Originally Posted by
Hughes500
I am afraid to say this thread is getting very sad. The more responsible of us try and make the system better and point out its weakness, yes HC i have a very bad name at The CAA for trying to do so, to make people safer. Quite frankly with your attitude I really don't know why I should bother, let the new generation kill themselves.
Here is an example for you i would welcome your professional comments on. Last week doing some training with a PPLH, not one of mine, I stuck the pedals in a cruise position just before the start of a descent from 800 ft to land. Student realised at 500 ft, asked me to take feet of pedals I refused saying no they are stuck, what are you going to be about it. Reply I do not know. I again asked what we were going to do at 200 ft, again reply I do not know. At 100 ft I asked again what are we going to do, again reply I do not know. My reply I have control.
Isn't stuck pedals part of the PPL training? So the guy will have been taught it, but not taken it in at the time or forgotten it. So I don't really see your point - people get taught stuff they subsequently forget. Happened all the time in my professional career as a Training Captain doing recurrent checks on professional pilots, so I see no reason why it shouldn't happen to PPLs too.
But it's interesting that you want to make a big deal out of that particular thing. I think it is a fairly pointless excercise since just how often does yaw control get stuck at the pedals? It is a completely different kettle of fish to yaw control getting stuck at the tail rotor. I know a great many pilots with 10,000 hrs or more each, none of them have ever had such an event. So just how important is it? By which I mean, if that PPL has an accident it won't be due to that circumstance but it will be due to some event not covered by trite and repetitive excercises.
When it does happen it is most likely due to some obstruction of the pedals by an object dropped by the occupants, or of course even more likely as a result of the passenger plonking his feet on the pedals. So your PPL was absolutely correct in recognising the problem and telling you to get your feet off the pedals. He had obviously visually checked for obstructions which was the right thing to do, and on seeing the problem he dealt with it correctly within his limited authority as P2. I wonder if you praised him for that or merely ridiculed him for not ignoring the obvious problem and instead carrying out some gung ho running landing thingy just like you were taught by an equally mindless instructor.
Well I'll give you that it is a slightly useful excercise in that it reinforces the concept of yaw with power, but it is just a game and some people find it hard to take role playing games seriously. Doesn't mean they are a bad pilot, just a bad actor.
In summary stuck yaw pedals isn't a common or even infrequent cause of accidents. So could you explain why you were wasting time on it, rather than concentrating on the sort of issue that is much, much more likely to be the cause of this guy's first accident? Seems you are part of the problem.