"Rick" wrote:

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 22:30:11 -0600, "Lady Pilot"
wrote:

Have you flown a Metro?

Yes, a Metro III for several thousand hours as a regional airline
captain and a Metro II for a few hundred flying freight and mail.

I apologize, I re-read your last post and I got a wrong impression on how
you worded the way you "stay focused on your trim".

As I said in my last post to Oz, there are many aircraft, just not the Metro
that has had this problem with the trim installed in reverse.

Please accept my apologies,

LP

Document?

Google it or ask the next Metro driver you run into.

You obviously are not a pilot of an aircraft.

Silly woman.

All aircraft I have ever
flown, you trim up to take off the pressure of the yoke (control column).

I guess someone else sets the trim for you then. They probably set it
nose low so you won't over-rotate and drag the tail or pitch up and
stall or as soon as you lift off. That is a good way to teach students
the use of trim without risking much besides wheelbarrowing down the
runway.

You trim for speed. If the trim is set too nose high before takeoff,
as the aircraft accelerates it will tend to increase pitch and stick
forces pushing the nose down. The opposite will occur if the trim is
set too nose low, as in the case Oz described.

Generally the
trim in motion indicator is dinging throughout the initial climb ...

What????

The Metro has a sonalert in the overhead that beeps whenever the trim
motor is running. Trim on a Metro is very powerful due to the large CG
range and a runaway trim can very guickly create very high stick
forces so the feds required a trim in motion signal to alert the crew
that the trim motor is running. Since it is used so much during
takeoff and landing it sometimes frightens passengers, especially on
takeoff when they suddenly hear what they believe to be an alarm going
off in the cockpit.

Please elaborate!

What more do you need?



Rick

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 23:21:48 -0600, "Lady Pilot"
wrote:


Please accept my apologies,

No problem.

Just be careful about drawing broad conclusions about flying from too
little information from too shallow a database and you will be a much
better airplane driver as well as technical analyst. 8-)

Years ago, while an instructor, I was also an APC, an accident
prevention counselor, and I remember a humbling conversation with an
FAA inspector who was a bit annoyed at my rapid conclusion that
someone or other had done something so foolish as to be beyond
comprehension and forgiveness.

He picked up a coffee cup from his desk and asked what I saw. I told
him he was holding a cup of coffee with a spoon in it.

He showed me the sand in the cup as he removed the fork.

Rick

"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

Capetanios Oz wrote:
Yeah, CASA is the body here, they are pretty tough absolute min for
PPL is 40hrs but usually 50-60.
Night VFR is not required but an endorsement, pretty valuable in Oz
with long hops.

That's one thing I don't understand about a Class I pilot's license. I feel
you really need to be qualified at night also to be able to hold a
certificate.

How many people would get a drivers license for just daytime only. And how
many would cheat and come home a little late...

LP

"Rick" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 23:21:48 -0600, "Lady Pilot"
wrote:


Please accept my apologies,

No problem.

Just be careful about drawing broad conclusions about flying from too
little information from too shallow a database and you will be a much
better airplane driver as well as technical analyst. 8-)

I don't feel like what I said was drawing any conclusions but the basic
principle I was taught by my flight instuctors. They always said, "make
little corrections, and then see what happens...". It was repeated over and
over to me until I became an above average pilot. As an instructor, tell me
what my instructors told me that was wrong?

Years ago, while an instructor, I was also an APC, an accident
prevention counselor, and I remember a humbling conversation with an
FAA inspector who was a bit annoyed at my rapid conclusion that
someone or other had done something so foolish as to be beyond
comprehension and forgiveness.

I am never quick to judge a pilot for any mishaps! I don't know where you
came up with that conclusion. I was just parroting what I was taught and
why the pilot in question made a few errors in judgement, in my opinion.

LP

Capetanios Oz wrote:
On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 23:37:57 -0600, "Lady Pilot" wrote:


Capetanios Oz wrote:
Yeah, CASA is the body here, they are pretty tough absolute min for
PPL is 40hrs but usually 50-60.
Night VFR is not required but an endorsement, pretty valuable in Oz
with long hops.

That's one thing I don't understand about a Class I pilot's license. I
feel
you really need to be qualified at night also to be able to hold a
certificate.
I think you misunderstood me LP,

Nah, I understood...I was digressing. :-)

My son is still a student pilot and will solo in another few weeks if
his fast progress continues.

So I'm assuming he has around 40-50 hours by now?

Yeah, I agree, but plenty of pilots here just fly around the training
area or not far out of it, just for the fun of flying.
Sorta like an expensive trip to the fun park :-)

Hell, I did that for years with a student license. Since I owned the
airplanes and my flight instructor worked for my company and would write me
off any time I needed to fly! hehee It actually turned into a couple of
legal battles with me bended the rules like I did. But hey, I don't write
the laws, I just bend them. LOL!

LP

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

Capetanios Oz wrote:
OK LP, I found it
http://www.billzilla.org/flying3.html

Okay, before I have too much to drink tonight, I will try to wane techinal
on this incident.

Your friend Bill, went along with Dave on this test flight of the Metro.

Dave took off and didn't remember the cardinal rule of taking off in an
aircraft. Let me explain this in simple terms. When you take off in an
aircraft, before you ever take off from the runway, you trim the nose up.
In my airplanes, this meant rolling back the trim a couple of times. In the
story, the pilot repeatedly did this until the aircraft was out of control.

Let me just shorten this whole scenario down to this:

If this same thing would have happened to me (if I were the pilot), my
flight instructor who is a true "test pilot" would have questioned me why I
kept fighting the trim. The first instructions you get as a pilot is to
make *small* corrections, if they don't work, you know something is
definitely wrong. The pilot should have know better, if he was truly
*qualified* as a test pilot. Your friend Bill probably saved his life.
Although I admit that the Metro is a very fast aircraft, a real *test* pilot
would have known how to react to this situation.

LP (Maybe someday I will tell you of some of my aviation disasters)

Seems it's normal to trim a Metro nose up after takeoff.
http://www.billzilla.org/aviation.htm

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 16:49:25 +1100, Capetanios Oz wrote:

On Sun, 16 Nov 2003 22:30:35 -0600, "Lady Pilot"
wrote:

That's bull****, Ozzy. Preflight for a small aircraft is at neutral,
then
you trim accordingly at take-off. If it goes the opposite way, any
pilot
who flies "by the seat of his pants" would know not to keep trimming the
damn aircraft all the way to the ground. Was the your son, flight
student?

Would you trim the sails for the opposite direction and not figure out
what
is wrong? Pretty much the same thing to me...

LP





Oz1...of the 3 twins.

I welcome you to crackerbox palace,We've been expecting you.

On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 00:09:07 -0600, "Lady Pilot"
wrote:


Dave took off and didn't remember the cardinal rule of taking off in an
aircraft. Let me explain this in simple terms. When you take off in an
aircraft, before you ever take off from the runway, you trim the nose up.

In transport category aircraft you trim according to the CG location.
This was not a single engine Cessna.

If this same thing would have happened to me (if I were the pilot), my
flight instructor who is a true "test pilot" would have questioned me why I
kept fighting the trim.

Any captain flying for an airline, especially regionals, can be called
out to test fly aircraft released by maintenance before they are put
back on the line. These are not engineering test flights like you see
on the Wings Channel, these are operational tests and any captain with
a type rating is qualified to make them and does.

The first instructions you get as a pilot is to
make *small* corrections, if they don't work, you know something is
definitely wrong. The pilot should have know better, if he was truly
*qualified* as a test pilot. Your friend Bill probably saved his life.

The pilot not flying, the captain in this case, has a lot of things to
do during the takeoff and intiail climb phase and watching the FO trim
is not one of them. As soon as the FO described his problem the
captain sorted it out and recovered. He did what he was paid to do and
did it well. He did not do what he was paid and trained to do before
the engines started.

This is not a light aircraft like you are used to. The trim is used to
remove excess control pressure as it develops. The trim is in near
constant motion as the aircraft accelerates very rapidly. The captain
would not know that the FO was having problems until it showed up on
the flight director or the FO said something. As the airplane
accelerated in the descent the stick load increased rapidly to the
point where the only thing the FO could think about was the pull he
had to put on the stick ...

Sorry, LP but you are way out of your depth on this one. Come back and
read what you wrote here in about a thousand hours and let us know if
you would write the same thing.


Although I admit that the Metro is a very fast aircraft, a real *test* pilot
would have known how to react to this situation.

Get over this "test pilot" thing. He did "react" to the situation and
recovered.

Rick

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 23:48:04 -0600, "Lady Pilot"
wrote:


I don't feel like what I said was drawing any conclusions but the basic
principle I was taught by my flight instuctors. They always said, "make
little corrections, and then see what happens...".

They were teaching you the basics of piloting and aircraft opertion.
They were not instructing you on a type rating on a transport category
aircraft. There is a big difference in technique and purpose.

You are still learning to read, you are not quite ready to critique
Hemingway.

. As an instructor, tell me what my instructors told me that was wrong?

For the aircraft you were flying, the conditions and your abilities,
nothing. That does not mean that have learned everything about flying
every airplane in every configuration and condition and can
pontificate on what that crew did wrong.

I am never quick to judge a pilot for any mishaps! I don't know where you
came up with that conclusion.

I came up with it from this statement:

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

I was just parroting what I was taught and
why the pilot in question made a few errors in judgement, in my opinion.

"Just parroting" what an instructor tells an ab initio student and
applying that to an entirely different circumstance in a very
different type of aircraft is a large error in judgement and that is
not just an opinion.

Don't just parrot., try and learn what it means and why so you can at
least paraphrase it.

Rick