PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Loss of control recovery
View Single Post
Old 12th Sep 2016, 13:34
  #13 (permalink)  
Centaurus
 
Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Australia
Posts: 4,188
Likes: 0
Received 14 Likes on 5 Posts
At the risk of being ridiculed, I think it is all a storm in a tea cup. I was fortunate enough to be military trained (didn't cost me a cent) where aerobatics and all sorts of unusual attitudes on instruments were taught in wartime designed aircraft such as the Wirraway (Harvard look-alike but more unforgiving).

The basics of stall recovery and unusual attitude recovery haven't changed that much since those days. From reading some the publically available accident reports, nearly all involved either night or IMC accidents where absence of basic instrument flying skills was the direct cause of the crash.

All the level D flight simulators I have flown have glass cockpit displays where 360 degrees of roll and very high and low pitch attitudes are available on the artificial horizon or PFD. Any competent simulator instructor should be able to demonstrate an unusual attitude recovery from fully inverted, to the various combinations of high and low angle attitudes, spiral dives, extreme nose up high angle of bank and so on. The technique for recovering from these various attitudes is well covered in the applicable FCTM and a host of other publications.

While the G forces involved may not be experienced in a full flight simulator, that doesn't matter. The aim in this sort of training is to correctly interpret what the flight instruments are telling you. This can be done by using the simulator visuals on CAVOK followed by the same manoeuvres in simulated night and/or IMC.

If students with 100 hours could successfully recover from all sorts of unusual attitudes in a Wirraway while under the hood, on limited panel, and with gyro instruments caged, with an instructor teaching him, then how simple is it to be taught the same manoeuvres in a Boeing 737 flight simulator with much more reliable flight instruments?

Providing the simulator instructor is competent to demonstrate rather than sit in the instructor panel seat and try to talk a student through a manoeuvre, then the basics of stall recovery and unusual attitude recovery on instruments can be covered inside 30 minutes of simulator time.
Centaurus is offline