On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 23:34:42 -0600, "Lady Pilot"
wrote:



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.

The website states the - trim switches - were installed backwards.
They are rocker switches and mechanically fit either way, they are
installed so that thumb pressure on the forward is nose down and aft
is nose up. The indicator will read actual stab position ... it is a
flying stab, that is the whole thing moves, there are no tabs.





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.

You don't do that in heavier aircraft, You had better be hands on the
stick and power levers anyway and you certainly aren't "testing" the
trim.

I'm the one who brought up the pilot's incompetence.

Ouch, that's quite a condemnation of a pilot who was faced with a
problem he probably never experienced before,and was not trained to
handle as it is not a common simulator exercise. By the sound of it he
was saturated at that point. Metro FO's are not always the highest
time sticks on the field and they generally have little time in an
aircraft with the performance of a Metro. Most of us transitioning
from light twins or Beech 18's spent quite a few hours a long way
behind the tailcone before we caught up with that airplane. Its
takeoff performance light was awesome even by jet standards.

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.

Ouch again, a bit of training is called for but if he was competent
enough to hire it is a bit unfair to write off his perfomance as
incompetence. He was not trained or experienced enough to handle the
situation and what happened is more a failure of the standardization
procedures and CRM. The incident started before the aircraft left the
ground.

Log book hours don't guaranty teaching skills or an understanding of
the crew concept. As a matter of fact CRM evolved because the industry
was populated with a bunch of war surplus relics with tens of
thousands of hours who were so bad at working with the FO and FE that
it was dangerous. Did you ever hear the old saying, "gear up - flaps
up - shut up" ... That came out of the cockpit where the guy on the
left had 50 thousand hours and knew it all until the day he bored a
hole in the ground because the new kid was too incompetent to listen
to.

Rick