It is a really hard transition for corporate/airline pilot retirees going into Ag as a second career. Not impossible, just hard. Nose gear and wing engineering have helped mitigate damage from poor rudder usage, but also have resulted in lots of really poor muscle memory. The phrases I used most during Ag training with other than guys that started tailwheel was, "walk the rudders" and "push that nose around." Pilots who seldom make steep turns almost universally slip around turns. Even when VFR and making fairly steep turns, they are uncomfortable with the nose going down and with the rate of turn correct for the angle of bank.

JP256, I don't remember taking the airplane instrument rating flight test either. I did get an Air Taxi certificate which involved an instrument check ride. And I got the CFII at some point. GADOs used to be fairly independent.

Yeah, Contact, I could get my CFI - Helicopter pretty easily, but after thinking about it a while, I decided I'd had enough of student pilots trying to kill me... I had one guy in the Army who was a real challenge. He was 3rd-generation Army (both Grandpa and Daddy rose to the rank of General), but this guy was never going to make the O-4 level...

We were out doing emergency procedures training one day. Flying downwind in the pattern preparing to do a simulated engine failure to full-touchdown autorotation landing, and he starts talking about tool box inventories for his enlisted guys. When I rolled the throttle to flight-idle, he didn't react AT ALL. Just sat there, continuing to talk about how Sgt So-and-so needed to enforce better tool discipline. I slammed the collective down, and he looked over at me, as if to say "What?" It went downhill from there, and I had to take the controls away from him when he literally went catatonic at the flare point... Wouldn't let go of the controls until I back-handed him across the bridge of his nose, at which point we were 45º to the runway, 3 feet off the ground, doing almost 60 knots. I managed a partial power-recovery / running landing that saved the plane (and us), but that was the last straw for me.

At that point, I grounded him (with CO's concurrence) until he decided to make flying his priority. It took almost 90 days for him to be able to acknowledge that he had done anything wrong, and that he needed to focus on his flying. Once he realized that he was a bad enough pilot that he could NOT multi-task in the cockpit, he was able to learn enough to get by. But as I told the my CO, he should NEVER be allowed to fly single-pilot in combat or simulated combat situations, where multi-tasking is absolutely required. He could only perform in a dual-pilot environment -- the AeroScout role was simply not his cup of tea. I was reassigned just about the time that they moved him from the Scout Platoon to the Lift Platoon (Hueys). Their IP "thanked me ever so much"... LOL

It wasn't long after flying with that guy that I decided to leave the Army... He took at least 5 years off my life!

I only had two really significant grippers and one was intentional to mess with me. I got out and rode back to home airport with another instructor. The other was a really big and strong petrified guy. He bought a nice PA-12 because he wanted to learn tailwheel. I could see he was going to make a good Navy catch and tried to flair. I couldn't budge the stick. We flopped down and barely caught the prop and he turned loose and I landed again.

I know pilots get infatuated with really nice airplanes. I just hate to check them out in the pretty ones. Rent a dog!