"Rick" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 22:23:02 -0600, "Lady Pilot"
wrote:


Oz, I really doubt that your friend could have known about the trim in a
preflight unless one guy was at the controls and the other guy outside
judging his movement on the trim vs. the elevator. ...
But you can't normally preflight a trim.

All the captain had to do was look to his right and down at the trim
indicator to see that the aircraft was trimming nose down. That is
what he did and how he knew what was wrong.

No, that's not what the website described. The trim was installed
incorrectly, opposite...so when you trim up you are going down and visa
versa. When I used to take off in my several different aircraft, before I
even left the runway, I would give the trim wheel a couple of quick turns,
just to see if it lifted the nose and I knew I was ready for take-off. If
the trim didn't respond accordingly, I would abort the takeoff and go rattle
my mechanics.

The trim is always preflighted. Trim operation and movement as
displayed by the trim indicator is part of the prestart checkist. The
switch is on the yoke, it is operted by thumb and the indicator shows
the direction and range of travel. Control pressure tells which way
you need to trim.

Yes, I just happened to talk to a very experienced pilot tonight and brought
up this subject. He says Metro's have electric trims, and they are a little
harder to *feel* like a manual trim that I'm used to flying with, but none
the less, he agrees with me that the pilot in question is probably an
*average* pilot, but he has a **long** way to go to become a "test pilot".


The FO thought like you do. He could only operate the switch in the
direction he was trained and used to.

Excuse me? I wasn't trained like that at all, to the contrary!!!

I'm the one who brought up the pilot's incompetence. I've owned and been
General Manager of three 135 Air Taxi Operations. If this guy was one of
my pilots, I would have a talk with the DO (Director of Operations) and have
the guy reviewed. On the other hand if he was my DO, I would seriously be
looking around for someone to replace him. But that never had to happen,
because my DO had over 50,000 hours flight time.

He fixated on what he felt and
what he was used to doing, rather than stopping to take a look at the
indicator he ignored on the preflight checks.

That's what I was trying to communicate in the first place.

LP