Cunnamulla fatal 14/4/19

What the hell does all this crap about looking after cows have to do with this accident ?

Really some of you guys need to get some fresh air and stay off the computer !

What the hell does all this crap about looking after cows have to do with this accident ?

 

Really some of you guys need to get some fresh air and stay off the computer !

I won't cover the lot here, but managing stock starts with the basic instinctive result that if you move to the left the animal will move to the right, you move to the right the animal moves to the left, you move towards the mob, the animals walk away from you. Takes a few years to do that with multiple animals, but they remain calm. If you try to rush it and they become stressed, they panic and are likely to charge off in any direction.

next time I have to get 300 ewes and lambs into our yards you will have to come over and show me how it's done.

I have a bitch of a time with 3 trained sheep dogs a quad bike and a couple of helpers.

Then I'm only a FARMER

300 sheep's there's your problem:oh yeah:

300 sheep's there's your problem:oh yeah:

1000 ewes, truck no dogs, drove them for three hours, yarded them myself. Who cares. Air mustering is the issue here.

1000 ewes, truck no dogs, drove them for three hours, yarded them myself. Who cares. Air mustering is the issue

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Just curious, what speed does a Foxbat stall at with just one occupant?

 

I would expect you would have to be both very slow and pulling hard to manage a stall.

Personally, I don't really like including bank angle in discussions of stall speed, too simplistic and often misleading because it only considers the special case of a level turn. I much prefer speed and wing loading and looking at the performance envelope where available. The problem with that is they are nearly always presented at MTOW.

However I accept in low level operation a level turn is more likely than decending, but what about a climbing turn? You could be at 50kn, 30 degrees and then pull 2g to climb and get yourself in real trouble.

I did wonder what real world experience Foxbat drivers had, one up, depending on the balance they could be really hard to get a distinct stall brake. I don't know?

These days, one could use AoA audible alarms. The Dynon Skyview pitot tube system does a fine job alerting me in my headset, whilst my eyes are scanning outside the cockpit. No need for graphs, flight envelope calculations... you don’t even need to see your ASI!

These extracts are from the book “The Killing Zone” by Paul A. Craig

Figure 4.3 is a general Load Factor Chart which complements Downunder's Foxbat Chart post #33

Note Paul Craig's disclaimer about turns other than level turns, which is complemented by BlurE's reference post $34

Once you include climbing and descending and steep, often compounding turns (i.e. turns which become sharper after entry) to follow a beast which had done a 90 degree turn, or doubled back you are well up into the top end of cropduster skills.

Low Altitude Applications

Bird spotting, powerline patrol, pollution monitoring, wildlife census…..have one thing in common: A pilot is on the job and that job requires attention to be paid to something on the ground. ……………They must be able to safely split their attention between flying the aircraft and doing the job……….that pilot must do two jobs at once very well. ……The pilots that do these jobs are usually not beginners.

Low-Altitude – Personal Flying

This category of accidents is the largest of the three maneuver accident groups. In fact 68.3% of fatal maneuvering accidents took place on what was classified as a personal flight. I would like to think that in its purest sense an “accident” is something that just happens and it is mostly beyond any person’s power to prevent. Based on that definition, the “accidents” in this category are really not accidents at all. They are deliberate acts that defy safety rules, aircraft limitations, and good old common sense. I will continue to use the word accident throughout this section but you know how I feel about them.

Figure 4.1 illustrates all the maneuvering accidents that took place from 1983 through 2000. The accidents are plotted against the flight hours of experience the pilot had when the accident took place. These are all the accidents together, so fatal – as well as those with serious injury, and even a few with no injury – are mixed in. You can see the pattern that has been present in past evaluations of flight experience data. There is a zone where most accidents occur. The span of experience from 50 to 150 hours is “off the chart”.

Avoiding low-altitude steep turns and low aerobatics all together is the safest course of action. But what is it about these maneuvers that become deadly at low altitude? Why does the airplane seem to fall out from under a pilot when in these maneuvers?

The airplane’s wings must provide life to counteract all “down” forces. Weight or gravity is the “down” force that we easily understand, but while flying other forces come into play. These additional forces can team up with gravity and reduce the effectiveness of lift.

Figure 4.2 illustrates two airplanes in flight.

The airplane on the left is flying straight and level. The lift exactly opposes weight. These lift and weight vectors are fairly simple, but things get complicated when the airplane turns.

The airplane on the right is in a medium bank turn. The first problem is that the lift vector is now leaned over, in the turn. Between the two airplane diagrams is a comparison of the “effective” lift. You can see that when the lift vector is leaned over, we lose effective lift because the lift vector no longer opposed weight. So in a turn we lose lift.

Meanwhile, the turn will produce centrifugal force, This is the swaying force you feel in your car when you take a fast turn. Centrifugal forces join forces with gravity to form a residual load. This is more commonly called the G force. The actual force of the earth’s gravity does not get stronger when you turn, but when you add gravity and centrifugal force together it places an extra load on the wings. From the wing’s point of view it is being asked to carry a greater load.

The wing is being asked to carry a greater load at the exact moment when lift is reduced and the wing is less able to carry a greater load. Something has to give. The accelerated stall takes place. Ordinarily the stall speeds are painted on the airspeed indicator. The slow end of the white arc is the stall speed with flaps down and the slow end of the green arc is the stall speed with the flaps up. But in a turn the colors of the airspeed indicator can no longer be trusted.

The airplane can and will stall even though the airspeed is well within the green arc. It stalls faster than the indicator says it should and that’s why it’s called an accelerated stall.

Figure 4.3 is a chart of the load factors. You can see that at shallow banks, the G force is not much above 1G. But when a pilot makes a 60 degree level turn, the G force jumps to 2Gs. That means a 2000 pound airplane now effectively weights 4000 pounds in the turn. More importantly the wings must support 4000 pounds. That is a great deal to ask – to get 4000 pounds of lift from the wings of a 2000 pound airplane. The wings probably will not be able to do it and lift is lost, the airplane stalls.

The average busy pilot won't be looking at the airspeed indicator in many situations. Bear in mind the stall occurrence is a wing's angle to the relative airflow thing, NOT it's speed and the elevator control is what will change the wing's AoA. The pilot will bring on the stall and pulling the stick back in an emergency is a natural response same as raising the nose to stretch a glide. A 90 degree balanced turn is impossible as the lift needed is infinite but you can bank to vertical and beyond with everything centred in other maneuvers like barrell rolls and loops.. The stall warning (audible) is a useful tool if you know the margin it's set above the stall speed. It's usually conservative and may be 9 knots but once it's actuated you don't know the margin unless it's going on and off constantly.. The statistics definitely show the lethal nature of flying near the stall boundary. I say again the commonly accepted method of "dealing with " stall training is ineffective and totally inadequate to what a pilot may well have happen to him/her in a real life situation. We can and must do better in this area. Nev

Who's to say the Cunnamulla lad didn't clip a tree when he was looking out for steers? There's a number of reports itemising aircraft coming into contact with vegetation when mustering.

Bottom line is, most of these style of mustering fatals involve youngsters who just don't have the experience to know when it's no longer safe to watch the steers, and when it's time to concentrate on flying.

The problem often lies in diverting ones attention for an extended period, to ground-based objects that present a different angle on movement, as compared to flying through a mass of air that is quite often in itself, also moving, but in a different direction.

Figure 4.3 is a general Load Factor Chart which complements Downunder's Foxbat Chart post #33

Sorry about that; thought it was.

The high accident rates we see under the category of 'runway-loss of control' (R-LOC), can be linked into these other low level accidents which are associated with LL manoeuvring for operational reasons or for show. I believe it can be traced back to student pilots not really being pushed sufficiently to maintain balance through flight phases where speeds are low and angles of bank are changing and high. We teach students to input controls in an order, eg for turns it's aileron>rudder>elevator>power. That's ok for the very initial stuff, but we should be trying to teach closely co-ordinated inputs, at a very early stage, such that we don't need to experience aileron drag, or slip, or speed loss before 'correcting.'

I know that many instructors are not happy to 'pause' a students' training while the skill of balanced flying is practised, but it can be done by simply doing 5 minutes of concentrated manoeuvring during each lesson - perhaps at beginning or completion. Try the students ability to roll 30 deg L or R, then reverse the turn, then reverse the turn and so on. It should involve constantly needing to vary rudder pressures to keep with the aileron inputs. If doing it at low speeds, then power must be increased as the control inputs begin, and reduced on roll out. Elevator inputs as required to maintain altitude. Do these exercises above 1000ft for starters, then reduce to 500 agl so that there is a bit more reality in the work. Having some scenery in view creates the pressure needed to test the students skills.

When a student can confidently manoeuvre the aircraft without 'fishtailing' it all over the sky, then they will be able to recover from those ubiquitous 'wind gusts' that cause so many R-LOC accidents. It also arms the student with the ability and confidence to 'fly' the aircraft to a safe arrival - rather than reverting to a state of 'fatalistic resignation' and losing it completely.

The aircraft doesn't 'know' that it is flying at 50KIAS and 200 AGL - only the pilot knows that. A student with good basic slow flying skills will become a safe qualified pilot and far less likely to lose control of their aircraft near the ground.

But back to subject of mustering. None of the above will train a pilot to go out and do operational low flying where 2 jobs are being done together. That takes a lot more skill and maturity, and needs to be learned from a skilled instructor / pilot.

That's why I've constantly advocated doing figure 8's with appropriate power additions and reductions. Rudder active exercises with power adjustments for speed maintenance or additions when needed to protect stall margins.. Anticipation should be automatic rather than 'fixing" a situation that shouldn't have developed. Rudder, aileron , coordination also should be automatic and intuitive rather than looking at a slip ball constantly. This is true seat of the pants flying and the Plane should be an extension of yourself. Awareness of stick position (for that particular aircraft and configuration)at all times will provide reduced or even eliminate stall risk. Nev

Safety message from the CEO

RAAus’ dials have been in the green for some time now. I talk often about our three key metrics. Organisational safety, membership growth and financial health. Of late though, we’ve experienced some rough running with our safety metric.

We’ve had a serious accident in Tasmania, where both members walked away following some quick work in the cockpit to get the plane back on the ground: a broken ankle and some cuts and bruises were the result.

A Victorian pilot while conducting a test flight encountered engine trouble, he made it safely back onto the ground in a nearby paddock: minor injuries upon landing were the result.

We had a fatal accident in remote Queensland on a property as part of a mustering activity.

And just last weekend, two members in Wagga, NSW, using all of their skills, got an aircraft back on the ground safely after an engine fire in flight.

In all of the press reports the headlines read along the lines of “lucky to escape”, “crash landing” etc etc. But generally, we know better than that. In three of the four incidents, pilot skill and training handled the inflight situation.

Is the CEO saying that the unfortunate cunnamulla pilot didn't have skill or training or am I reading it wrong.

He may not know Thruster.