http://www.atsb.gov.au/media/5777834...-019_final.pdf
Well worth reading by all general aviation pilots regardless of aircraft type. To have a runway pitch trim going to full nose down shortly after takeoff at night on instruments is a scary situation and the pilot is to be commended for his actions in preventing a crash. To have it happen at a most critical time makes interesting study of the pilots immediate actions. There was no time to drag out an emergency procedures manual as he needed two hands on the elevator control to prevent the aircraft spearing into the ground. While groping for the trim cut-out switch which was adjacent to a flap cut-out switch he inadvertently selected the wrong switch.
Many students of today's flying schools are taught from the time they step into the cockpit to use written checklists for almost all phases of flight from walk around preflight to line up checks. These are CASA mandated policy. It does not prepare you for situations where control difficulties in the air may not allow the luxury of reading an emergency checklist from a book. During wartime days it was Royal Air Force training policy when pilots converted to fighters was the pilot under conversion had to know where cockpit controls were while blindfolded.
While such measures are unnecessary in peacetime, the blind use of read and do checklists instead of memory has its drawbacks. In the example of the PC-12 incident where the pilot was forced to feel for a particular switch at night and the subsequent delay in locating the switch allowed the runaway trim to operate un-checked, there is a lesson to be heeded. Instant knowledge of the position of every switch and control in the cockpit is good airmanship. Relying on a written checklist for almost everything is not good airmanship.
Instructors should not only keep this in mind when training ab-initio student pilots, but encourage students to read ATSB reports and learn from them. After all, they are free..