AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2022 - 22

PROFICIENT PILOT
Stall talk
Push when your instinct says pull
BY BARRY SCHIFF
ACCIDENTS RESULTING FROM inadvertent stalls continue to claim
a sad number of victims every year despite improved stall-awareness
training. We know what causes stalls and how to recover from
them, so why do they often get the upper hand?
We know that conventional stall recovery requires lowering
the nose, and we do this handily during practice. Such stalls, however,
are performed at altitude where stall recovery is merely an
academic exercise. We obviously do not practice them at low altitude,
so it is difficult to appreciate what it would be like to sense
the terrain rushing up to meet us. When a pilot experiences an
inadvertent low-altitude stall, he tends to ignore his training and
revert to a fatal instinct. Instead of releasing back-pressure on the
control wheel, he worsens the situation by pulling back in a counterproductive
effort to arrest the descent.
Each of us can accurately describe how to recover from a stall,
but can we execute that recovery with equal aplomb when near the
ground? A most challenging demand is exercising the will needed
to lower the nose at a time when a further loss of altitude can
barely be tolerated. Such a recovery requires extraordinary discipline
and is why an inadvertent, low-altitude stall often results in
bent metal and a cloud of dust.
One misconception contributing to this problem is the way we
regard elevator usage. A student is instructed from lesson one to use
the control wheel to raise the nose or lower it. He is told to pull the
nose up and push it down. Such terminology instills and reinforces
the belief that elevators are always used in this manner to make an
airplane go up and down. Although this is an accurate perception
during normal flight, it obviously is inapplicable during stall recovery.
This may be why a pilot might revert to pulling on the control
wheel during a stall near the ground. He tries to do what he has
been taught: Pull the control wheel aft to make the airplane climb.
There are other times when pulling the control wheel aft
does not raise the nose. Hauling back during a steep turn mostly
increases turn rate. Doing the same during inverted flight pulls
the nose down.
Perhaps we should discontinue referring to the control wheel
as a nose-up, nose-down control. Perhaps we should heed the
advice of Wolfgang Langewiesche, author of the classic book,
Stick and Rudder. He wrote in 1944 that the elevators should be
regarded as an angle-of-attack control. A pilot so taught might
22
AOPA PILOT / January 2022
be less inclined to pull back on the control wheel at a time when
he should do otherwise.
It is natural for instructors to use expressions such as " pull
the nose up " and " push the nose down, " but these instill reactions
that are counterproductive during stall recovery, especially
at low altitude.
There is another misuse of terminology that possibly contributes
to mismanaging stall recovery. These are the terms " high " and
" low " angles of attack. Many instructors, flight manuals, and training
videos say that stalls occur at high angles of attack.
Before learning to fly, I had never heard of angles described
as being high or low. I was aware only of large angles and small.
To me, the notion of high and low angles of attack is illogical and
dangerous. It reinforces the misconception that a stall occurs
only as the result of a nose-high attitude, and this misleading
reference is supported by the unusual nose-high attitudes commonly
used to teach and practice stalls.
Pilots should be trained to understand-and believe-that
stalls can be induced with the aircraft in any attitude, especially
when the nose is at or below the horizon. This requires being
taught how to enter and recover from stalls that occur at relatively
nose-low attitudes. As a matter of fact, there might be no
need whatsoever to practice stalls resulting from genuinely nosehigh
attitudes, which can be alarming to some pilots. We rarely
enter such stalls inadvertently. Exaggerated nose-high attitudes
are such effective visual warnings of an impending stall that they
almost preclude the possibility of an inadvertent stall.
The inadvertent stall responsible for so many accidents each
year is typically entered with the nose relatively low and at an
altitude from which the further loss of altitude would be apparent
and frightening.
An effective way to practice stalls might be in a visual simulator
that enables a student to perceive the ground rushing up
toward the aircraft (complete with realistic sound effects in case
of failure to recover). This can
develop the discipline needed
to resist pulling back on the
wheel, particularly when " the
ground arises to smite thee. "
BarrySchiff.com
BARRY SCHIFF, a retired
TWA captain, has written
more than 1,700 aviation
articles and 12 books.
http://www.BarrySchiff.com
AOPA Pilot Magazine - January 2022

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