{"id":5531,"date":"2019-09-05T09:07:20","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T16:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=5531"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:50","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:50","slug":"239-why-acme-training-is-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/239-why-acme-training-is-good\/","title":{"rendered":"#239 Why Acme Training is Good"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll bet THAT title surprised you.\u00a0 <\/span>The ol\u2019 curmudgeon claiming that the Acme Flying School\u2019s training is GOOD?<\/p>\n

The Tailwheel Town PA12 at the grass strip at the Madras Airport (Photo by Phil Comingore)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, sure, and, in case you haven\u2019t figured it out yet, I\u2019ll let you in on my thinking.\u00a0 <\/span>How many times do you think you\u2019ve heard me claim that a good pilot has to be able to perform a particular maneuver several different ways?\u00a0 <\/span>Plenty.\u00a0 <\/span>You see, especially when taking a checkride, we often have to fly the airplane the Acme way.\u00a0 <\/span>Most examiners will be required to test us according to the Acme way because that is how the FAA thinks airplanes should be flown.\u00a0 <\/span>It might be easy to fall back on how we teach\u2026 fly a tiny, low pattern, bank steeply, make a short approach.\u00a0 <\/span>But to be a good pilot, we have to be able to do it their way.\u00a0 <\/span>That means a huge pattern, long final and stabilized approach.\u00a0 <\/span>Heck, that should be easy!\u00a0 <\/span>But sometimes it\u2019s not. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember once I was inbound to a controlled airport and there was a guy in front of me.\u00a0 <\/span>I recognized that we were close, but it wasn\u2019t really a big deal to me.\u00a0 <\/span>It was to the controller.\u00a0 <\/span>Controllers aren\u2019t allowed to tell you to slow down, because they are rightly concerned lest you go hurtling out of control, stall and spin in to your death (What?\u00a0 <\/span>You didn\u2019t know that a stall is almost always followed by a spin?\u00a0 <\/span>Welcome to Acme!).\u00a0 <\/span>I was planning to slow down in order to keep the controller happy, but he beat me to it.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cexecute a 360 on final,\u201d he cleared.\u00a0 <\/span>I was a bit mad and I guess I decided that \u201cI\u2019d show him!:\u00a0 <\/span>So I rogered his clearance and did about an 80 degree bank and had my three-sixty done in a half a heartbeat.\u00a0 <\/span>I rolled out, smugly; \u201cThat wasn\u2019t what I had in mind,\u201d he muttered over the radio.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t remember how the rest of the approach went, but I do remember that he was a pretty good sport about it.<\/p>\n

Angela swoops in to Sisters in the Tailwheel Town PA12.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cPlaying well with others\u201d isn\u2019t something that we have to do only when at a tower-controlled airport.\u00a0 <\/span>There are plenty of times when our normal operations will only serve to terrify most other pilots.\u00a0 <\/span>In those cases, we simply need to fly like everyone else flies and do it well.\u00a0 <\/span>And that means that sometimes we have to fly like Acme\u2026 or just go somewhere else!<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll leave you with one warning.\u00a0 <\/span>If you believe that the primary rule of pattern flying is that you must always be able to make it to the runway in the event of an engine failure, then YOU will often fall victim to the Acme pilot\u2019s looooooong downwind which, if you are behind him, will lure you further than you would go and make it impossible to make it to the runway without power.\u00a0 <\/span>I have one piece of advice if you find yourself in that situation.\u00a0 <\/span>Climb and slow down.\u00a0 <\/span>A tailwheel town flyer can safely fly at minimum controllable airspeed and with only 300 feet of altitude above the surface.\u00a0 <\/span>Most Acme pilots will be terrified to do so and are probably incapable of it.\u00a0 <\/span>And climb.\u00a0 <\/span>After all, if at 300 AGL you can\u2019t make it to the runway, more altitude will surely make that return possible. I never said Acme Training is all bad\u2026 it just needs a bit of tweaking from time to time!<\/p>\n

Happy Swooping!<\/p>\n

Brian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ll bet THAT title surprised you.\u00a0 The ol\u2019 curmudgeon claiming that the Acme Flying School\u2019s training is GOOD? Well, sure, and, in case you haven\u2019t figured it out yet, I\u2019ll let you in on my thinking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5534,"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":[17,24,35,67],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5531"}],"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=5531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}