Grumman Mallard Accident WA Australia Day

General stuff that gets thrown about when Pilots shoot the Breeze.
ozloadie
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Grumman Mallard Accident WA Australia Day

Postby ozloadie » Sat Jan 28, 2017 10:06 pm

A tragic start to the new year, but maybe some good can arise from the CRM lessons to be learnt.

There is an idiom used in the SAR industry both military and civil which says " 'The rescue is not complete until you are watching the reruns on the video with a cup of coffee at the debrief."

This applies also to aerial displays and shows.

Planning, rehearsals and practice are all critical prerequisites to the conduct of all of these activities and time spent in these disciplines is not wasted.

Late additions and rushed processes need to be slowed down to the pace required to examine their makeup to the same standard as the rest of the activity has been prepared.

A new type endorsement is a minimum experience qualification and not neccesarily familiar with all of the circumstances one might encounter, particularly at low level with an aircraft that can be heavy and not immediately responsive to hard manoeuvres.

Any aircraft with a boat hull, and this includes helicopters, will require a marked increase in power through a tight turn and aligning the nose with a definite horizon throughout the turn to get the most effective use of that added power and no loss of altitude and no or minimum loss of airspeed.

Coupled with this profile for efficiency is the balance of the manoeuvre throughout, otherwise the efforts with the power and profile will be decayed, airspeed will be lost and a rate of descent will be incurred.

There is an additional factor of the boathull profile masking the laminar flow of air over some of the control surfaces in an unusual or extreme attitude. This adds to the decay or delay of effectiveness of any control or power input and increases the disadvantge of the descent rate that is incurred, meaning the negatives have been increased with little altitude and time availabe at low level.


A Fleet Air Arm instructor once advised me that whatever type you learn on or qualify later, spend some time at 4,000 AGL or more and throw it around a bit and try different configurations to see what the aircraft will do. That gives you plenty of height to recover by.

Partial and full control deflection at slow speed would be a good indication of what to expect if you were required to do so, particularly elevators, observing the time and height required for the airspeed to obtain a useful quantity, however with the safety margin in 4,000 ft altitude available during this practice.

Shoving the nose down in a big aeroplane is not something that everyone is comfortable with, but necessary to break the stall and the quickest way to increase airspeed.

We all are normally shown what effect those control inputs have on our training aircraft, but how often are these explored on advancing to bigger and heavier types.

This knowledge may be a critical resource one day for major engine failures, as effective use of your controls could be the only resource left available (EFATO's good indicator!).

Steve
ozloadie
Gold Wings
Gold Wings
Posts: 54
Joined: Oct 2010

Re: Grumman Mallard Accident WA Australia Day

Postby ozloadie » Sun Aug 27, 2017 11:44 am

Update - ATSB file number AO-2017-013 - still active and pending - comments indicating a low level stall.
Steve
ozloadie
Gold Wings
Gold Wings
Posts: 54
Joined: Oct 2010

Re: Grumman Mallard Accident WA Australia Day

Postby ozloadie » Thu May 17, 2018 1:16 am

Still active.

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