Flying Turns

[@alansaunders1407]

Thanks Steve. It's good for all of us to practice the basics, rather than aimlessly boring holes in the sky. Cheers from downunder. 😁

[@rv12sg]

As winter starts to set in up here, I am jealous that you are at the start of your warm season.

[@alansaunders1407]

@rv12sg 🌞

[@jimmydulin928]

Good job with the coordination in the turns. My problem with holding altitude in turns, high altitude orientation for instrument flight, is that they are horrible energy management for low altitude work like takeoff and landing. As a crop duster, I understand what the airplane wants to do in every turn, as Wolfgang keeps encouraging us. It wants to lower its nose to maintain trimmed airspeed rather than altitude. This is low altitude orientation where horizontal limitations are as great as vertical limitations. Airspeed, and not altitude, is life down here and altitude maintenance at any cost does cost lives. How do crop dusters make greater than 60 degree banks a thousand times a day without stall or even excessive fatigue? It is our legs that fatigue, not our arms at 1 g 70 degree banks. The free ground effect energy of the six inches to three feet swath run and pitching to just over, not well over, the wire or tree gives us zoom reserve airspeed for the turn back into the field 50 feet upwind (wind management.) A slight turn downwind will give us a bit more room unless headwind is enough to reduce radius of turn back. As soon as we turn back toward the field, we release back pressure on the stick. We turn steeper than we think necessary to be sure we don't end up putting a down wing into a wire getting aligned with the crop row. The nose will go down under the target unless we take some tuck out, but not much wing load... maybe 1.1 g. We level the wing before pull up to arrive again at six inches to three feet in the field. OK, not necessary in the pattern. However, the airplane trimmed for Vy for takeoff will decelerate below Vy in the turns crosswind and downwind if the pilot pulls back on the yoke. Exceeding the angle of attack is when the stall happens. A pilot pulling on the yoke is what causes it. Why are we teaching students to stall in the pattern where it is generally fatal?

[@jeff11030]

Takes me back to my early training. Thank you. What are going to do next time?

[@rv12sg]

Gosh Jeff, I never know myself. I'm anxious to go somewhere though. The problem now is that the nights fall below 32 degrees and I do not have a preheater. In wintertime I usually post videos on aviation topics that don't require me to fly.

[@manifestgtr]

45 degrees is definitely where stick and rudder issues start showing up. At that point, the plane starts wanting to tip over, shallow out, descend. Those are the turns that I have to hit every once in a while to make sure they stay clean. I don’t go to 60 degrees toooo often as it just seems a little huge…I dunno, maybe I should. Under normal circumstances, you don’t really steepen past 30 degrees too often but I guess too much focus on “normal circumstances” can leave you ill-equipped when the “abnormal circumstance” decides to come knockin…

[@rv12sg]

For me, both 45 and 60 degree banked turns are good practice in power and pitch management. In the video I allowed a loss of several hundred feet in altitude. Not up to the standard I demand, so it's back to the practice arena for me.

[@dustindickerson]

Steam gauges on glass panel? Wrong in so many ways!

[@rv12sg]

Oh no Dustin. I’ve tried it both ways. Can’t beat the look and ease of scanning the old tried and true gauges. 😂

[@dustindickerson]

@@rv12sgI get it. I used to think the same way. Learned on steam gauges but converted and would never go back now. Took hours to convert though. Scan is reduced and way more information is available in smaller scan. Cool thing about garmin though you can have it either way!