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Old 11th Sep 2014, 08:06
  #29 (permalink)  
Centaurus
 
Join Date: Jun 2000
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I'm not an instructor, but once managed to cause a little damage to our respective underwear by being overenthusiastic in correcting a wing drop with rudder in an unfamiliar aircraft - the resulting roll reversal was pretty impressive
Correcting a wing drop with rudder? The instructor who taught you that technique needs re-training. It can be potentially dangerous at low level as it can result in an incipient spin in the other direction. Picking up the wing with rudder is No 10 in hoary old general aviation myths taught by flying schools down throughout the ages. No wonder you had a roll as you described. Suggest you should only apply enough rudder to prevent the wing from going down further. That means usually about one quarter of rudder pedal travel. At the same time use ailerons to level the wings. Include stick forward to unstall the wings and apply full power as necessary. If all done simultaneously it should take less than five seconds if done correctly. Practice until perfect.

Most general aviation trainers today are designed to have a benign stall characteristics including ailerons effective below the stall. On the other hand if flying a war bird type, a wing drop is likely if mishandled at point of stall. But let's face it very few ab-initio or private pilots fly a warbird like a Mustang or Trojan?

Because most light trainers are designed to have benign stalling characteristics and wing drop stall training is mentioned in some CASA syllabus, it is common to see instructors deliberately placing the aircraft into the most frightening attitudes that would never happen in real life and crossing the controls so much that it forces a wing drop and they can proudly announce to the student "see Bloggs, look at the wing drop and the way to stop that is to shove on the rudder and pick up the dropped wing".

What the instructor doesn't say is that you have to boot the poor Cessna in the arse all over the sky to force a wing to go down. Not exactly good instructional technique especially if the student copies his instructor during solo practice and over-stresses the airframe in attempting to force a wing drop.

Airliners like the 737 for example have very tame stall characteristics. They simply squash down at a high rate of descent and don't drop a wing. During stall recovery training in a 737 simulator it would be unheard of to have the instructor deliberately throw the 737 all over the sky booting in rudder to try and induce a wing drop like some instructors do at flying schools. That being so, it makes one wonder why flying school instructors including 250 hour grade 3 types and RAA instructors too, often stick their Cessna or LSA into quite astounding unrealistic attitudes to force a wing drop just to tick the syllabus box?

Last edited by Centaurus; 11th Sep 2014 at 08:27.
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