Originally Posted by
Hughes500
HC
the problem with a forum is putting down everything from a briefing without boring everyone with 10 sides of A4( not me back-pedalling ). Having said that there is obviously 2 distinct opinions of how to look at emergencies/ malfunctions call them what you will.
One side of the argument appears that if you are testing then yes brief as to who has control / throttle etc etc, the other being what the emergency will be ( or have I misread you) and where you are going to do it. Yes I rolled a revision exercise into a general handling / emergency session as I was asked to do( to try and help keep the pilots cost down ) Quite frankly it is wrong to tell the pilot before hand that I am going to do an engine failure or gearbox warning light or whatever, he should be capable of doing these ( yes even a ppl)off pat/ automatic reaction. If you are flying twin pilot machine with a big checklist then fair enough, but not a light single. I would have it that the basic emergencies / malfunctions should be off pat these to include engine failure/tr issues/smoke in the cockpit/vortex ring/gearbox warning lights/electrical failure.
My life was probably made a lot less unpleasant by an instructor who used to throttle chop the machine every so often. It made me very aware of flying defensively and not taking things for granted. So when a 300 engine stopped on me at 100 ft 30 kts coming back into land the reaction was automatic, landed with only a bent cross beam. Not sure practice engine failure 3 ,2 ,1 go would have helped, as I can assure you it is nothing close to reality
Looks like we are going to differ on these but lets not bother wasting any more time on this thread as we have done it to death ( and no I do not have a big ego , ask people I have flown with) . Have I learnt things from this, yes !
Sorry I didn't mean "back pedalling" to be a deprecating term. "Filling in the gaps" would have been better.
Anyway I think there is a fundamental difference between training for an engine failure in a single, and something like stuck pedals. With the former, it is a matter of quick reactions and so once the principle of what to do is covered, repeating the excercise at unexpected times does of course have merit. But with something like stuck pedals where there is not such a sense of urgency, on a training flight it is better done having reviewed the excercise in the classroom first.
My piano teacher used to tell me that "practising" was only accomplished when the piece was played correctly. If it was incorrectly played it didn't count. And thus it is with flying - flying a training exercise incorrectly just reinforces the mistake and drains confidence, whereas flying it correctly builds confidence and "burns the right neural pathways". So it is better to be fairly sure the excercise will be flown correctly and this is best done by briefing thoroughly on the ground beforehand.