How about some stalls!!-CRM

How about some stalls!!

It has been a while since I told the story of how I learned to fly the powerful Helio Courier.  An airplane with so many treats and capabilities for the pilot that it makes you wonder about the team of aviators and engineers who designed it to be tough, to be safe, and to be a pilots joy.

            Helicopter jobs were scarce so I learned to fly the incredible Maule M-5 Lunar Rocket.  That move catapulted me to appear in the roster almost every day with flights to every little strip of grass inside the mountains.  Few wanted that job so I was the king of the Maule, and that gave me an interesting status. 

           

            The company had just begun a fixed wing operation delivering mail and cargo, which included a PA-34 Seneca, a PA-31 Navajo and also a small Cessna 172 for the new operation.

            Before the Maule no one was going to give me the keys to the Seneca let alone the Navajo, but as soon as I began flying tail dragger I was a shiny blip on the radar.

            Tail draggers are a hoot and a half and I loved to fly them, but people stayed away from them.  They can be tricky on the ground and were almost always going to short grass strips in the mountains, which were for the most part surrounded by low-level clouds.

            I began flying the Maule and the mail flights and one day I was called to the office to talk to the general manager.  One side of the fixed wing operation I did not know about was that we had  have another airplane flying for the last three years each day, three to four hours every morning fighting the dreaded fruit fly.

            He told me that the pilot in that operation was moving back to the city and that there was an opening in that position and if I wanted I could have it. 

            You are telling me that there are three to four hour to be flown every day, and you don’t know if I want them?  I took the job right on the spot, no ifs, buts or questions otherwise. I didn’t even know exactly where this job really was.  I said yes to all.  When I was going out the door the only thing I said was, can I share my job with some one?  That question got me back in the chair of the general manager which was also my helicopter instructor and had been looking to get me a spot where I could make a living out of flying.

            He asked me if I was happy splitting my paycheck in half.  I said, a moment ago I didn’t have a job, but I had have a friend, now I have a job and I would like for both of us to benefit from it.  He looked at me and said something in the line of  “Do as you choose”.  Happiness!!

            After telling my friend we were given this amazing opportunity to fly four hours a day I began easing up all the little details that encompassed this adventure.  We had to leave town to live in a rural area, we were to fly in the mountains and the airplane was a tail dragger.  The moment I finished telling the news he (who I’m going to tell you, is one of the most intelligent and cautious aviators I know) of course had some things to say.

            He’s speech was the screen play for, the apocalypse meets War of the Worlds, being narrated by a Morgan Freeman impersonator with a thick Latin-American accent while riding with (full gallop and looking backwards) one of the seven horsemen.  I heard it all and it wasn’t pretty. He was not confortable but when he finished his soliloquy I let him know that we were departing the next day.

            The rural areas in the Guatemalan mountains are off the charts beautiful and my grand mother lived nearby from the place we were going to live, a small peaceful town with a long aviation tradition from the days of the cotton fields.  We had it made; job, place to live, grandma’s food.

            Once there, we got settled in a nice little hotel the company provided and there we met with the instructor.  Charly is a character, about six feet tall, always loud and always smiling.  He flew the aircraft doing this job in the past and the company had contacted him to give us instruction.  For me it was a bit like transitioning from the Maule to the Helio but for my friend it was not only a new airplane but also his first tail dragger.

            He gave us two photocopies of the flight manual and explained to us that there were things missing from the manual that he was going to teach us. Off we went with strict instructions to read the manual and learn it by heart.  And so we did, we sat down in our new home and learned the manual.  We thought that by having everything understood and learned we were off to a great start.

            Instruction began a couple of days later with some questions about the manual and some interesting maintenance pointers, then we talked about the area to be covered while flying and the maneuvers that we were going to perform during our instruction, all very nice.

            And so we began our instruction with me going first at the controls.  We went to see the area, which was impressive, 12,000-foot volcanoes framing the landscape to be flown.  Once we knew where we were going to fly we began the maneuvers to ease up on our handling abilities.  Everything was going normal that day until I was required by Charly to perform a stall.

            I had read the manual and it clearly stated that this aircraft was prevented from stalling by limiting the travel of the elevator and as if I was reading from the manual I recited the paragraph.  When I finished reciting my verse I looked at Charly and he had a look as if he wasn’t really confortable with letting us go fly without knowing if we could go out of trouble if we slowed the aircraft too much.  My friend who was sitting in the back gave me a look that clearly stated to quit contradicting the instructor immediately.

            Charly told me that he understood what I was saying but nevertheless he wanted me to perform a stall.  I turned my head back and by this time Mario was doing all sorts of faces for me shut up and do the bloody maneuver. 

            Well that I did, I set up and slowly retarded the throttle to almost idle, and the aircraft began decelerating graciously, at some point the speed slowed to the end of the green arc and as soon as I felt turbulence in the joke I lowered the nose and moved the throttle forward.   Mission accomplished I thought, where’s my diploma?  As I finished my beautiful maneuver Charly made a face as if he had just had a drink from a glass full of lemon juice.

            He seamed unhappy, he was troubled by my maneuver.  He said “What was that?” –Well, a stall in an aircraft incapable of stalling!!

            I could feel my friend eyes in my neck.  Charly then said to me, repeat the maneuver take the throttle all the way to idle and raise the nose more.  The second and the third attempt to stall the aircraft were no better.  By this time I was feeling as if I wasn’t going to make it through the course and Mario had come forward to see what was happening.

            Then he said, I’m going to stall the aircraft, which is what you can’t do, and then you recover from the stall, which is really what I want to see you do, Ok? I said OK.

            My friend did not go back to where he was, but stayed with his head between us and his arms in our seat backrests trying to see what was the maneuver he was going to have to perform later.

            An this is how it transpired, Charly gave full throttle to the aircraft, lowered the nose and accelerated to what I thought was too fast for doing……

            There are times when you should put attention to what is happening instead of thinking about what you are going to say to sustain your point of view regarding this or that.  I should have focused.

            With a positive pull Charly set the Helio in a vertical climb, and I know we were vertical because when I got spooked by the sharp pull I turned my head to see him and the horizon in his window was perpendicular to our path.  The noise of the accelerated aircraft began to fade as it decelerated going up and suddenly I got a glimpse at the airspeed indicator, it was bellow the green arc.  Remember; focus on the moment instead of blabber nonsense in your head of what is going to be the argument!  Charly closed the throttle.  Now the last pieces of the puzzle I knew how to put together were blown by the wind.  His words, “You got it”.

            Let me tell you, nothing prepared me with little more than 200 hours to what was to come.  I was thinking how to get out of this pickle, which was aircraft’s windshield full of sky when earth’s gravity reclaimed its price.

            The aircraft stopped climbing and without giving any indication on what was to come, violently nosedived.  And from having a windshield full of sky we were now going down I would venture to say almost vertically.  I wasn’t going to get caught again thinking nonsense so I focused.  Stall recovery technic is to lower the nose, and that is where I got stuck since there was no way pushing the nose was going to help one bit, the windshield was full of green earth and the other part of getting out of a stall is bringing the power back, which at that moment seamed irrelevant. 

            The aircraft accelerated and Charly pulled from the dive very naturally adding power as we leveled off.  Mario and I were both quiet, we didn’t know exactly if we understood the details of what just happened and I think Charly saw two very long faces.

            He saw us and said, “Well, that’s that”

           

-I had already begun thinking on what to say about me not being confortable with….

And as soon as he finished his sentence applied full throttle, pulled the aircraft into a vertical climb AGAIN!!! And said, “You got it”

            By the time we returned to our base we were doing this very aerobatic maneuver ourselves.  Even though I concur with you that there are different and better ways to teach and learn that maneuver in that aircraft, this is our story, this is how it happened to us.  I got a ton of knowledge out of that event and I think the most important one was to FOCUS.

            I had information that I really wanted to share with Charly about my knowledge of the aircraft, but at that moment it was mostly irrelevant.  What was really needed was to pay attention to what was happening and either learn or act. 

            Your mind can take you places where you may not want to be at some point and it takes not only effort but also discipline to be where you have to be.

           

            Charly is an amazing guy, a great aviator and fantastic instructor and taught me many things, some of them directly and other like this one tangentially.

            The need and requirement to focus is real and the effort to make adequate decisions in time has to have the correct value to you.  Remember you are only allowed one decision at a time, regardless of how good you think you are at multi tasking.

            Giving the proper value to your opportunity to make one correct decision is paramount in flight safety.  So make an effort to learn to tame your thoughts so they don’t get in the way of that opportunity.

            Practice, make and effort, tame your thoughts and learn to make good and timely aeronautical decision every time.

Safe flights,

Luca



Days after publishing this article the great CAPTAIN CHARLY LLARENA left this earth to fly forever in blue skies and calm winds.

CHARLY, you excelled in so many aspects of life and shared what you had without hesitation.

I will always be grateful.

Godspeed!!