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Aviation Training

 in the Days of Yore

By Jim Stark & the CAA

I stumbled across a couple of old training manuals at a garage sale. One is about basic airmanship training as it was practiced at the time, and the second is on flying and navigation in the blind. Both were printed in September 1941 and issued by the CAA three months prior to the infamous Pearl Harbor raids.

A lot has in changed flight training since then, but much hasn’t since flying and the basics of aerodynamics had been around more than 30 years. They had a pretty good grasp on how things worked and how to teach flying, but the liability issues of modern times were not a factor back then. As airplanes were then, the J-3 Cub would be a modern ship.

Plenty of altitude must be obtained before starting this maneuver in order that the spiral may be continued through a long series of turns, since it will be found that the student probably will exhibit no difficulty in the first two or three turns. It is only when it is prolonged that the student is prone to let the ship get away from him, become dizzy, or lose his sense of position. This maneuver should not be continued below 1,000 feet. No judgment of drift or altitude is necessary at fist, except to see that the recovery altitude is sufficiently high. The objectives are a constant gliding speed and a constant degree of bank. Later, a ground object should be used as a center and due allowance made for drift.

The student should start on spirals from glides, using the medium bank and then, in successive practice, gradually increase the bank for each spiral until the 60 bank required for a tight spiral is attained and held throughout this maneuver.

Slipping, skidding, and vertical variations of the nose are, of course, not permissible, just as in any other turning maneuver.

A constant speed and a constant bank are very important. Since this is not necessarily a maximum performance maneuver, a speed of from 10 to 15 miles per hour above that in a normal gliding turn of equal bank may be used, but it should not be more.

Particular attention must be given to the recovery. Smoothness must be attained and the controls must be coordinated so that no increase or decrease of speed results when the straight glide is resumed. Considerable practice will be required by most students before this can be accomplished consistently from a 60 spiral held through six or more complete turns.

As proficiency is acquired, the student should endeavor to make precision recoveries toward an object on the ground. He then should select such a point before starting the maneuver, execute a predetermined number of turns, and come out on the point. The greater the number of turns, the more difficult it will be for the average student to retain his orientation.

Such practice will be of great value as a preliminary to the spiral approach precision landing and advanced maneuvers requiring a high degree of orientation, such as lazy eights and chandelles.

Since there are no new features involved in its execution, it is not considered necessary to break this maneuver down into the customary divisions.

Report of the Month

Something’s amiss in this IO-360-ES engine. What’s wrong? Take a guess, then look at the caption below to see if you’re right.

(To learn where the various elements might be coming from, click here.)

Values
Should Be

We thought corrosion might be contributing to the metals, though we don’t usually see this much metal unless there’s a problem going on. Then: a discovery! The owner contacted us when he found the tachometer shaft had worn down significantly. It was changed right before the February 2009 oil change. This may indeed have been the source of a lot of the iron, chrome, and nickel, so we will be looking for a nice improvement in wear next time.

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