Keyboard and Rudder: A blog on the Art of Flying: September 2017

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Gear Down and Welded

This week over on the Larry the Flying Guy channel on YouTube, I got a comment on this video implying that it's not necessary to check for gear down on a 172.

It may seem silly, since the 172 is a fixed gear aircraft, but checking it has two important purposes:

1. Building the habit for when you move up to a complex airplane.
2. In the stress of an emergency, we tend to fall back on ingrained habits.

Both of these points are related to the Law of Primacy: what we learn first we learn best. If you learn to check gear down from the beginning, it will be second nature to you when you learn to fly a retractable. If you don't learn to check gear down from the beginning, it makes it much more likely that you'll forget to check when you aren't in a 172 anymore. It takes no effort to "check" the gear in a 172 and it builds an extremely useful habit from the very beginning.

During the pre-landing GUMPS check (Gas, Undercarriage, Mixture, Props, Pumps, Switches—although there are dozens of variations on this that pilots will fight about endlessly, so don't get caught up in the specifics of my personal version), the callouts would sound something like this in a 172:

"Gas: Both."
"Undercarriage: Down and welded."
"Mixture: Full forward."
"Props: Full not there."
"Pumps: On."
"Switches: Landing light on."

Personally, I would even point next to the empty space next to the mixture control while saying, "Props: Full not there" because that's where the prop control would be in a plane that had one. That's for the same reason as the "Down and welded" callout for the landing gear: it builds the habit of checking.

Why "Down and welded?" Because the callout in a retractable would be "Down and locked." I'm being a bit humorous with the "welded" bit. If you want it to remain standardized, you can say, "Down and locked" even in a 172. (In that case, I would also change "Props: Full not there" to "Props: Full forward" too.)

In fact, that's what we do at my airline. When I was on the Dash-8, we had two variants. One had a specific indicator light and the other didn't. Nonetheless, the Before Start checklist intentionally still included that light and the required response was the same on both—even the one that didn't have the light.

In an emergency, the law of primacy also lays the foundation for your performance during stress. In a high workload situation, the brain falls back on what is most deeply ingrained in order to free up mental resources to deal with the other pressures. If you're in a retractable, you'll be glad your gear checks are deeply ingrained. Many, many gear up landings are caused because the pilot is preoccupied with something else and doesn't have "Gear: Down and locked" so burned into their mind that it is automatic.

I use automaticity in the ERJ-145 too: in visual conditions, I try to consistently be at 200 knots at glideslope intercept. That way I can say, "Gear down, flaps 22" all at once. The extension speed for 22 degrees of flaps is 200 knots, and if we lower the gear and put the flaps in at the same time, I don't have to remember that the gear is down but the flaps aren't yet. The less I have to fiddle around with configuration changes on final the better.

(It also works out nicely because when the autopilot lowers the nose to start following the glideslope down, the extra drag of the gear and flaps keeps it from picking up speed. At the right power setting, it even slows the plane down at just the right rate to be at Flaps 45 speed at just the right time. I try to be as lazy as possible because the secret to good airmanship often is doing less, not more. The less you do, the less you can screw up.)

If your instructor isn't teaching you to check the gear in any airplane, they're doing you a disservice for your future learning. Ask them why they don't, and tell them "Because you don't have to" is not the right answer.

See you next Wednesday!

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The author is an airline pilot, flight instructor, and adjunct college professor teaching aviation ground schools. He holds an ATP certificate with ERJ-145 and DHC-8 type ratings, as well as CFI, CFII, MEI, AGI, and IGI certificates, and is a Master-level participant in the FAA's WINGS program and a former FAASafety Team representative. He is on Facebook as Larry the Flying Guy, has a Larry the Flying Guy YouTube channel, and is on Twitter as @Lairspeed.

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Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Never too old to spread your wings

It has always been thought that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Unless you're dumber than a dog, this isn't actually true. (And as smart and wonderful as my dog is, he's still a dog who can't fly.)

Much modern neuroscience research has shown that the aging brain is nearly as capable of learning as the young brain is. In fact, it may be more important to keep learning later in life in order to keep the brain active in order to keep those "senior moments" from becoming a "senior lifetime".

The oldest flight student I ever had was 82 years old. Since he still kept himself mentally active and on the lookout for new things to learn, he was still a very sharp man. He had more difficulty getting in and out of the plane than he did getting into the lessons.

Last month, the BBC had an article called "The amazing fertility of the older mind" that goes why you can and should keep learning new things at any age. The key take away comes from a study by Denise Park at the Center for Vital Longevity at the University of Texas at Dallas:

Park first divided her 200 participants into groups and assigned them to a programme of different activities for 15 hours a week for three months. Some were offered the opportunity to learn new skills – quilting, digital photography, or both – that would challenge their long-term memory and attention as they followed complex instructions. Others were given more passive tasks, such as listening to classical music or completing crossword puzzles, or social activities – such as field trips to local sites of interest. At the beginning and the end of the three months, Parks also gave the participants a memory test.

Of all the participants, only the subjects learning the quilting or the photography enjoyed a significant improvement – with 76% of the photographers showing a higher score at the second memory test, for instance. A later brain scan found that this seemed to be reflected in lasting changes to circuits in the medial frontal, lateral temporal, and parietal cortex - areas associated with attention and concentration. Overall, the more active pastime of learning a new skill led to the more efficient brain activity you might observe in a younger brain, while the passive activities like listening to music brought no changes. Crucially, these benefits were long-lasting, lingering for more than a year after the participants had completed their course.

I've written many, many times about how flying enriches life. Now there's proof that it can enhance your brain, too. If quilting can bring positive and long-lasting changes to the brain, imagine how much more benefit would come from learning something so much more complex, like flying!

Even if medical issues keep you from getting in a cockpit, that doesn't totally prevent you from learning to fly. You can always fly with an instructor on board. You won't be able to solo, but you can still enjoy the experience of flight.

You can also use a home flight simulator. The nice thing about Microsoft Flight Simulator (or its successor, Prepar3d) or X-Plane is that there is no cost per hour, no drive to the airport, and no medical required. Plus you can try out things in a sim that you'd never do it the real world, which engages your brain even more.

The article wraps itself up in a way that I actually can't improve upon:

You may be surprised by how much you enjoy the challenge itself. "The participants got more confidence in themselves," Park says. One man went on to take photographs for his local newspaper; another woman had at first reluctantly attended the quilting class, despite having no real interest in the skill. She still wasn’t convinced by the end, but her successes had nevertheless inspired her to take up a new hobby – painting – instead. "I didn’t like quilting, but I had learnt how to learn," she told Park.

So why not give it a go yourself and attempt to stretch your mind beyond its comfort zone? As Priscilla Sitienei – the 90-year-old Kenyan great-great-grandmother – put it: "Education has no age limit."

See you next Wednesday!

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Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Even the best want to get better

Unless you're into chess, you probably don't know Wesley So. He is currently ranked second in the world, and from July 2016 until April 2017 didn't lose a single game of chess. Nonetheless, I was struck by what he said at the end of an interview on YouTube: "I still have a lot to improve upon."

Again, this guy is the second best in the entire world. In the six months before he said that, he had won two of the strongest tournaments in the world plus the United States championship. And yet he is still trying to get better.

But here's someone you probably have heard of no matter what you're into: Tiger Woods. I recently came across his newest book, The 1997 Masters: My Story by Tiger Woods and Lorne Rubenstein where he goes into his life before his breakthrough tournament, breaks down each day of it into a chapter of its own, then muses about his life afterward.

One of the striking things in it was that Tiger wasn't satisfied even after becoming the youngest person ever to win the Masters and having done it by such a huge margin of victory. After winning that major tournament, he was exempted from having to qualify for the next ten years. The next year, that rule was changed to five years, so when Mark O'Meara won it in 1998, he only got a five-year exemption.

That meant Tiger could relax for a while and no longer have to scratch and fight and work his tail off to be the best, since no matter what he would be able to play on the pro tour for a decade. That ten-year exemption was an opportunity to enjoy the fruits of all the hard work that got him there; a time he could use to go on autopilot and cruise along. But here's what Tiger said about the chance to get lazy:

[T]o have a job for ten years? That security? That was huge. It was a nice gift, a gift that [O'Meara] didn't get. If the Masters winner still got the ten years, he would have been exempt until he was eligible for the Champions Tour.... He would have to play a full schedule to make sure he did as well as possible and keep his status. [He] couldn't pick and choose the tournaments to play in. Meanwhile, I got peace of mind from having those ten years. I could take the time required to improve or even change my swing, if I wanted to. And I did want to, even after winning the Masters by twelve shots.
[The 1997 Masters: My Story, page 173, emphasis mine.]

Not everyone thought that was a good idea. After all, the swing he already had was good enough for him to dominate a field of the world's best golfers. Why would he take the risk of rebuilding what worked so well? Tiger responded to those critics:

I was criticized widely for wanting to change a swing that had won the Masters so decisively. But I didn't care that I had won by twelve shots, or that there was so much criticism. I knew what I needed to do, [coach] Butchie knew what I needed to do, and above all, I wanted to do it. I thrived on working on my swing. I was addicted to staying on the range for hours. A typical practice day for me was hitting six hundred balls, working on my short game and putting, playing, sometimes on my own, and working out in the gym for two or three hours. That was the life I wanted. I fed off the crowds at Augusta, and I was grateful for the support I got there, especially on Sunday as [my caddy] Fluff and I walked along. But I would have played the Masters with nobody there and with no hardware on the line.

We went to work. I wore myself out on the range, but I loved working so hard on my swing. I've always enjoyed spending hours and hours on the range, or studying film of my swing. It's been for one objective: to get the most out of myself. I wasn't in the game for the trophies. I was in it to find the answer to one question: How good can I be? [176-77]

All the work he put in gave him a pretty good answer: he would win 13 more major tournaments after that first Masters victory, spend over 13 years ranked #1, and the list of his other accomplishments alone has its own Wikipedia entry that is much longer than this entire post.

There is always something we could do to get better at whatever it is we do. I still strive to become a better aviator every day, even though there is no higher level of certificate to attain as an ATP. What does it mean to get better as an airline pilot? I'll go into that next week. Until then, see you next Wednesday!

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