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Oops, darn it...

But blowing the tail down when under heavy braking requires more than just the throttle application when simple modulating the brakes is far more responsive for reducing the issue.
Kind of like landing of snow, you do not know for sure just what you will need to react too on each landing, and you will and are many fold more able to cope with that situation than I simply due to me having little experience in that world.

I recently got back on a road race motorcycle where I have not even been riding on the street in decades. Within hours I was braking into corners with the rear tire off the ground as I always used to in the '70s and 80s when I brought home trophies most every weekend. An instructor had been riding behind me, he came over after a session with a concern that the rear wheel was in the air as I turn in to each corner. My statement was, "How else do you do it". He, like many had just never learned the finesse to ride into turns that way.

To aggressively decelerate a plane using brakes, you first must learn to properly modulate the brakes. Bandaiding the action with throttle application is no where near as good as learning the art of "threshold braking". Seems to be something never even considered to be taught in the aircraft world but is a skill of utmost necessity in other sports. And those skills need to be considered in short landing contests which are much easier to loose than to win, especially on tarmac.
 
Amazing thing to me is the prop flexed so much and is unscathed. He called me Sunday evening and is super impressed with it. Super smooth and pulls harder than his best Catto. He told me he had not flown a lot this year and I bet that was a huge contributing factor. It is a bad feeling when that tail starts coming up, I am easying off breaks and pulling hard on that stick. I am not wired to hit the throttle to blast the tail down when trying to stop. I also noticed he didn't dump his flaps when he landed.
 
Amazing thing to me is the prop flexed so much and is unscathed. He called me Sunday evening and is super impressed with it. Super smooth and pulls harder than his best Catto. He told me he had not flown a lot this year and I bet that was a huge contributing factor. It is a bad feeling when that tail starts coming up, I am easying off breaks and pulling hard on that stick. I am not wired to hit the throttle to blast the tail down when trying to stop. I also noticed he didn't dump his flaps when he landed.


I certainly hopes he sends those blades in for inspection or gets new ones. I truly don't want to read later about a blade departing and it ending poorly. I LOVE the prop he is using and have advocated for it as you know, however, a strike like that an I would never trust it again. Might fail in one hour, Might fail in 20 hrs, but its a very high probability that it WILL fail.
 
So, would an intentional ground loop give you a chance? Maybe not enough time, but maybe it would be enough to get the cg behind the wheels


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If he had added power as the tail rose, wouldn’t the blast of air under the flaps have lightened and lifted the tail even more before that air had a chance to reach the tail feathers? It seems to me that prop wash wouldn’t reach the tail much at all with the flaps down.
 
I found that heel brakes are harder to modulate (if that's the right term) than toe pedals. Might be me tho. It's just easier for me to retract my boot tip than pull back the whole foot and attached leg to get the heel pressure lower, especially when they get heavy on deceleration. Guess that's why the old 4" brakes are maybe easier on props.

Gary
 
I had a composite prop on the Rotax bite the dirt once, and it looked OK after I got the tail down, but a little push on the tip showed it had partially delaminated, not unexpected after that hit. Real obvious also once it was flexed just a bit, not much chance of not noticing it before taking off again anyway, which is a good thing.
 
Amazing thing to me is the prop flexed so much and is unscathed. He called me Sunday evening and is super impressed with it. Super smooth and pulls harder than his best Catto. He told me he had not flown a lot this year and I bet that was a huge contributing factor. It is a bad feeling when that tail starts coming up, I am easying off breaks and pulling hard on that stick. I am not wired to hit the throttle to blast the tail down when trying to stop. I also noticed he didn't dump his flaps when he landed.

Me neither, I am more inclined, and have done so 2 or 3 times with good effect, to hit the "mags" (Rotax...) and the master, both located where they can be instantly swiped, and with NO safety guards over them, I want to be able slap them, not fit my fingers into the guards and then depress them, but that's me. Hitting throttle seems a bit, a lot, counter intuitive. I have still taken out a prop (actually just one blade, the SAME blade, of a 3 blade prop) twice, but the engine was powered down and other than replacing that single blade no other damage was done. The other 2 blades couldn't believe their luck!
 
Composite props are amazing. I’m glad Don is going to take a look at Joe’s.

Here’s a couple photos of mine after I destroyed the cub. The prop was quite an article to inspect as the carbon fiber shell was largely intact, after damage that would have broken or curled a metal prop around itself. But the core of the prop was largely destroyed by the frontal impact with terra firma at wide open throttle.
Nothing like Joe’s slight nose over. His may be fine.

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Transmitted from my FlightPhone on fingers… [emoji849]
 

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People seem to be concentrating on whether or not the prop is OK.
But prop OK or not, the engine has still suffered a sudden stoppage,
and would require a teardown inspection per the Lycoming SB / AD, eh?
 
Just got off the phone with Joe who just got off the phone with the Sensenich engineer who inspected his blade. No problem found, not even a scratch.
 
I am far from an expert on anything related to aviation, but when I saw the video the day it was posted I was amazed at the bend of the blade. But like most others I thought it was toast and the engine would need a thorough check. I now wonder if the blade flexing so much helped protect the engine?
 
It does, but come'on... a FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR, that was scared and had to have another CFI tell him on the radio that it was okay to land on the highway. I wonder if he was qualified enough to understand why the fan quit...
 
This one has a good ending



Ominous remark from the reporter at the end of the clip: The FAA will investigate".

I'm curious if the anonymous airline pilot was in an airliner,
or perhaps in another nearby GA airplane--
he seemed to be coaching the pilot "you're looking good....watch that truck".
 
Sadly another 150 instructional flight just went down in the water near Jay Stanford. A CFI on his last flight due to his wife having some medical issues and an 18 yr old student. Neither survived.

Not sure if it’s just the constant stream of info now or an uptick on accidents, but it’s not good.

Single pilot appears to have stalled and spun in his recently purchased Decathlon at my local airport two days ago, lucky to have survived the crash. Airlifted to Albany Med. -hypotheses is this happened during a go around but many questions linger.


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The airline pilot coaching the student/instructor seemed like he was GA very nearby.

Geez, the stall/spin low to the ground needs to stop. We were all taught how to avoid it in basic training. Full power and nose no higher than level until you have the sufficient airspeed.
 
The airline pilot coaching the student/instructor seemed like he was GA very nearby.

Geez, the stall/spin low to the ground needs to stop. We were all taught how to avoid it in basic training. Full power and nose no higher than level until you have the sufficient airspeed.

Respectfully, I’ll beg to disagree. Today, many pilots are not taught even the rudiments of aerodynamics, or stall/spin aerodynamics. In fact, many pilots were never taught proper use of the controls. In short, we’re doing a pretty good job of teaching students how to manage a GPS, but we seem to be failing them when it comes to LOC avoidance.

And those folks become flight instructors……

MTV
 
Respectfully, I’ll beg to disagree. Today, many pilots are not taught even the rudiments of aerodynamics, or stall/spin aerodynamics. In fact, many pilots were never taught proper use of the controls. In short, we’re doing a pretty good job of teaching students how to manage a GPS, but we seem to be failing them when it comes to LOC avoidance.

And those folks become flight instructors……

MTV
I am sure you are correct, but my instructor (got my license last fall) beat that stuff into my head.

Edited to add: I did all of my cross country stuff with paper flight planning and a paper chart until he was convinced I could do it in my sleep. Only then was I allowed to use my phone/foreflight. And it was not just point to point, it was departure to TOC to the needed landmarks, and then to the TOD to TPA to traffic pattern. Not much was left to chance. It was a long arduous process filling out all the points on the flight planning chart but in the end it was great education
 
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I am sure you are correct, but my instructor (got my license last fall) ........

Serious Question - Not to be taken as an offense, just looking for some objective basis to understand what has REALLY changed in primary flight instruction.

  • How many power on, full stalls do you estimate your performed?
  • How many deep stalls (Holding the elevator to the stops)?
  • How many accelerated stalls?
  • How many cross-controlled stalls?

Just looking for estimate of what you learned vs. what I learned. I found that even 30 years ago they had stopped teaching some of the things I now consider "Basic"...
 
I am sure you are correct, but my instructor (got my license last fall) beat that stuff into my head.

Edited to add: I did all of my cross country stuff with paper flight planning and a paper chart until he was convinced I could do it in my sleep. Only then was I allowed to use my phone/foreflight. And it was not just point to point, it was departure to TOC to the needed landmarks, and then to the TOD to TPA to traffic pattern. Not much was left to chance. It was a long arduous process filling out all the points on the flight planning chart but in the end it was great education

Good for your instructor, but cross country flight planning has little to do with LOC. If your instructor did that stuff, I hope he or she also really worked hard on the subjects I was noting: aerodynamics and loss of control. Very few instructors these days do, and many haven’t even learned this stuff themselves.
Which is why we have so many LOC accidents.

MTV
 
Serious Question - Not to be taken as an offense, just looking for some objective basis to understand what has REALLY changed in primary flight instruction.

  • How many power on, full stalls do you estimate your performed?
  • How many deep stalls (Holding the elevator to the stops)?
  • How many accelerated stalls?
  • How many cross-controlled stalls?

Just looking for estimate of what you learned vs. what I learned. I found that even 30 years ago they had stopped teaching some of the things I now consider "Basic"...

I pretty much did all that stuff every flight prior to my dual CC day, and did all the time once I solo’ed, but I am just going from memory so not hard numbers. I did all my training in a taildragger, solo’ed at 11.5 hours and got my Sport Pilot Certificate at 31.5 hours. My buddy started at the same time in the same plane and same instructor, took him 69 hours to get his certificate. That being said, I am totally OCD and studied pretty much nonstop the whole time, flew minimum 2 hours sessions 3-4 times a week. I take it very seriously and all of my training and post certificate flying is geared towards being competent in the backcountry flying.
 
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