More personal thoughts...

.... No two days will have the same exact weather! No two flights will be exactly the same! Be ready for plan "B" or "C" and rules may be broken to save a bad day from a disaster. The WX is badly forecasted in "micro climates" many times a year in Oregon. Know your "micro climate" if you have them in your location.

Who has tried energy management turns and what do you think about the utility and safety of them?

contactflying wrote:Who has tried energy management turns and what do you think about the utility and safety of them?

What are they? How do I do it? When would I use the technique?

Jeredp,

Thanks for the questions. I am not a salesman, but I do like giving free things away.

The energy management turn is another technique to glean free kinetic energy from the aviation environment. Because the energy management turn eliminates load factor, in the banked portion of the turn, it increases the utility and safety of any aircraft. It's use is most critical, however, with fairly low power to weight general aviation airplanes in maneuvering flight situations. This is where many on this site often find themselves in the airplanes they fly in the mountains. This is where all of us find ourselves on every takeoff and landing.

The problem I have found, these last forty one years, is that the Practical Test Standards and many flight instructors who demand those basic instrument standards, even after testing, have indoctrinated most pilots in the necessity of maintaining altitude precisely and making only climbing, level, and descending turns. I have no problem with climbing and descending turns. The first is dangerous and the second is safe, but nothing can be done for the first. Something can be done for the dangerous, load factor producing, level turn. Don't use it except for instrument work.

To emphasize the need for the energy management turn, in backcountry flying, let me use this scenario: We are flying a Cub down a river at ten feet AGL. Up ahead, there is a ninety degree turn in the river to the right. Now, to make it interesting, we add a bluff directly beyond this turn and a fifty mph tailwind behind us (big numbers are easier on my math.} No! In maneuvering flight work, the danger of the downwind turn is not a myth. We have no choice, from this bad position, but to yank and bank to the right. As load factor jumps on and the Cub starts shaking, we now are between a rock and a hard place. We can reduce bank and impact the bluff. Or we can hold the bank and back pressure on the stick and cartwheel the Cub into the river. Or we can pull back even harder and go into the river nose first, falling in a stall.

Now, the energy management turn: We anticipate the need to turn right steeply to miss the terrain ahead. We pull up wings level trading 100 mph cruise speed and ground effect kinetic energy for altitude. This slows us down reducing the radius needs of the upcoming steep turn and reducing the rate of closure with the terrain. As we slow rapidly and near the cliff, we bank sharply right and push (not pressure) a lot of right rudder while releasing all back pressure,letting the nose go down as it was designed to do in any turn. It will go down significantly, in a steep turn. Let it. If we have not sprayed crops or practiced a lot of steep turns, we need to think "push the nose around rapidly." We will not be using enough rudder, causing the nose to hang up dangerously too slow and too high. In turns greater than sixty degrees of bank, the rudder helps get the nose down quickly to prevent load factor, mush, and stall. Finally, once we have the nose pointed down the river in the new direction (oh God!, not heading, not GPS), we need to remember that we must get the wings level first before pulling up at the ten feet of altitude.

Only these things make the energy management turn dangerous when done poorly: not standing on the rudder, when turning very steeply, to get the nose around quickly and trying to pull up while finishing the turn. If we allow the nose to slow up, we are slipping and will get too low before completing the turn. Not leveling the wing prior to pulling up will create the graveyard spiral or catch the low wingtip on something.

Now leave this extreme scenario and realize that the energy management turn for medium and even shallow turns still saves valuable energy that would otherwise be lost to load factor. It is the safer turn and it is more fun and rewarding. It is rewarding to have full command and feel for the airplane, rather than just making certain altitude and heading numbers happen. The PTS is very fair and accurate for testing. It has no place in the Flight Review and normal contact flying, in my (i'm sorry, not so humble) opinion. You just can't be humble when you almost constantly swim against the stream.

Again, Jeredp, thanks for the questions. By asking, we demonstrate a willingness to learn. This, I think, is more valuable than appearing to know. I do like the apparent rate of closure approach, however. Different thing altogether. Don't get me started.

Contact, the crazy old pilot

Thanks for the description. This sounds similar to a chandele???

Similar to the old contact lazy eight. Now all the maneuvers are basic instrument maneuvers because of the altitude, heading, and speed requirements. In the old days, they were done naturally, not mechanically by numbers on gauges.

Jeredp wrote:Thanks for the description. This sounds similar to a chandele???

It's a High Yo-Yo. One of the first maneuvers you'll learn in any ACM (Air Combat Maneuvering) training.

John Boyd, who was a really good pilot and knew the physics and math of this stuff, called it "energy maneuverability." An upstream swimmer and enemy of wasteful Pentagon generals, he may not have gotten full credit for it in the Air Force.