On Jul 17, 2007, at 6:43 PM, David VanHorn wrote: >> >> - Flight controls FREE and CORRECT. >> >> Sounds like he didn't really give 'em a good yank during the standard >> pre-flight. What a moron. > > Happens all the time. A friend of mine crashed a very nice model > helicopter that way. > His "preflight" was to wiggle all the sticks at once, and see that > everything was moving. > Unfortunately, two servos were in the wrong plugs. > > They wiggled, but his ability to hover was significantly impaired. Hey your friend might like the old standard helicopter joke... since it probably applies to his situation... or perhaps he won't... but I'll share anyway... ----- You know what helicopters are, don't you? Thousands of spare parts, hovering in tight formation. ----- Unfortunately no sympathy from here. There's two parts to that checklist item, and he missed the CORRECT part of that check. He did it wrong. By only "wiggling" he only did the FREE part of the equation. Hopefully he didn't hurt himself. Not a helo pilot here, but in a fixed wing aircraft, grab yoke normally with only your right hand, and stick your thumb straight up. Twist toward the left, counter-clockwise, the direction your thumb points. Thumb in the air, points to the left... left aileron should have gone UP. If it went DOWN, you're screwed and someone cross-rigged the airplane and apparently is trying to kill you. Wash, rinse, repeat with left hand on its normal position on the left side of the yoke. Left thumb up, pointing toward right side of aircraft, means right aileron should deflect UP when you turn toward where your thumb is pointing. And you MUST move the control surfaces and LOOK at both sides during each of these to make sure they're "CORRECT"... (the side opposite your thumb had better go down when the correct side goes UP) or you didn't complete the pre-flight correctly. Period. (By the way, the thumb trick works in a stick airplane too... grab stick with right hand, stick thumb out. Push stick that direction, and that aileron should go up. Same with left hand. Then give the stick a pull and make sure the damn pin is in. Some also advocate doing the "stick swish" in a big old circle to make sure you're "FREE" of everything. That or just to give the guy in the other seat (if you have dual sticks) bruises on his legs. Heh heh. Spread 'em, dude... whack whack whack. Good negative reinforcement/feedback for them not allowing their legs to clamp around your control stick! I was always whacked by my instructor in the Schweitzer-233 glider, because the darn seat just isn't wide enough for me... I could push my legs against the outside walls of the aircraft and he could still reach one of them. Especially on the left side where I would be trying not to jam up the spoiler control lever, because that test was definitely coming "next". I learned to do the "seat dance" to slide my butt back and forth in time with the stick, both when flying and also when the instructor was about to whack me. LOL! When he was flying from the rear seat I got whacked a lot if he decided to reverse the aileron when I wasn't expecting it, so I learned to pay close attention to what he was doing. Which, since I was a student, wasn't such a bad thing, really!) Same with the elevator and rudder. If you can not see the tail (like many commercial airliners) you'd better hope the maintenance guys aren't morons. (Much harder to cross-rig, but it's happened... I hear.) In fact, in US-certified aircraft if you can't see the flight controls, they're required to give you a flight control location indicator on the panel... so there's still no excuse. And here's one people forget... and/or get in a hurry and never check... While you have the yoke in your lap pulling back and seeing that the elevator came up... spin the trim tab a bit... see if it deflects the opposite direction to the elevator... (up trim means downward deflection and vice-versa). A trim tab rigged backwards can also ruin your whole day right after takeoff if you're confused by it. You should always be able to overpower the trim tab on MOST aircraft at slow speeds, but it's not worth the risk to find out the hard way when you're busy. You have to set it to the takeoff position anyway, and double-check it, so you might as well see if it's working right. (Many instructors don't teach anything about LOOKING at what the trim tab(s) are doing. Shame.) My instructor watched in horror recently as another instructor sent a pre-solo student to the aircraft by himself to do a pre-flight walkaround, and the instructor did NOT follow-up with one of his own. Dangerous, stupid, and reckless, all in one "I need to get going with this flight" move. I almost always fail the "FREE" check... my damn kneeboard is too big and if I slide the seat forward to where I'm comfortable, it gets hit during the left hand check. I always have to screw with it to get it out of the way, and I usually remove it right before landings, since even in "blood pressure cuff mode" (adjusted so tight it feels like a damn blood pressure cuff, cutting off blood flow to my right foot!) it slides down and gets in the way again... (Note to self: I need to get a smaller kneeboard, or thinner thighs! Soon! It was quite annoying on Friday when I really needed the kneeboard for some navigation logging and calculations.) -- Nate Duehr nate@natetech.com -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist