Originally Posted by
TheOddOne
I've been thinking about this lately, too.
So, what I do now is:
a) teach recovery to a glide descent,
b) recover to a glide descent, then recover to S&L (as per ex 8)
c) recover to a glide, then recover to a climb
d) recover with minimum height loss, to a climb (which I think is what the examiner will be looking for).
The rationale here is to show in a) the pure aerodynamic recovery with change in A of A, back to the known (glide recovery to S&L), THEN introduce the ideal in d). Too many people on reval. flights shove in the power before the A of A has reduced, causing a pitch up back into the stall, with all kinds of yawing going on 'cos they don't adjust rudder against the power slipstream changes. I'm looking eventually with a 'straight' stall, for a constant heading through the manoeuvre.
TOO
I have a few issues with this.
There is a lot of evidence that pilots under high stress will revert to the first thing they learned - in your case, you are setting people up for a pitch only recovery as default action, which will cause excessive height loss.
Secondly heading is really not that important - an unstalled aeroplane in a turn, is an unstalled aeroplane. The ONLY thing that in the immediacy should be going on with the rudder is keeping zero sideslip.
I do absolutely agree that nobody should be applying power first - but there is
adequate evidence that simultanous power and pitch both gives us consistent stall recovery and minimum height loss. (For the Brits, this is the CFS stall recovery.)
It seems to me that everybody - but especially a new pilot - should drill the right actions (simultaneous pitch and full power, zero sideslip with rudder, attitude for a shallow climb), then anything (such as pitch only to explore something, partial power in a very high powered aeroplane, recovering to level flight, correcting bank or heading) should be a deliberate exception from drilled best practice *only* once that best practice is consistent and instinctive.
Originally Posted by
InSoMnIaC
Do what is appropriate for the situation.
Similarly - no. Can I offer a parallel from my other interest - when not doing aviation, I do martial arts. I have a 3rd dan black belt and am chief instructor at a club - so not a beginner. I teach flinch responses to immediate threats, and in our style basically only a very very limited range of actions. These responses have been designed over a lot of years to protect somebody from immediate harm, without hurting anybody else.
So - somebody swings a baseball bat at my head - I pass it out of the way and step behind the arm.
So - somebody jokingly but I didn't notice early enough swings a cushion at my head - I pass it out of the way and step behind the arm.
Or - somebody grabs me from behind with malign intent, and I drop my weight and go into a guard position.
Or - an aunt spots me in Sainsburys and gives me an unexpected hug, and I drop my weight and go into a guard position.
In my martial arts, I'm making myself instinctively safe without making things any worse, then stopping to think what to do next.
I see a stall recovery in exactly the same way. Any pilot should have an instinctive stall response - stick forward, full power, ball in the middle with rudder, climb attitude. That protects life and aircraft, THEN once that's done there's time to "Do what is appropriate for the situation". The alternative is for things to get worse whilst you use non-existent thinking time to decide upon the right actions.
G