Fred Weick, designer of what Wolfgang Langewiesche called "The Safety Airplane," knew rudder pulls the wing with the down aileron forward. Yawning this greater lift and greater induced drag wing (down aileron) forward increases its relative wind and decreases the relative wind over the lesser lift and lesser induced drag wing (up aileron.) Fred saw tremendous safety advantage both in eleminating adverse yaw and also the cause of all stall/spin accidents, the pilot's ability to pull back, too much, on the elevator control.

So Fred put in a funny banana shaped bellcrank to make the ailerons work in a way that would not cause adverse yaw and he restricted up travel of the elevator to create the Ercoupe.

So we don't fly "The Safety Airplane." That means we cannot deal with adverse yaw thinking aileron is a primary control and aileron pulls rudder. It just doesn't happen that way. And when pilots insist on using only aileron or leading aileron, upset has already begun to happen. Loss of effective control has already happened.

Rudder is a primary control and rudder pulls aileron or at least the down aileron which drags its wing back. We simply cannot control lateral nose movement for turning well if the nose first moves the wrong way. Slips, insufficient rudder, are more popular than skids, too much rudder. From an efficiency and safety standpoint, this is unfortunate.

Base to final in a downwind can cause the infamous skid/stall/spin only if we elect to make our base downwind, only if we fail to allow the nose to go down naturally in the turn, and only if we limit bank angle. Base to final, or any turn, can be made at 1g regardless of bank angle unless we pull back on the stick. So we
can make upwind base to final where possible, lead rudder and bank sufficiently to make the target/numbers,
and certainly allow the nose to go down naturally (don't pull back on the stick.)

Or we could fly the reasonably priced "Safety Airplane." Yes, I know the Go Around is the school solution. And yes, that solves this attempt. What about the next one? Should we really advocate just doing the sanctioned but ineffective things until we finally make it down, perhaps in one piece.

Are you serious? Airplanes in flight have no idea if they are turning upwind or downwind - therefore it doesn't matter if your base turn is upwind or downwind. The only effects wind has on an airplane in flight are track and groundspeed. That is basic aerodynamics.

yodacat wrote:Are you serious? Airplanes in flight have no idea if they are turning upwind or downwind - therefore it doesn't matter if your base turn is upwind or downwind. The only effects wind has on an airplane in flight are track and groundspeed. That is basic aerodynamics.

Landing is a ground reference maneuver. Turning base downwind makes it more likely for pilots to overshoot (seemingly) necessitating a skidding final turn which can get people in trouble. Turning base into the wind makes it easier to not overshoot final.

Having read Contact's books, I believe this is what he is referring to. Same reason crop dusters make their turns upwind, keeps radius small.

Landing patterns can be upwind, downwind, crosswind. Most times you don't get a choice. A competent pilot is able to fly them all without caring which way the wind is blowing.

yodacat wrote:Landing patterns can be upwind, downwind, crosswind. Most times you don't get a choice. A competent pilot is able to fly them all without caring which way the wind is blowing.

You did not just say "a competent pilot doesn't care which way the wind is blowing"...

I'm definitely not competent then

Yodacat,

I appreciate your comment and also invite you to read Safe Maneuvering Flight Techniques by clicking my signature box. There is a lot of stuff not emphasised in Practical Test Standards that a lot of competent pilots find more effective and safer.

I chose the pattern in most of the 50,000 or so landings I made, many more spray runs. Most were flown at 200' or less. While competent enough to make downwind turns, I was not a masochist.. Patterns high enough and wide enough to make downwind base to final comfortable and safe for competent pilots are too time consuming for Ag and pipeline work. When traffic dictates taking the less efficient and less safe route, we can choose to join or give way to all. I gave way to all and lost very little time doing so. I had to go around a couple of times over the years.

Angling across from the near downwind corner of the runway to the upwind big airplane touchdown zone marking, in strong crosswinds, require an upwind base to final. There is seldom any traffic in those conditions, but the pipeline patrol can't wait until the wind is calm. I know a pipeline pilot who lost his life and the life of a pipeline employee because he refused to learn wind management techniques. He was a competent retired airline pilot.

I am pretty hard headed on wind management, not because most competent pilots will often need or use it, but because many here will. A lot of pilots on this site expose themselves to backcountry situations where wind management and other seldom taught techniques are really important..

contactflying

Pipeline, spray work and other low level flying is a whole different ball game but the principles are still the same. It's still ground reference maneuvers but in a whole lot more unforgiving environment. And by the way, during my career in Part 91, 135, and 121, I instructed at the airlines. The average retired airline pilot is a fish out of water in a small airplane low level. Add a know it all attitude (not rare) and there's a recipe for disaster. Your story doesn't surprise me at all, but "If the student failed to learn, then the instructor failed to teach".

@ CFOT : Your words, not mine. : )

yodacat wrote:@ CFOT : Your words, not mine. : )

It's not the student's fault he has no idea how much downwind affects his groundspeed, his rate of closure with obstructions, the radius of his turn, and maneuvering capability. Nor is it the instructor's fault. Sanctioned training references deal only with touchdown speed and encourage giving most reduced groundspeed advantage up by increasing airspeed.

As instructors,we would better serve our students by using our experience in small airplanes and the experience of others, when available, to judge the value and safely of FAA sanctioned materials that emphasize high altitude orientation. The maneuvering of the airplane not being affected by wind direction is a high altitude orientation. It is a very dangerous orientation for maneuvering flight including takeoff and landing. Very dangerous.

Large bureaucracies like the FAA defend turf aggressively and thus are slow to change or improve. They are working on upset and loss of control now, however. They don't admit harmful orientation, but they do eventually improve.

After sixty years of high altitude orientation, we have become very good at contact flying as if we were using basic instruments to egress inadvertent IMC. That doesn't help 150 miles from another airport with fuel and having to deal with 30 gusting to 50 crosswind with only a single runway available.

CFOT=Controlled Flight Onto Terrain. This is very good low altitude orientation. Shannon puts whatever he is flying slowly and softly onto terrain maintaining the apparent brisk walk rate of closure on short final to eliminate the need for the round out and hold off. We have no problem with power pitch to hover taxi in low ground effect, but not the hold off with elevator only until the airplane (not the pilot) decides to come down. Definitely not controlled flight onto terrain.

* CFIT

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_flight_into_terrain

CFIT was a term created by and given officialdom. Shannon, CFOT, used his own experience and terminology. I like his better and I very much appreciated his willingness to test Safe Maneuvering Flight Techniques for accuracy and authenticity before rejecting them. He will attest that while different than the high altitude orientation, they are easy to learn, more efficient, and safer in a contact flying environment.

Contact is an old but officially sanctioned word. It means flying completely by reference, contact, with terrain. CFIT is mostly non-contact. Is there a theme here?

A+ to instrument integration for contact flying in a mostly instrument world. It has lessened pilot work load and improved safety in the high altitude environment. It has also led to loss of control, upsets, and CFIT in the maneuvering flight (their term not mine...I just call it contact flying) environment. And making the environment I worked in fifty years taboo didn't improve safety there.

[quote="contactflying"Slips, insufficient rudder, are more popular than skids, too much rudder. From an efficiency and safety standpoint, this is unfortunate. Base to final in a downwind can cause the infamous skid/stall/spin only if we elect to make our base downwind, only if we fail to allow the nose to go down naturally in the turn, and only if we limit bank angle. Base to final, or any turn, can be made at 1g regardless of bank angle unless we pull back on the stick. [/quote] Skids are much worse to be in during a stall with limited ground clearance than a slip. This isn't dogma. It's fact, and only takes a few minutes to confirm for anyone willing to give it a whirl. But it's a free country, I guess.

Lesuther,

You are absolutely correct that the stall while skidding flips the airplane worse than the stall while slipping. Both stalls live in the high altitude environment where pilots practice both.

In the maneuvering flight environment, including takeoff and landing, stalls generally include fatalities unless we are in low ground effect. We don't practice stall recovery there.

The dangerous and unfortunate slip preference (I am talking about maneuvering sloppiness not slip to landing) is that it prevents effective maneuvering in an emergency.

The skid preference I am referring to is with the nose well down and bank significant, as in the energy management turn or any turn without back pressure on the stick. The only way to stall, in a a skid, in a slip, or coordinated, is to pull back on the stick. Again that dangerous habit is neither the pilot's nor the instructor's fault as both were trained that way.

Really old pilots were not trained, or didn't self train, with high altitude orientation. Crop dusting schools teach the energy management turn, but they can't write it down. Allowing the nose to go down naturally in all turns, using vertical space available especially when limited, doing anti-stall things, and not stalling is life and death down low. A lot of pressure is on pilots to stay high and wide in the pattern so they can always make shallow to medium turns, arbitrarily always to the left, does not prevent tragedy.

At 200' and below using wind management, always letting the nose go down in turns, using vertical space available over obstructions and in turns, taking off fast and landing slow, among other things not in sanctioned training materials, prevent tragedy.

We don't emphasize stall recovery in low altitude orientation because stall recovery is not a solution. We do emphasize rudder usage and too little, slipping around, is a very real problem. We need to get the nose on target before vertical space is used up. Pushing the nose around, even skidding a bit with the nose well down, is better than hooking a wing on a wire.

Getting the nose on target, the numbers, is important. Going around is important too, but not as important as flying efficiently and safely. Going around is not the solution to the downwind base to final shallow bank and lots of back pressure skidding turn. Nor is stall recovery practice.

Low altitude orientation is not concerned with how to stall best, nor is it concerned with how best to recover from a stall. It is only concerned with what we can do to prevent the deadly low altitude stall. In this case with the very fast groundspeed and very large diameter base to final turn, we bank sufficient to bring the nose onto target using enough rudder to get nose movement across terrain down there (not across the horizon up in the top of the windscreen) appropriate to the significant bank, and most importantly, we allow the nose to go down naturally.

Concerning elevator with stall prevention in any situation, do nothing. Let it go. The airplane cannot stall itself. Let it go. Let the nose go down as it is designed to do for stall prevention safety reasons.

In this base to final situation, we want to land down there. Why are we trying to stay up here by pulling back on the stick? Why are we trying to avoid the earth?Where did we get that orientation?

You are rambling. Of course you should be headed downhill turning base to final.

Ok. Was the FAA's downwind base to final skid/stall/spin accident/fatality problem caused by the airplane exceeding the critical angle of attack, or was it more accurately caused by pilots pulling back on the stick?

How many thousands of times have you allowed the nose to go down naturally in turns, that is not pulled back on the stick? I mean not pull back in a descending turn, not pull back in a turn from level, and not pull back further than trimmed to begin a climbing turn.

Go to the other side of the airport for the really bad stall and stall/spin accidents. The really dangerous maneuvering flight turn is the climbing turn from takeoff runway extended to crosswind. I have my students release back pressure in this, the really dangerous turn, as well. After the energy management turn to crosswind, they may safely continue the climb wings level.

I know competent pilots should be able to fly at a very high pitch attitude very near the ground. I just think it is a poor place to practice stalls.

And you are practically perfect right, yodacat, the practical test standard says to do it. I also do it, at less angle of attack but with positive rate of climb, on the instrument takeoff. These guys flying out of gravel bars and high altitude backcountry landing zones will not always have FAA cleared takeoff zones.