Originally Posted by
Parson
Having only been inverted in a light aircraft myself, is the reason AH came out of the loop 'aligned with the A27' (rather than intended heading) a symptom of 'getting it wrong' at the apex and/or entry?
It looked to me from one of the videos that the roll intended to change the axis of the loop was accomplished before the airplane was vertical. That would have displaced him farther along his run-in axis than if he had planned to roll in the vertical, resulting in him being beyond the line he wanted to be on at the bottom of the loop (and therefore lined up with the road rather than offset east from the runway) and also reduced the height he expected to achieve at its apex. I've wondered if him seeing that he was on the wrong line as he was coming down the backside of the loop was momentarily distracting and caused him to briefly pause the steady increase in pull necessary to minimize the loss of altitude as his speed increased. Being a bit too low on the run-in, a little slow on the run-in, not having full thrust available, rolling before being vertical, and not pulling enough initially on the downside of the loop: no one of those would have done more than than reduce the margin he expected to have at the bottom of the maneuver but together could have slightly more than eliminated it.