johnbpatson
But colonels can fly anything. That is why they put birds on their collars…
But colonels can fly anything. That is why they put birds on their collars…
Full colonels should not be allowed to fly unfamiliar aircraft, they are too used to being in charge and fixed wing guys don’t know chopper controls from a bilge pump. Many years ago an ex 106 guy (06) practicing landings in a KC-135 stalled it on the down wind, and was such a brute that the IP barely was able to recover it and of course the IP got fired.
Opps Former Navy guy here. We have those.
It can work the other way round as well. We had guy, lower ranked than Colonel, who transitioned from rotary wing to fixed wing. He was always reaching for the collective when time to flare for landing.
Those eagles colonels wear have fixed wings, johnpatson. They may flap, but they don’t rotate.
Speaking as an Army helicopter IP the issue wasn’t really letting the colonel fly, but letting him land.
FAM flights are done all the time in many airframes, but you normally don’t let the unqualified pilot land.
“Unqualified Colonel”. You won’t find a better example of a tautology.
Look it up. You won’t be sorry.
Old habits die hard.
Think professional courtesy played a role in this accident? I would say yes.
Talk about misleading and sensational headlines.
The F-35 pilot was not the qualified and was not the PIC.
The Apache trained and qualified instructor pilot was PIC.
The instructor pilot was the one faulted in the accident report.
For civilians, this is like a CFI having a mishap with a student pilot.
The student pilot is not the PIC or qualified.
I won’t presume on a cause, but if the pilot was a F-35B pilot control habit may have played in. I am a helicopter pilot, and I previously worked in a career where I had access to a V-22 simulator. The difference between a helicopter with a collective and a vertical lift aircraft with a throttle is that the pilot’s motion for power is opposite. To add power a collective requires a pull and a throttle requires a push. Decrease power is an opposite motion. We found that transitioning pilots often defaulted to the wrong input when critical operations during hovering required quick changes in power to control the aircraft.
My son is a Navy helicopter pilot and he got me some time in the simulator. Flying a helicopter is easy. Like most aircraft, takeoff and landing is far more difficult. Landing was really hard. Crashed on my first try and took over 2,000’ of runway to make my next landing.
Who was sitting in which seat?
The PIC/instructor should have had hands near, very near.
I trained several former Army helo pilots for their fixed-wing instrument ratings in Cessna 172’s. While they already had their ASEL ratings, on the missed approach they kept trying to use forward cyclic as they applied power. 
At least with the second guy I was ready for it. As a non-RW pilot, I can only imagine going the other way and having a FW pilot doing RW transition pulling on the cyclic for a go-around.
Years ago, '68, I was looking out of a classroom window at Los Angeles Center located on AF Plant 42 in Palmdale. An F4 from George AFB was in the pattern doing T&Gs. He had done one, turning downwind right in front of our building. On the next one, as he lifted off, they started a very tight climbing turn. As it reached the crosswind to downwind point, it was racked up in about a 90 degree bank. Suddenly it began to roll inverted and nose dropped down. I saw the canopies eject but it was almost right into the ground by then. Exploded in big ball of flame. Very sad to see, almost right in front of us.
Turns out it was a Col. getting refresher training being given by a Capt. IP who had just returned from Vietnam. Accelerated stall or a mechanical issue. Don’t think that was ever determined.
2 replies
When I was in school, with a little experience with fixed wing aircraft, my buddies and I found a helicopter game at a local arcade with semi-realistic helicopter controls. I was terrible, and I could see that my instincts from my fixed-wing experience were unhelpful. I was worse at flying the game than people with no experience in any kind of flying. It made me think that either you need to learn both from a very young age (or just early in your exposure) or else you just need to pick one and learn that as best you can.
I took transition helicopter training in a R22 years ago. I had a hell of a time learning to balance the machine then push the nose down vs pulling back like you do in an airplane. THAT is where I learned about “muscle memory.” Once I mastered that my instructor made me fly a constant radius circle around a barrel while hovering with the nose always pointed at the barrel. That was when I figured out I wasn’t cut out for it.
I was a tower controller for 3 years at a base with RF-4s. In the VFR closed pattern, the upwind was almost straight vertical, and completing the turn to downwind they were nearly inverted. On downwind they would roll wings level.
A tower controller at LGB when I worked there was an experienced fixed wing pilot. The Hughes 300 folks, of whom we had many, invited him to come down and go fly one of those. He said when he tried to hover, he could not keep it within the airport boundaries. Wasn’t for him either.
Reminds me of the USAF 3-star who crashed a MiG-23 owned by the CIA at the Nellis range forty years ago. The general flew fighters in Korea and Vietnam and wanted to fly the MiG but wasn’t trained. It seems he may have pulled rank and got a cursory cockpit briefing before launching, and ended up spinning the jet and auguring in. This Colonel is lucky he walked away.
