https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k8PeC9n_8Y This is a test to see if I can move a video successfully from one thread to a new one. If this works, I will cover similarities with Ed's Wischmeyer's cognitive awareness drills and the energy management turn.

I watched Ed's video again and will try to answer Tom's question about similarities with my techniques. I also use the extreme bank Dutch roll to teach lead rudder followed by coordination of rudder and aileron. Because I am teaching safe maneuvering flight techniques, I don't cover Ed's stall demonstration. I do teach stall avoidance that is without effort when we allow the nose to go down naturally after zoom up and during all turns. The default turn muscle memory is zoom if reserve is available, release back pressure while leading rudder followed by aileron to bank for the turn, and continued use of rudder against dampening and the increase in bank from dihedral in the wing. I also teach spiral avoidance by levelling the wing first before the pull up over the target. The cognitive availability parts would be that any bank is entirely possible without stall and that spiral is not possible with the wing level. The cognitive availability to troubles caused by too much pulling back on the stick when slow is more subtle but that can be taught.

All of my techniques are taught at low altitude, not because they have to be but because they can be safely done there. Pilots need to become comfortable with safe low altitude maneuvering because they have to engage is same during takeoff and landing. Extreme pitch and bank attitude is scary if we think these attitudes cannot be done safely at low altitude. We become cognitively aware of horizontal and vertical (Ed refers to lateral and longitudinal) space available down low that we have been conditioned to believe does not exist. While limited, space is available to maneuver successfully given good planning and proper technique. Nature and other humans will throw enough curves to tax or cognitive availability without this fear that maneuvering flight is not safely possible.

In the energy management turn, we zoom up to what should be an uncomfortable pitch up at slowing airspeed knowing that we are about to bank uncomfortably steeply all with what is an uncomfortable amount of vertical space available. And we have lost the horizon. But we are cognitive of the relief of allowing the nose to go down naturally as designed for safety. So that relief puts us in an extreme pitch down while in and extreme bank. And we have again lost the horizon. People trust the carnival operation to have the physics of the roller coaster right but don't trust the airplane designers. Yes, we are on the same rail if we allow the law of the roller coaster to operate naturally. And we have to become cognitively available to the need for very rapid rate of lateral nose movement across terrain (horizon is out of view above the high wing) for coordination and that rudder, lots of rudder, makes that happen.

Finally, we have to prevent spiral in the pull up. In the Malibu accident at Oshkosh, I agree with Ed that it looks more like spiral than stall spin. This base to final turn to align with the runway centerline extended and centerline happens many times daily crop dusting. We avoid the traffic and downwind turn, but GPS race track pattern has too often brought the dangerous downwind turn back into the equation on every other turn. The zoom up gives us a bit more altitude and the resultant slower airspeed gives us a tighter diameter of turn, but we have to complete the turn in time to level the wing going over wires or obstructions into the crop row. When we are not going to be able to line up, we have to bail out by levelling the wing and pulling up. Neither pulling up while still in a bank nor putting the down wing into something works. Like the Malibu pilot, Ag pilots can let operational considerations and distractions cause them to become cognitively unavailable concerning that down wing's nearness to things.

Pilots I fly with nowadays are amazed with how acrobatic looking but easy and normal to control is the energy management turn. The difficult part is making them aware that medium and even shallow turns can just as easily be energy management turns. Not that they are as necessary as the steeper turns of low altitude work to miss things and turn to target, but that safe muscle memory can best be developed using default energy management turns.

Dan Gryder and Flywire are also trying to help us learn, from general aviation accidents, what we might do differently to prevent more of them. I agree with him and David Soucie, author of Why Airplanes Crash, that the NTSB and FAA is more concerned with making the agencies look good. We are all in this together. We can fuss at the government but cooperation is much more effective. The fact that they may not desire our cooperation is a work around issue.

Thanks for your post, Contact. Still munching on it….

Best,

Tommy

Ed is looking at expanded envelope exercises to orient pilots toward recognition and acceptance of unusual attitude in the prevention of LOC rather than in the recovery from LOC. I am using safe maneuvering flight techniques to give pilots a different orientation, that of low altitude work including takeoff and landing and pattern. Energy management borrows from the expanded envelope Ed is talking about, greater pitch up, greater pitch down, steep banks, and such.

High altitude orientation softens the blow of unusual attitude because recovery is possible. Confirmation bias is going to make bureaucracy more likely to find stall spin, say, if that is what they have been finding as the probable cause often. The use of the term unusual attitude is a bias in itself toward limited pitch and bank. The airplane doesn't care about the attitude so long as the pilot allows the safety designed into the airplane and so long as he uses the controls properly to do what they were designed to do and so long as the pilots manages total energy available without engine thrust bias.

Acrobatics goes a long way in reorienting the pilot to some value in unusual attitudes, but is itself biased toward recovery rather than practical use of those attitudes. And entry into and out of the maneuvers involves full deflection of the controls. Like a closed or fully open throttle, the maneuver value of a control to manage glide angle and rate of descent for example is lost. The value of unusually high pitch up, with zoom reserve in airspeed, is to quickly, and with the outcome not in doubt, zoom over obstructions and to initiate the very effective trade of airspeed into altitude and to slow down to start a very tight diameter turn. The value of the unusually steep pitch down from this energy managed pitch up, if we release all back pressure and allow the nose do go down as designed, is that we quickly regain that airspeed given up in the pitch up. The value of the unusually steep bank and allowing the bank to get steeper because of dihedral is that a greater percentage of the main wing is thus diverted to lift in the horizontal direction causing much faster rate of turn. Rudder usage has to become more pronounced than in altitude maintaining level and even climbing an descending turns because fuselage dampening of the tail coming around outside of the center of gravity.

I have appreciated Ed's discussion of cognitive availability, but I titled this cognitive awareness which has to come before availability. The stuff we haven't seen, much less brought into muscle memory by iterations, are less likely to trigger availability in both the lateral and vertical aspects. Thus Ed's expanded envelope exercises and my maneuvering flight techniques.

Dan Gryder was recently looking at a 182rg accident in Louisiana that where the official probable cause was stall spin. I agree with Dan that it was more likely the pilot locked up on the controls so solidly that the instructor was unable to get out of the pilot's induced pitch straight down. That was what a witness saw. No not a pilot witness, but when Dan asked very pointedly, "was there any turning or twisting of the airplane," the witness said no. The airplane was completely buried in mud with no debris field. Cognitive awareness, fear, was present, but not cognitive availability.

Fantastic post Jim, thank you!