{"id":5501,"date":"2019-08-22T09:04:55","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T16:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=5501"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:50","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:50","slug":"238-pitch-and-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/238-pitch-and-power\/","title":{"rendered":"#238 Pitch and Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

There may be no better symbol of how flight training is conducted than the old debate about what controls speed and what controls altitude.\u00a0 <\/span>Those who decided how they would teach others to fly must have been confounded by this question, but they pressed on, coming up with a method that the Whuffos who climbed up out of the slime of the ground-pounder could understand.<\/p>\n

\"\" The Tailwheel Town C 140 climbing. (Photo by Wendy Neidig)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPower controls altitude and pitch controls airspeed\u201d, they told us with didactic positism.\u00a0 <\/span>And you know what?\u00a0 <\/span>They could prove it.\u00a0 <\/span>But what they DIDN\u2019T tell us was that the opposite could also be proven.\u00a0 <\/span>To the Acme Flying School, \u201cIt all depends\u201d was a wholly unsatisfactory answer to the question of what does what.<\/p>\n

And you know what?\u00a0 <\/span>To this day, there are doubtless thousands of pilots who were taught that way and who still believe it to be so.\u00a0 <\/span>It must be remembered that the motivation for this explanation is the same as for the development of the nosewheel: to make flying easier to learn.\u00a0 <\/span>After all, the old truism of \u201cthey buy what they fly\u201d is very understandable. \u00a0 <\/span>But it\u2019s important to understand the truth.\u00a0 <\/span>Some will never figure it out.\u00a0 <\/span>The chasm that exists between them and the ones who figured out the truth is so deep as to be un-crossable.\u00a0 <\/span>Let\u2019s cross it, shall we?<\/p>\n

The Acme instructor, with the confidence that his three hundred or so hours can produce, will give us a demo.\u00a0 <\/span>In flight, he will increase the power and the airplane will climb.\u00a0 <\/span>Then he will push forward on the elevator and the airplane\u2019s airspeed will increase.\u00a0 <\/span>He has proved his point.\u00a0 <\/span>But, let\u2019s say that he wants to prove that the opposite is true.\u00a0 <\/span>He then increases the power, while maintaining the altitude with elevator.\u00a0 <\/span>Bingo!\u00a0 <\/span>The airspeed increases.\u00a0 <\/span>Then, he pushes forward on the control wheel and, Voila!\u00a0 <\/span>The altitude decreases.\u00a0 <\/span>He has just proven that, indeed, it all depends.<\/p>\n

\"\"The climbing turn is one of the most dangerous maneuvers a person can do because they can easily skid and over-G the airplane.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At Tailwheel Town, to fail to understand this relatively simple concept is to be unable to perform the maneuvers that we use.\u00a0 <\/span>Let\u2019s take \u201cSlaloms\u201d.\u00a0 <\/span>As we carve a turn across the center line, the speed with which we race down the runway is controlled by power.\u00a0 <\/span>We use the aircraft\u2019s attitude to tell us whether or not we are using enough of it.\u00a0 <\/span>If the pitch attitude of the aircraft is too high, we simply add power.\u00a0 <\/span>The speed increases and we must lower the nose to keep the airplane on the ground.\u00a0 <\/span>We are no longer struggling along, but are now at a roughly level pitch attitude.\u00a0 <\/span>With that added speed, our control inputs are more effective.\u00a0 <\/span>We gracefully carve our turns, alternately crossing the center line as we proceed like a snake, curving down the runway.\u00a0 <\/span>And because we know that, in this case, pitch controls altitude, we keep the airplane\u2019s main gear planted on the runway, with a little forward pressure on the elevator.\u00a0 <\/span>Because, if we fail to apply that pressure, the durn thing will very likely leap into the air!<\/p>\n

I once knew a very proficient pilot.\u00a0 <\/span>He\u2019d amassed thousands of hours and was an excellent pilot.\u00a0 <\/span>But I can\u2019t tell you how many times I heard him explain trim\u2026 \u201cOnce the aircraft is trimmed, if you add more power it will climb at the speed for which it is trimmed.\u00a0 <\/span>If you decrease power, it will descend at that same speed\u201d.\u00a0 <\/span>He was dead wrong.\u00a0 <\/span>I guess he\u2019d never performed a very simple experiment to find out the truth.<\/p>\n

\"\" Jerry (left) performs maintenance on his 172 as Brian looks on.<\/strong><\/p>\n

People have long heard me extol the talent of my pal, Jerry.\u00a0 <\/span>On those rare occasions that ol\u2019 Jerry shows up at Tailwheel Town, they would flock to him to ask him technical questions about the control of their airplanes.\u00a0 <\/span>Imagine their frustration, when Jerry would answer their questions with \u201cWell, it all depends\u2026\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>But you see, he just shared a great truth with them.\u00a0 <\/span>And the day when the fledgling flier learns how true it is that, \u201cit all depends\u201d, is the day when that flier begins to approach mastery of the aircraft.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There may be no better symbol of how flight training is conducted than the old debate about what controls speed and what controls altitude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[35,67,131,154,196],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5501"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}