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