Training and Safety Tip: Power through blue
In the brown? Power down
Everyone hates an uncomfortable surprise, and pilots are no exception. You may one day find yourself lurching through a sudden onslaught of clear air turbulence, or being tossed around by the wake of a large aircraft, or otherwise coping with the consequences of air being stirred into rapid variations in velocity.
It’s critically important to know how to react in a situation like that. The wind gust could throw your aircraft into an unusual attitude, from which you are expected to know how to recover—and quickly. Your actions should be immediate and deliberate. In extreme cases, your response to the startling condition could mean the difference between continuing your flight as planned or an unscheduled off-airport landing.
In private pilot training, students are exposed to nose-up and nose-down unusual attitudes while behind the foggles. Your flight instructor will ask you to shut your eyes and drop your head as she takes control of the aircraft. She’ll fly turns and change pitch to try to induce spatial disorientation. When she tells you to open your eyes and take the controls, you should be able to infer the correct course of action to help you return to straight and level flight from your instruments alone. When you are disoriented and have no visual references, your inner ear cannot be trusted to know which way is up.
The primary instrument you should be looking at is the attitude indicator (followed by your power setting and turn coordinator). It’s good to remember the following aviation adage: “In the blue, power through. In the brown, power down.”
That means, if you see lots of blue on your attitude indicator, indicating that you are pointing toward the sky, make sure you have full power in order to prevent a stall. If you see brown, indicating the ground, reduce power to prevent overspeeding. That’s the first step.
After that initial throttle action, the procedures differ, depending on whether you are nose-up (blue) or nose-down (brown). For nose-up attitudes, push the nose to the horizon and then level the wings—your main concern is, once again, to avoid an aerodynamic stall. For nose-down attitudes, level the wings first, then pull the nose up. This is really important. If you are pointing at the ground, the law of gravity will pull you down faster, and you don’t want to overstress the airframe as you level out.
If, later, you want to learn more about dealing with unusual attitudes, or perhaps even try your hand at flying upside down (aerobatics), why not take an upset prevention and recovery training course to build on those basic unusual attitude skills? A good pilot is always learning.
