Jammed yoke

[cgzro]

http://fsims.faa.gov/wdocs/alerts/DECEM ... age013.jpg

Could perhaps jump a pulley if cable was a bit skack. Trim systems do that sometimes.

Pushrod based controls sometimes break at rod end threads and Ive had 3 trim push pull wire failures but caught on the ground twice.

Most common is control direction misrigging which is why control check after maint are so vital.

[comfail]

http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/civilaviation/c ... 01-185.htm

This SB shows the control yoke setup fairly clear, not sure exactly if its the same setup read about in this topic.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I think care must also be taken when extrapolating control failures/jams in unlimited aerobatic airplanes and apply the data towards simple Cessna and Piper aircraft. Not that it can't happen in a Cessna or Piper just that I think the probability is much higher when the aircraft is subjected to the extreme attitudes and high Gee loadings of aerobatics.

[Beefitarian]

I looked at some drawings. You should be right BPF.

[andrew172]

the airplane can be recovered from a spin even with the rudder stuck hard over and I have done it in a C 150 Aerobat.

Just curious, but how did you manage to get it out, was it a fully developed spin and how much altitude did it take?

I'm also very curious about that, I thought it is impossible to recover from a spin with a jammed rudder.

[cgzro]

think the probability is much higher when the aircraft is subjected to the extreme attitudes and high Gee loadings of aerobatics

Yes what happens is the wear and tear is much faster.
So cracks in metal etc show up at 1000 hrs instead of 10,000.
It makes us kind of paranoid.

But the point about spending time on most likely problems is an excellent one.
Just double checking fuel and weather /route would eliminate the majority of accidents.

On the spin recovery question.
Often rolling into a spin will break it and put u in a spiral but its ac dependant.
Dont know if it works in a 150 have not spun one in years.
Door to create opp yaw could also work and various pumping actions can have effect but again ac dependant.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Re spin in a C150 with jammed rudder.

First a caveat. When I teach the spin for the PPL/CPL I don't go past 1 turn before starting the recovery. The point of the exercise is not to teach you how to spin it is to teach you how to recognize an incipient spin and recover before the aircraft departs or if you were asleep at the switch to quickly recover if you did let the aircraft enter a spin.

The 150 does not have a very powerful rudder and the yaw can be overcome by the ailerons which is why you can make a slipping turn. Also there is enough washout that the ailerons are still effective even with the wing stalled. So in the jammed rudder scenario forward stick and full out of spin aileron will allow you to recover albeit with a really ugly rolling yawing corkscrew.

I want to emphasize that I can only attest that this works for the C 150/152. Using this method in other airplanes could be deadly as forward stick and out of spin aileron with the aircraft in spin will make the spin worse in many airplanes. This is one of the reason why I highly recommend non aerobatically trained instructors don't let the aircraft get into a fully developed spin (ie more then 2 turns for most aircraft)

Andrew172 I see you are still obsessing about the jammed control scenario. Of all the questions a 10 hr PPL could want to ask on a flight training board why is this the only thing you care about .........

[Colonel Sanders]

Of all the questions a 10 hr PPL could want to ask on a flight training board why is this the only thing you care about

+1

I might humbly suggest that with respect to emergencies, you first master the practice forced approach (i.e. engine failure) and all it's variants. For example, an engine failure at 100 AGL is different than an engine failure at 1000 AGL which is different than an engine failure at 3000 AGL.

Also, there are different types of engine failures: complete, and partial. Sometimes the prop stops, totally changing the glide characteristics of the aircraft.

Also, many different engine failures can be worked around if you have sufficient systems knowledge.

I might also humbly suggest that you master fire procedures. Killed George Beurling, after all - it's ok, you've never heard of him, he's just the best pilot Canada's had in the last 75 years. Fire during start. Fire in the air. Electrical fire, engine fire.

After you master all of the above, then onto advanced flight control failures.

You might think that I'm completely ignorant wrt aviation compared to you, and suffer from a permanent cranial-rectal inversion. So Be It.

[andrew172]

Andrew172 I see you are still obsessing about the jammed control scenario. Of all the questions a 10 hr PPL could want to ask on a flight training board why is this the only thing you care about .........

Because it seems that control failure is the only one emergency thing which is not covered in trainings. In my situation, we did all emergency training lessons before my first solo and control failures were not covered. We did all kind of stalls, incipient spin, engine failure and engine fire procedures. I was trained for them all, but control failure is not in my PPL schedule and it will never be. That's why I was asking here.

I'm not obsessed with control emergencies, they are not more important for me than other failures, they are very rare, but the difference is that for an engine fire, I was trained to prevent it and if it happens, I also know how to act to have a chance to surivive. For control failures, I was just trained how to prevent it (and that's not sure, there are ppl who don't pay attention to flight control checks and in this situation, there will be students who don't pay attention to prevent a flight control failure, so in the best case you are trained to prevent it...maybe being prepared to fly with a jammed control is too much ). Don't tell me it is not easier to know that the trim acts opposite when your elevator is jammed or to know that you can yaw your Cessna with doors, or opposite rudder has secondary roll effect and a lot of useful tips I read here. I think you cannot figure them out quickly when you are in trouble. Why don't you learn them all in your PPL training or CPL training? Maybe they are very rare, but as long as they happen, you have to be trained for these situations. Maybe there are still other problems you are not trained for and it's pretty silly that you have to try it in the air when it happens versus being already prepared for it. Also, I know that most accidents happen because of pilot error, usually basic pilot errors like stalling on final, base to final turn spinning or others, but that's not a rational reason for not teaching other plausible rare scenarios after you master the basics and I did it, if that was the problem.

In your opinion, it's better if a CPL student or even CPL holder asks these questions. If I would be, I'm sure I would ask them because I have asked CPL ppl and they were not trained for discussed failures. In my opinion, it is better to know them from my first solo, because you don't know when it happens, from my first solo to CPL it's a very long time, a lot of things can happen, why not being prepared for them? It's stupid.

[Beefitarian]

Andrew172 I see you are still obsessing about the jammed control scenario. Of all the questions a 10 hr PPL could want to ask on a flight training board why is this the only thing you care about .........

Because it seems that control failure is the only one emergency thing which is not covered in trainings. In my situation, we did all emergency training lessons before my first solo and control failures were not covered.

Did they train you on falling sattellite strike, snakes in an airplane, catastrophic airframe failure, in flight hair product fire, and undiscovered interior wasp's nest disturbed by takeoff?

[andrew172]

In some scenarios there's nothing to do and above you mentioned some of them. But in a control failure one, it seems that there is something to do and you have to know what. I think there is a difference between an unrecoverable scenario and a controllable one, at least if you were trained for the last one.

[Beefitarian]

Maybe.

Lots of things are not as simple as, "What if the aileron jams?" That example depends on just as many variables as all mine. Way too many to list. This is not even a decent short list.

• how have you loaded the plane? Can you shift some thing to counter forces?
• how stuck is the control, can you wiggle it loose, can you force it loose? Be Carefull not to break anything and make it worse.
• what's your mood like, tired, distracted, annoyed at your life partner?
• what plane are you in? How does it handle without using the ailerons, elevator or rudder?
• will the jammed control oscillate, possibly to the point of breaking up the plane?
• how quickly do things happen because of it?

Just because the Colonel posts the perfect explanation for landing a pitts then we study it and understand every word. It can't prepare us for the practical applications experience provides. In some cases you will discover things that you thought you knew hundreds of hours after talking about them. This will happen more than you expect.

Some planes might not even need correct rudder inputs to land if the rudder is ineffective. In some planes you can nearly block the rudder with flaps. You'll need to discover how these sort of things work by flying lots of hours. The same plane most likely won't have enough rudder authority to over come the stuck aileron either.

I doubt anyone is being a dick here to make you feel bad. I'm only being dick because the question is so flawed we could spend years writing back and forth about it. The next day something that wasn't mentioned, could not be countered or you forgot, causes a crash.

Most instructors would reluctantly discuss and maybe even instruct you in the plane infinite scenarios and what ifs. They might not be excited but the school owner would be giddy.

[Beefitarian]

I look forward to being corrected but believe.

Let's say we are flying a small single engine aircraft, we enter a normal left turn and when we reach the bank angle, we are unable to release the yoke back to neutral, it's jammed there. Can we overcome it? Is it a controllable situation if we use full opposite rudder? Can we stop the roll?

Most likely no. I can't even see how and I have a super hyper over active imagination.

The most probable out come especially in a 172.

the aicraft will keep rolling and in a few seconds we gonna crash

Though given some altitude it would certainly take minutes.

In a multi-engine I think you have one more option, that's asymmetric thrust, so it's a little easier to counteract the roll, but what about single engine scenario?

Asymmetric thrust will affect yaw and barely factor into roll. Probably causing more harm than good.

Sorry about your luck. Anyone care to fill us in where I'm wrong?

[andrew172]

Maybe.

Most instructors would reluctantly discuss and maybe even instruct you in the plane infinite scenarios and what ifs. They might not be excited but the school owner would be giddy.

Thank your Beefitarian for your posts! I think I'm going to understand why things are that way, but I would be happy to tell me if you know or if you can figure out why it is that way regarding instructors issue, are they reluctant to discuss because they don't want to hurt our good feeling, our student mood, presenting how can a flight go wrong? Or as you said because these emergencies are too complex to fix them in a theoretically manner? An engine fire is a complex scenario, it can degenerate in multiple ways, it depends on a lot of things how bad can it end, but they still present it to us. And about school owner, why he would be that giddy regarding that?

[Beefitarian]

Contrary to popular belief instructors don't want to waste time while you pay them. If they can get you to pass the flight test with the least amount of hours it looks good and other students will want that also. The owner of the school makes money off the extra time though so if you are willing to put in 100s of hours extra to get a PPL you're a great customer.

One other problem is wasting time can be subjective.

While you and I might be happy doing cross wind landings duel even when we get to a safe point. Your instructor may be concerned you're wasting money having him in the plane while you work on improving them. To be fair he's rode along for thousands of approaches and I'm sucking the life out of him by boring him, making him ride along while I do more. Realistically once you're ready to do something by yourself many instructors are not going to want to hang around to watch. There will be some other thing you need to learn though so that's what they will be teaching.

You seem to have a good attitude wanting to learn everything. Most students probably think they know enough and want a flight test recomend allready.

I am a very strange person and because of marriage, children and foolishly focusing on eliminating debt. I never sold our house to buy a C-310 and move to an acreage like I planned and wanted to.

I stopped flying and playing music then gained some weight. Once 5 years went by my license was no longer valid, I became depressed. ( not nesiscarily clinically) I came here because I had no one to even talk about airplanes with. I love my kids and would do some of this over but they don't like airplanes either so I bore them talking about flying sometimes. Because they are the only thing that is important to me, I don't get enough time to go flying still.

I finally was fourtunate enough to start flying year before last. I was at a flight school that I actually don't mind but. I was spending a lot of time idling while the hobbs ran waiting for traffic to finish before I could depart. In one case half an hour dual time. $80 wasted in my current opinion. Second they had a different idea of what would happen than I did. They wanted to spend time doing things over again if we were fourtunate enough to have time after spending much of the schedule waiting. I wanted to get in the circuit. I became worried about wasting time while the felt they all needed to see me do a straight stall not writing down that I did it to standard so the next guy could move on.

I went to another school where by a unique situation I can talk much more openly with the CFI who is doing my dual. I may spend just as much or more money due to not being able to fly as often this year vs. last, but I feel the dual is productive so I'm happy.

You are the customer. If you want to try something in the plane that is unorthodox talk to the instructor. If you get a experienced one they will let you do some strange things like push a door open to feel the yaw it creates. They will also stop you from doing other strange things if the risk out weighs the benefits of learning experience. Like shutting off the engine in flight to see how much different it glides compared to at idle. I had an instructor that let me shut down our 172 in the 90s, at the level of experience I had I could not tell the difference in glide. Most feel the risk is much to high to do that. Including me now.

Like I said when you get to 300 hours you will think back to things you thought you knew all along and realize you really just figured some of them out. I have heard and may some day find out for myself it happens again around 500, then again around 1000 hours etc. Experience and currency are king when it comes to flying. Fly more and often.

[trey kule]

Hello Andrew.

I am trying to be gentle here, but some very experienced people , both in aviation, and instructing are trying to give you some good advice, and you appear determined to ignore it. It may be free, but it is good advice.

I will see if I can help..You are going to be flying with an instructor until you go solo. That means you can concentrate on getting a real foundation built rather than playing the "what if" game. There will be plenty of time for that later.
After you go solo, you will remain in the circuit for a few hours, and when you do return to the training area, you will be dual again.. There is not much point in learning some advanced technique for recovering from an extremely rare occurance if you cant fly the plane...Try and put things in the proper order, and focus on excelling at what is important at this stage of your flying. It is one of the reasons you are "dual"

It is unfortuante that some instructors think they need to do just about do the whole PPL curriculumn with a student before solo,,Time wasted , as the student's skills are not able to handle the advanced stuff..They are not required by TC, in most cases, or are being enhanced by the instructor. It overwhelms the student, and the basic stick and rudder skills they should be learning are being ignored for this type of improbable scenario.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Ok you want a full and complete discussion about how to deal with a control jam. Fine but first you have to answer some questions.

1) what are the 5 most common faults you will discover on a walk around

2) the aircraft has been sitting for a week in the rain with the fuel tanks 1/4 full. The aircraft had Just been fueled. What is the best way to insure there is no water in the fuel

3) you check the oil and find it is at 4 quarts on an an engine where 7 quarts is full. What do you do ?

3) it is a cold day and the first flight. You start the engine and note the oil pressure is in in the bottom of the green arc. What should you do .

4) during the run up one mag has a 50 RPM drop the other has no drop. What do you do.

5) what is the minimum static RPM for your aircraft and why is it important to know this

6) what is the most important action in the event of an EFATO

7) what is the first indication you are getting carb ice

8 you apply carb heat and the engine immediately starts running rough what do you do ?

[andrew172]

1) Nobody told me which are the most common and I think it is not really important for me to know them as long as I was trained to pay attention equally to all aspects to be checked during the walkaround. I realize that some of them are more common than others but I check them all in the correct order and manner and doing it this way I can't figure out why it would be a problem. You say it's worth to know the most common faults to pay extra attention checking them? I prefer to do that for all of them.

2) Testing the fuel from all sources.

3) My instructor told me that recommended quantity is >=6 quarts. Call the mechanic to check and refill it.

3) Throttle up a bit and wait for oil pressure to rise. If it's not in green, don't go.

4) There's no mention for a minimum drop in POH, it says max drop per each and per both, but no min, however I'm not sure if it's ok or not, I wouldn't takeoff, I'll ask the mechanic.

5) About 600 RPM. Didn't know exactly the value. I think if it's not in that range you don't have enough power or the engine can quit itself. Again, call the mechanic to fix it. The idle power RPM is a mandatory check? It is not clearly mentioned in checklists or manuals. If it's not in the correct range, it would be obvious that you have engine problems during run-up check, am I right? So is it necessary to check it separately?

6) Glide speed 65 kts, check for obstacles, secure the cabin if you have time, call ATC etc. But first you have to fly the airplane, make sure your speed is recommended glide speed.

7) Reduced engine power, drop in RPM.

8 Checking all remaining engine controls, fuel pump on, mixture etc. and keeping carb heat on to de-ice. Finding the nearest airport and monitoring the engine situation. Preparing for an off-airport landing if it gets worse.

[ross1]

Hello Andrew....seems like you've opened a nice can of worms here...that's what hangar flying is all about. Sometimes you'll ask 100 pilots the same "What if" or "What would you do" question and you'll get 100 different responses. Frustrating but that's the nature of the beast. Hopefully one of those answers will be the best for the situation you might stumble into and it will be what saves you butt. Here you have received several good replies as well as the usual silliness (again, the nature of the beast) and it might seem that the overall response is "don't worry about it" . I don't think that's entirely accurate though...I think what's being said is "worry about everything but with due concern". I'm pretty sure that the possibility of jammed controls scares the crap out of everyone but its not something to excessively dwell on. Your initial question about jammed controls was "Can we overcome it"...only those who have been through such an event can properly answer...because of the unlimited variables, the rest is speculation based on experience and crossed fingers. It appears you are very keen and dedicated to obtaining the best training you can but what you looking for is not in the sylabus...right or wrong, its just not there. As suggested previously, concentrate on what's being presented to you and apply yourself to that first....later there will be time to find an aerobatic or "extreme flying" school that can put you through more intense training... training that still might not answer your question but the kind that will instill a confidence that you can deal with jammed controls (or worse) to the best of you ability, should it ever occur.

Happy Flying!
Ross

[Genetk44]

#2) wait 20 minutes after fuelling and then test for water,crud
#6) get the nose down

[Big Pistons Forever]

1) Nobody told me which are the most common and I think it is not really important for me to know them as long as I was trained to pay attention equally to all aspects to be checked during the walkaround. I realize that some of them are more common than others but I check them all in the correct order and manner and doing it this way I can't figure out why it would be a problem. You say it's worth to know the most common faults to pay extra attention checking them? I prefer to do that for all of them.

2) Testing the fuel from all sources.

3) My instructor told me that recommended quantity is >=6 quarts. Call the mechanic to check and refill it.

3) Throttle up a bit and wait for oil pressure to rise. If it's not in green, don't go.

4) There's no mention for a minimum drop in POH, it says max drop per each and per both, but no min, however I'm not sure if it's ok or not, I wouldn't takeoff, I'll ask the mechanic.

5) About 600 RPM. Didn't know exactly the value. I think if it's not in that range you don't have enough power or the engine can quit itself. Again, call the mechanic to fix it. The idle power RPM is a mandatory check? It is not clearly mentioned in checklists or manuals. If it's not in the correct range, it would be obvious that you have engine problems during run-up check, am I right? So is it necessary to check it separately?

6) Glide speed 65 kts, check for obstacles, secure the cabin if you have time, call ATC etc. But first you have to fly the airplane, make sure your speed is recommended glide speed.

7) Reduced engine power, drop in RPM.

8 Checking all remaining engine controls, fuel pump on, mixture etc. and keeping carb heat on to de-ice. Finding the nearest airport and monitoring the engine situation. Preparing for an off-airport landing if it gets worse.

1) if you can,t answer you are doing the walk around by rote without understanding what you are looking at. That understanding is crucial for seeing those unusual failures/problems. And you are all about the unusual......

2) you need to wait 15 to 20 mins for any water/crud that has been stirred up by the fueling to settle out

3) if the airplane had 6 quarts on the last flight and now has only 4 this potentially means the engine has a Big problem and it is trying to tell you it is sick. Finding out whether it is low on oil because nobody has added any oil for a long time is OK but if this is a sudden development then the engine needs to get looked at

4) no drop means the mag is not grounding out. So you can't test it on the runup and the prop will be hot when you shutdown

5) Static RPM is the RPM you will see when the aircraft is stopped or moving slowly. It is in the POH and is what you should see on takeoff as soon as the throttle is full in. It is the Only way to know the engine is developing full power at the beginning of the takeoff run

6) Nose down Immediately

7) Correct

8 ) if you have a good dose of carb ice as soon as the heat goes on the ice will start to melt. The melt water has to go through the engine so it will run like crap as it eats the water and then smooth out and the RPM will rise.

So congratulations Andrew. You seem to be OK flying an aircraft with potential water in fuel, an engine that may potentially suffer a catastrophic engine failure, won't know that the engine is not developing full power on takeoff and when cruising along with an iced up engine you are flaffing around with an wasting time with irrelevant checks because you don't understand how to deal with carb ice. When you get back you will leave an aircraft parked with a live prop and not know to warn everyone.

Yup I see you have all the "regular" emergencies weighed off and it is absolutely appropriate that you are worrying about jammed controls

[Dagwood]

The problem with worrying about jammed controls is it's rarity, and how each airplane will have different ways or methods of surviving. BPF's list of questions summarizes probably 90% of the common problems that could kill you if you don't know what to watch for. It is also applicable to practically ANY light trainer that you might fly.

Jammed controls might account for 0.0001% accidents. The correct solution in a C172 might not work in a Cherokee, and maybe not even a C150. When you factor in the variety of causes of control problems: broken cables, broken hinges, stuff getting jammed in the moving parts, something breaking that isn't supposed to, it becomes prohibitively ridiculous to train for each on on every type of airplane that you fly.

On larger aircraft you may also have hydraulic failures, fluid dryout, electrical failures, or computer software problems. You might remember United Airlines Flight 232 which had a control failure due to an engine catastrophically failing and sending shrapnel through the hydraulic lines. The crew was able to steer the airplane using differential thrust, and they crash landed the aircraft at Sioux City. Yet, due to the extremely low risk of a similar re-occurrence, airline training still does not include a total hydraulic failure scenario.

[Expat]

Well said. I do not recall getting moose avoiding training, when I got my driver's license.

[andrew172]

It is not my fault that I wasn't warned about some things like mag no drop which leaves the prop live. I really consider to change my instructor because of that, but I'm not sure if that changes the situation. I asked some PPL or CPL friends about the mag no drop issue and they were not trained about it. So, what can I do to improve my knowledge? I want to learn more things but nobody told me about them.

The same thing about fuel testing issue. About oil problem, I said I will call the mechanic to check it, it's his job how to fix it, not mine. I don't mention the others, because it is clearly that it was a communication problem and you or me didn't understand exactly what the other one said. How can you say I won't know that the engine is not developing full power on takeoff? Do you know that I don't check the RPM at full throttle? If I know it should be about 2500 RPM at full and it is not during takeoff, I will abort, it is not right?

[Colonel Sanders]

The internet is a wealth of garbage and valuable information.

Here is some valuable information:

http://www.whittsflying.com/web/page0Ma ... adings.htm

It's a little FAA-centric, but airplanes work the same everywhere.

I must ask - is this post bullying you?