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German pilot killed in Polish air show

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German pilot killed in Polish air show

Old 19th Jun 2019, 01:21
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Also at low altitude, the rotation rate seems to slow down, then he starts a secondary left spin down to impact.
... which was probably extremely fortuitous for the people on the bank!

It's hard to give a logical explanation for what what we see here. The control inputs seem to be sometimes pro-spin, sometimes neutral. As mentioned earlier, it might be helpful to see what was in the program immediately prior to this film sequence. Was a spin (and possible late recovery) on the agenda? Or was it a totally unexpected interruption to the planned sequence, the startle factor took over and blocked out the correct recovery procedure until the very last seconds? There appears to have been plenty of time for the correct inputs to be applied. Whatever it was, the tragedy of the event leaves us all with a heavy heart.
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Old 19th Jun 2019, 01:43
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I watched it frame by frame and the rudder looked to be flopping back and forth. The pilot certainly was not standing on the pedal.
I'm also wondering if the pilot didn't steer away from the bank and into the water at the last moment.
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Old 19th Jun 2019, 02:09
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Hiding in Plain Sight...

The post two above this shows something that I initially missed. Look at it- can you see what is there staring us all in the face??

Watch the video again- at the beginning of the film sequence the main gear starts deploying to the down position. By the end of the video it is mostly down.

I am now officially curious and am going to break the sequence down frame by frame. The more I see the more I think something failed in a similar fashion to my own personal experience. I'm noodling now on why one would put the gear down in a stabilized spin and haven't come up with anything I'm willing to share yet, but I do have an idea.

Regards,
dce
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Old 19th Jun 2019, 02:17
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Originally Posted by Fly Aiprt
Thank you for responding.
I’d say you're confirming my point : when it comes to spins, strongly opiniated discussions tend to arise ;-)

We agree that concerning the spin mishap, the unfortunate pilot’s actions on the controls are not consistent with what we believe should have been done.
I suppose we’ll also agree that in competition and practice we rarely deal with fully developed spins, and the technique we use is not always the same as what could be advised for fully developed/inadvertent spins.

I’ll just say that although you are a far more successful competitor than I was, I’m an instructor not totally ignorant of things aerobatic.
The coaches that taught me advanced aerobatics were former unlimited world champions, and two of my co-owner buddies with whom we taught ourselves unlimited aerobatics eventually became world champions.
We never had any argument as to how to perform this or that, we thoroughly gathered information and analysed the aerodynamics of any manoeuvre before trying them.
We found that to stop a developed spin one has first to stop the rotation, and an "unblanked" rudder may help.

I’m not trying to convince anyone, just conveying what experience and aerodynamics taught me.

The rule I’ll never break on the internet is, never enter or dwell in, “experts arguments”.
So I’ll leave it here, we are both entitled to what our experience taught us, if we differ, then so be it.

Thanks again for offering your opinion, albeit vehemently expressed ;-)

BTW you’ll have no problem identifying the picture below – maybe you met the author – and discussing its merits or inaccuracies.



Best regards

I have been taught to keep the stick back, apply full opposite rudder, then ease the stick forward to recover. If the aircraft doesn't recover, start again with the stick fully back and repeat.
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Old 19th Jun 2019, 02:19
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Originally Posted by wonkazoo
The post two above this shows something that I initially missed. Look at it- can you see what is there staring us all in the face??

Watch the video again- at the beginning of the film sequence the main gear starts deploying to the down position. By the end of the video it is mostly down.

I am now officially curious and am going to break the sequence down frame by frame. The more I see the more I think something failed in a similar fashion to my own personal experience. I'm noodling now on why one would put the gear down in a stabilized spin and haven't come up with anything I'm willing to share yet, but I do have an idea.

Regards,
dce
The landing gear throughout the video and in the still referenced is fully retracted.

The standard '52 is a bit different to most other aircraft in this regard. Even when fully retracted, the landing gear is almost entirely exposed. Great in a wheels up landing! Just jack it up, lower the gear, replace the prop and fly away.
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Old 19th Jun 2019, 02:20
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Originally Posted by wonkazoo
The post two above this shows something that I initially missed. Look at it- can you see what is there staring us all in the face??

Watch the video again- at the beginning of the film sequence the main gear starts deploying to the down position. By the end of the video it is mostly down.

I am now officially curious and am going to break the sequence down frame by frame. The more I see the more I think something failed in a similar fashion to my own personal experience. I'm noodling now on why one would put the gear down in a stabilized spin and haven't come up with anything I'm willing to share yet, but I do have an idea.

Regards,
dce

Seat failed, with the backrest moving backward, and the pilot grabbed the gear lever to try to bring himself upright?
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Old 19th Jun 2019, 02:32
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Originally Posted by dash34
Seat failed, with the backrest moving backward, and the pilot grabbed the gear lever to try to bring himself upright?
The seat doesn't move fore-aft in a '52, the pedals do.

That aileron position will certainly have worked against prompt spin recovery. As to why the left aileron is full or near fullly raised....I don't know. The Yak 52 is a brilliant aircraft, though not one terribly forgiving of mishandling.
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Old 19th Jun 2019, 03:21
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Originally Posted by 4forward8back
The landing gear throughout the video and in the still referenced is fully retracted.

The standard '52 is a bit different to most other aircraft in this regard. Even when fully retracted, the landing gear is almost entirely exposed. Great in a wheels up landing! Just jack it up, lower the gear, replace the prop and fly away.
Interesting- I knew it didn't fully disappear but the mains look like they are much lower than they should be. There is clear daylight between the tops of the wheels and the wing. In any case I"ll defer to your expertise here as previously mentioned my Yak 52 experience consists solely of watching them infrequently from the ground. I am going to go look at some images though as my mind still isn't buying what you are suggesting (and is in fact probably true...).

Cheers-
dce
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Old 19th Jun 2019, 03:39
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Originally Posted by dash34
I have been taught to keep the stick back, apply full opposite rudder, then ease the stick forward to recover. If the aircraft doesn't recover, start again with the stick fully back and repeat.
Beggs Muller is probably the best single approach to spin recovery for all types of aircraft out there. It calls for power to idle, application of opposite rudder and, yes, hands off the stick. Typically the stick will move to a position slightly aft of neutral. In a Pitts, in an accelerated flat spin the recovery can take up to three or four turns before the airplane appreciably slows it's rotation.

Different airplanes have different characteristics which revolve around where the horizontal stab and elevator are located, the physical area of both the elevator and the rudder, the pitch coupling of the airplane, the CG and a few dozen other items as well. What is critical amongst all airplanes though is the fact that if you keep the airplane in a fully developed stall, which will happen if you keep the stick back throughout the recovery, all you will accomplish is to reverse the direction of the autorotation. I.E. you will begin spinning in the other direction.

We've wandered rather far off-topic here, but no matter what it remains the case that if you are in an autorotational state you MUST DO two things. 1) You must stop the rotation with adverse yaw, and 2) you must get both wings flying again instead of just the one. Again, as a blanket approach Beggs Muller is the most scientifically and technically proven method for doing this consistently and the one least likely to cause disorientation or confusion. Consider that if you start with the stick buried aft and you inject opposite rudder and you are late releasing the back pressure then the airplane is going to snap to the opposite direction. (Because all that increased rudder effectiveness your pictures so neatly show...) Hence my concern in people offering that stick back is the way to begin a spin recovery.

If you are a competition or airshow pilot you don't need me to tell you squat, you've already figured out how to use power to goose the recovery, or how to cheat the downline by slamming the rudder and then stuffing the nose while using aileron to make it look pretty. Ditto if you are doing gyroscopic figures and you are just having fun, using torque and precession to manipulate the airplane in ways the novices reading this cannot understand. (My personal favorite, and I only had two airplanes that could do this, is a double hammerhead. You hit zero at the top, kick left rudder with full power on, and as the nose comes through the vertical you stuff the stick forward, causing the airplane to turn 360 degrees about it's yaw axis (the nose continues to the left, up through the vertical and back down to a vertical downline), all while in a vertical (and descending) plane. Most bizarre maneuver I ever did, (beacsue it makes no sense and shouldn't be possible!!) and most enjoyable too!!

If you already know stuff like this then you don't need to be reading any of this and you know it. If you don't, and if you are thinking of teaching yourself spins for some bizarre reason, or if you find yourself unexpectedly in a spin then you need to remember just three things. Power Off. Opposite Rudder. Let go of the stick. When rotation stops fly it out of whatever attitude you are in with power as appropriate.

Regards,
dce
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Old 19th Jun 2019, 03:39
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Originally Posted by wonkazoo
Interesting- I knew it didn't fully disappear but the mains look like they are much lower than they should be. There is clear daylight between the tops of the wheels and the wing. In any case I"ll defer to your expertise here as previously mentioned my Yak 52 experience consists solely of watching them infrequently from the ground. I am going to go look at some images though as my mind still isn't buying what you are suggesting (and is in fact probably true...).

Cheers-
dce
This should help:

I've got a bit of time on type, certainly no expert.

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Old 19th Jun 2019, 04:19
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Originally Posted by 4forward8back
This should help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgvxkrNxdf0

I've got a bit of time on type, certainly no expert.
You nailed it!!

So much for my brilliant observational skills!!

Thank you for shutting that one down before anyone invested too much time in it!!

Cheers-
dce
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Old 19th Jun 2019, 10:32
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yak 52 flat spin recovery

The flat spin recovery in the Yak 52 I was taught by Gennadi Elfimov many years ago was - throttle shut, outspin full rudder and stick fully forward to inspin corner (full inspin aileron)-requiring both hands- as high force needed. Wait till rotation ceases and neutralize controls before negative G. This took a lot of height loss. The flat spin was usually inadvertently entered from a stall turn so I never did them low level. The sensation when flat spinning was strangely comfortable due to the high nose attitude. There are some examples of Gennas' wonderful flying on you tube.
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Old 19th Jun 2019, 12:41
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Originally Posted by wonkazoo
Beggs Muller is probably the best single approach to spin recovery for all types of aircraft out there. It calls for power to idle, application of opposite rudder and, yes, hands off the stick.

Again, as a blanket approach Beggs Muller is the most scientifically and technically proven method for doing this consistently and the one least likely to cause disorientation or confusion.
wonkazoo - you are clearly a very able pilot. However, I have to take issue with your insistence that Beggs Muller is the best 'single' approach. The critical point here is that pilots MUST know the spin recovery techniques for their specific aircraft. Whilst Beggs Muller does indeed work on a variety of types, in some aircraft taking your hands off the stick in a spin will cause it to go high rotational.

Let's have no more talk about 'general' or 'blanket' spin recovery techniques please. Make sure that you know the spin recovery techniques outlined in the POH for YOUR specific aeroplane.



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Old 19th Jun 2019, 13:38
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Question - I have zero agenda asking this, just curious - in the case of a completely free rudder, i.e. no control continuity at all, no bungee force, no cable or pedal friction, what would that control surface do in a spin? Would it depend on the a/c model and the exact maneuver (I suspect so)? Could it account for the behaviour in the video? Does anyone have any real world data? Wonkazoo, did you happen to have a camera pointed at your tail when your Event happened?
Curious non-aviation control systems engineer wants to know...
Thanks
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Old 19th Jun 2019, 13:39
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Originally Posted by greeners
wonkazoo - you are clearly a very able pilot. However, I have to take issue with your insistence that Beggs Muller is the best 'single' approach. The critical point here is that pilots MUST know the spin recovery techniques for their specific aircraft. Whilst Beggs Muller does indeed work on a variety of types, in some aircraft taking your hands off the stick in a spin will cause it to go high rotational.

Let's have no more talk about 'general' or 'blanket' spin recovery techniques please. Make sure that you know the spin recovery techniques outlined in the POH for YOUR specific aeroplane.
Excellent advice, there are a number of aircraft out there that will either not recover or recover more slowly using that generic technique.
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Old 19th Jun 2019, 16:14
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Originally Posted by greeners
wonkazoo - you are clearly a very able pilot. However, I have to take issue with your insistence that Beggs Muller is the best 'single' approach. The critical point here is that pilots MUST know the spin recovery techniques for their specific aircraft. Whilst Beggs Muller does indeed work on a variety of types, in some aircraft taking your hands off the stick in a spin will cause it to go high rotational.

Let's have no more talk about 'general' or 'blanket' spin recovery techniques please. Make sure that you know the spin recovery techniques outlined in the POH for YOUR specific aeroplane.
The real problem here in the US anyway is that there is no statutory requirement that a prospective pilot ever experience a spin before becoming licensed. This is one reason (I believe) that stall spin accidents in the pattern and elsewhere are still far too common. For the majority of those accidents the pilot keeps the stick buried to the rear, primarily out of fear and inexperience I'm guessing. If the PIC had simply released the back pressure up to the point of autorotation or even in most cases after it they would not have fatally crashed their perfectly good airplane. Everything I have written here is intended primarily for that audience- the one who doesn't know what adverse yaw even looks like, much less a developing spin. For that audience, and perhaps that audience only, keeping the stick back is simply not the right advice and nearly all GA aircraft will fail to recover or will take unduly long to recover if the back pressure on the stick is not released immediately after applying opposite rudder.

Perhaps I was wrong when I offered that spins are not the great unknown- they aren't, but how your aircraft will react when in one or entering one is highly variable, hence this discussion.

Warm regards-
dce
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Old 20th Jun 2019, 03:28
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Shouldn't ailerons be neutral for a spin recovery? I think he was incapacitated to some extent, confusion, disorientation.
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Old 20th Jun 2019, 04:38
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Excellent posts

As someone who very nearly became a statistic in a Condor whilst instructing during the 70s due to being stuck in a spin and whose then pupil died 20 years later in a Christian Eagle its refreshing to read some knowledgeable posts.
I always believed and taught that if you arent sure what the aircraft is doing put everything in the middle which helped in severe turbulence glider flying in the french alps.
re the question of airflow on the rudder..on some early glass gliders, the phoebus being one, the rudder would aerodynamically lock in the fully deflected position when side slipping and need a very hefty boot of rudder (or aileron induced yaw) to unlock it.
What has startled me is some aircraft pitch down through the vertical during recovery.
whilst I've only seriously flown glider aerobatics, model aircraft are a great tool to experiment with especially torque rolls and flat spins. If it goes wrong it only costs a few hundred quid.
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Old 20th Jun 2019, 05:19
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Originally Posted by MightyOneFiveTwo
Question - I have zero agenda asking this, just curious - in the case of a completely free rudder, i.e. no control continuity at all, no bungee force, no cable or pedal friction, what would that control surface do in a spin? Would it depend on the a/c model and the exact maneuver (I suspect so)? Could it account for the behaviour in the video? Does anyone have any real world data? Wonkazoo, did you happen to have a camera pointed at your tail when your Event happened?
Curious non-aviation control systems engineer wants to know...
Thanks
I'm very sorry, I did not ignore this question on purpose.

No, in 1996 cameras were not everywhere like they are today. I did video in my next airplane, which was a big deal at the time, but as to what my rudder was doing in the Goshawk I can only theorize. The first thing to note is that it basically wasn't doing anything. A rudder, when attached to two fixed points, can exert physical force- hence its existence in the first place. Once my rudder became unattached on the left side it lost the ability to influence airflow and thus control the airplane- it became instead a passive device that was controlled by several exterior forces, namely the relative airflow and any g-loading on the structure.

It was not substantially different than what I see in the video of this most recent tragedy, with the one notable exception that twice in that video he appears to put the rudder hard over to the left. I could not do that- in either direction. Thus it isn't clear to me at this time what happened in this incident, although I have to confess to seeing things similar to what I tried (firm opposite and then in-spin aileron, quick elevator inputs etc) to recover my airplane. In this instance it appears that he did get it out of it's spin. In the second rotation from the last the airplane appears to be more vertical, with aileron controlling the rotation and not yaw. This idea is supported by the sudden bank back to the left, but I am really just guessing here.

At some level what I am seeing here doesn't add up. If he is an experienced aerobatic pilot. (Was actually) then the inputs in the frames that are visible make absolutely no sense. He never lays over hard opposite rudder to stop the spin. That leads one inevitably to: Why not??

Someone else asked in this thread if there was any film of what preceded this sequence and I would love to see it if there is. Was this a spin that just went south, or a maneuver that failed or left him in an unstable auto-rotational state low to the ground?? In any case, and as I've said previously- I am very interested in what they find. I fear if control continuity is present they will rule it CFIT, which would be very unfortunate as it appears to me that there is more going on here than meets the eye.

Warm regards,
dce
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Old 20th Jun 2019, 06:20
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Originally Posted by blind pew
As someone who very nearly became a statistic in a Condor whilst instructing during the 70s due to being stuck in a spin and whose then pupil died 20 years later in a Christian Eagle its refreshing to read some knowledgeable posts.
I always believed and taught that if you arent sure what the aircraft is doing put everything in the middle...
Scary. Truly scary, and very worrying. Very sad to read.

An instructor who admits to nearly killing themselves and their student because they didn't know the correct procedure for spin recovery, and who therefore couldn't teach it, whose student then goes on to kill themselves...

Nothing makes wonkazoo's point better than this tale of woe and tragedy.
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