AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - January 2014 - 78

P&E

78 | 

TECHNIQUE

got a 6,000-pound pull [on the airplane].
When that airplane flips upside down,
for an instant everything seems fine, but
it immediately starts pulling towards the
ground. [During an] attempt to roll the
airplane, within a quarter of a roll you'll
be pointed straight down.
"It takes a long time to think it through
when you're turned upside down. What
we're more likely to do is pull. After
thousands of students, I've seen people
come out here, and no matter what I've
explained to them on the ground-if I flip
them over in the air before they have had
any practice-they're gonna pull.
"In reality we've got to get rid of that
lift and go at least to zero G, and then roll
the airplane. It takes training and it takes
time. It takes more than one flight. It takes
a number of flights to build up an understanding of three-dimensional flight,"
Koontz said.
He suggests the four aerobatic fundamentals: loops, rolls, hammerheads,

"It's a three-dimensional
world up there, and we're
two-dimensional people."
-Greg Koontz,
airshow pilot and
aerobatic instructor
and spins. All of those maneuvers require
three-dimensional thinking. The loop,
for example, teaches you how to get out
of a dive, but the roll is the most important thing. "When a person has a good
roll, they can get out of anything," he said.
He teaches rolls on all four flights, for a
total of at least 20 by the end of the fourflight course.
Koontz has taught continuously since
1993, training 16 to 80 students a year.
More than half of them did not come so

they could do aerobatics after they leave.
They came to improve their general skills,
Koontz said. The course is $1,390, but
includes a room in his home and breakfast. A few insist on the one-flight upset
course for $300. "If they want it, I definitely want them to have something,"
Koontz said. Some people get it and
do well, while some are frustrated after
one flight.
Koontz worked for eight years as
chief pilot for Aero Sport in St. Augustine,
Florida, and learned aerobatics from the
late Jim Moser and Moser's fellow aerobatic pilots.
So did any of his students save an aircraft after it tumbled out of control? "It
goes the other way," Koontz said. "They
prevented the aircraft from getting into
such an attitude in the first place." AOPA
EMAIL alton.marsh@aopa.org
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AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - January 2014

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