Helicopter Flight Information
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Helicopter Flight Information |
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Piston Engine Over-Torque? You never heard of that!Don't feel alone, most students have not, it is the hand-me-down effect of inexperienced flight training. If you have not heard of an over-torque with regard to the aircraft you have been flying, your training may be lacking. One of my former students had come to a school where I was checking pilots who either were having difficulties, or were in an advanced stage of training. He had asked that I complete a flight review, and give him some advanced training on cross-wind departures and approaches. It had been two years since I had flown with him. Much to my dismay, on the initial departure, where there should be no significant change in aircraft attitude, he pushed the nose over and pulled the collective. The manifold pressure exceeded the limit of what we were permitted for the current conditions/configurations. He never looked at the manifold pressure, and he had no idea of what it was. He had just experienced an over-torque, and was completely unaware. I was visiting at another flight school, and was preparing for a flight when a student who I had asked to fuel the aircraft for me asked, "do you want it topped?" I asked what he normally did, he stated that they always topped the aircraft regardless. I inquired about weight and balance, and he stated that they did not worry about it. Well guess what? If you don't worry about weight and balance, and you always top the aircraft, you aren't worrying about over-torques either are you? Why, well that is simple, because you are getting a crappy education. Learning the location of limitations information, how to compute weight and balance, and to use checklists, doesn't do any good if pilots don't actually utilize the information. Many times I have observed students/pilots read a checklist but never actually check anything. Know limitations, but never observe them. These habits do not make good pilots, but they do exhibit school mill flight training. Don't let yourself get caught up in these practices! I have long maintained that pilots need to be trained in a way that the basic principles of what they do can be used from one aircraft to the other in a seamless way. I was doing a check out of a Flight Instructor I had just hired; while doing his warm up, he robotically completed the checklist without actually checking what he was reading; he pointed at each of three instruments and stated, "green, green, green". It became instantly obvious that he had only flown a single make of aircraft. We just happened to be flying the same aircraft he had trained in. A better, more appropriate statement would be, "Instruments green, pressures and temperatures normal, fuel ok". Now that would work in any aircraft, especially those that have more than three gauges as many do, and I would know that he had at least looked at his fuel, right? As a flight instructor, if you had doubt as to whether or not your student had actually looked at the instruments, you could easily cover them and ask what they read. Be safe out there!!
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