When I was doing upgrade training one of our checkies used to have you fly downwind properly trimmed at 1500 ft in the B767. Then he would quickly slam the controls from stop to stop and nothing happened. A good lesson in leaving it alone. He also taught me to let go the column about every 15 seconds to ensure that we were in trim. Boeings tend to PIO if you waggle the ailerons.

If I can brinag a contribution to the discussion, such a "practice" was blamed announcing: "don't self masturbate", historical "callout" of the 2nd W.W italian air Force pilots, which has still some fans nowadays...

VinRouge and wiggy,

I certainly don't look down on fast jet pilots, or indeed pilots from any other background. What disturbed me about the ex-Lightning bloke I mentioned is that no-one could find a way round his problem however hard they tried. He was the exception - nearly all the others were excellent.

This is from my line training: (skip to 8:05)

I would say utterly boring rather than interesting. Good example of the worst in back seat drivers.

What about old captains flaring with stab trim starting at the 50 ft RA callout?

True. Seen it a hundred times in the 737 and 727 and you get to know the pilots that have that habit. They cannot help themselves. Perfectly stable approach, a well judged flare then suddenly a completely unnecessary stiff arm burst of power followed half a second later by rapid throttle closure. It becomes a reflex movement by some pilots who think they sense a windshear and apply power to prevent the aircraft from falling out of the sky from six inches above the runway. All it does is cause a float.

Any FOQA/FDM data, (always de-identified), will show this - with AP engaged, there is minimal flight control movement until disconnection.

Whether such movements have a material effect upon the flight path can also be examined, but perhaps all the fore-aft and/or left/right movements cancel one another out. Besides, mass alone would tend to dampen changes in the flight path, (but not pitch/roll attitude!).

PJ2

This has been a lively, excellent discussion - I've enjoyed reading all of it - especially some of the old boy's stories.
I've always felt the "Mastaflailers" are doing something more than simply flying the aircraft. It's a nervous thing if you ask me.

Stick shake as you flare and stick push to get the nose wheel on. That the way to do it!!!

When I started in the CRJ, I had a similar nervous habit: I would flail not on the elevator, but on the trim. With a tunnel visioned field of attention, I would trim for an elevator pressure (just what you're supposed to always do, right?) except that was the elevator pressure was what existed only in the last milliesecond. But when you're new, nervous, and tunnel visioned, that last millisecond is effectively your whole world.

Of course, with any amount of turbulence, there are constantly varying elevator pressures, and when trimming for them all, I would never establish a baseline. The trim and elevator were in constant motion (the trim being appropriate for a parcel air already far behind me) toward no particular end, and my already high workload was therefore only increasing, in a chaotic and positive feedback loop.

After I realized this, I taught myself after trimming to not touch the trim for at least a few seconds -- and handle any pitch needs with the elevator only. Then, if and only if I notice that a preponderance of my inputs were in one direction, I would retrim for that... and then repeat: leave the trim alone, fly for a bit, and then reevalutate whether my last few seconds of elevator use are equally up/down, or biased one way; rinse and repeat. Then things calmed down a lot, my workload decreased, which allowed more of my attention to the bigger picture, etc.

If you wait until you are at the end of an escalator before starting to walk, you risk stumbling badly, so we all learn to start walking before we need to - it's easier and faster for the body to adjust your gait to recover from the stumble, than it is to initiate a discrete movement to recover (whilst of course starting to walk).

On what I assume is the same basis, somebody advised me to alternate gentle light left/right pressure on the pedals prior to landing my tailwheel aircraft - if it starts to diverge to the left then I'm more likely to make a good recovery if I make the next rightwards stroke slightly longer and heavier than if I wait for the aircraft to diverge, then have to consciously recognise that I'm turning to the left and that I have to wake up my lazy right foot and mentally calculate how much I have to push it down.

I suspect the neuroscientists would explain this in terms of 'central pattern generators' which are fairly autonomous mechanisms in the spinal cord that control walking and many other repetitive movements. Whether similar mechanisms are enlisted for the manipulation of joysticks, I couldn't say, but I wonder whether making continuous movements is a fundamental part of how we fly - just that some people perhaps take things a little too far.

He never actually crabbed.

You mean never de-crabbed

And he actually tried, (see the big initial left rudder application) but it was way too late; it was a fraction of a second before touchdown which is not enough time for the yaw to occur. Then the yaw due to left rudder combined with the yaw due to the tricycle directional stability added up to way too much. Big overshoot to the left, late recognition and then the opposite yaw to the right happens, etc. and off into the PIO