Instrument Recovery Training
Published in Flying Magazine, July 2006
- By jay hopkins

Back in January of 2002 I wrote an article titled, “Extra Maneuver Training.” In that article I lamented the minimal training on spins and upset recoveries received by student pilots and even instructors. Because of this, stall/spin accidents are responsible for about 25 percent of fatal general aviation accidents, and about 20 percent of those occur during dual instructional flight with an FAA-certified flight instructor on board. I also described the Emergency Maneuver Training (EMT) program available from Aviation Performance Solutions (APS), located at Williams Gateway Airport (IWA) in Mesa, Arizona.

Recently B.J. Ransbury, one the owners of APS, informed me that APS had expanded their offerings to included recovery from upsets on instruments and invited me to participate in an accelerated version of their ground school and flight training. It turns out a lot has changed over the past four years. Back in 2002, the EMT program was merely a sideline to their primary business of allowing the general public to experience an aerial combat mission against another aircraft. BJ told me that EMT now accounts for over half of their business, and that they are now doing training under contract for various airlines, the U.S. Government and corporate clients. They have even formed a new company, APS Emergency Maneuver Training, to differentiate the training they offer from the aerial combat flights.

The Instrument Recovery Training (IRT) was originally offered as a stand alone program, but APS discovered that pilots attending the course did not have the basic recovery skills necessary and quickly became overwhelmed and frustrated. APS now offers the IRT only as an add-on at the end of their two-day (three flights) or three-day (five flights) visual recovery courses. This means that the pilot going through the IRT has had at least three visual flights in the Extra 300, starting with basic aerobatics, recovery from slipping and skidding turns to a stall, recovery from unusual attitudes, and spin entry and recovery.

The Instrument Recovery Training flight repeats many of the these maneuvers with the pilot wearing glasses that limit vision outside the aircraft. The flight starts with steep turns, slow flight, and power on and off stalls. This is followed by the actual IRT maneuvers: wing-overs, unusual attitudes, spiral dives, over-banks, wake turbulence upsets and aerobatics on instruments. The use of the Extra 300 provides a high level of confidence because the airplane is licensed as an unlimited category aerobatic aircraft and certified to plus or minus 10 Gs. On the other hand, the instructors are careful to make the flight very realistic for the pilot, and all maneuvers are conducted within the limits of the airplane the pilot normally flies. Thus the main advantage of using the Extra 300 lies in the huge margin of safety provided.

APS is aware of the importance of preparing a pilot for a flight and assuring he is familiar with the aerodynamics behind the maneuvers he will be flying. Each flight is preceded by up to two hours of ground instruction using excellent audiovisual aids. The instructors really know what they are talking about, as they are all retired military fighter pilots with 10 to 20 years of military flight experience, along with at least a Bachelor of Science degree. Because of their in-depth understanding of the subject and inputs from experts such as Rich Stowell, author of Emergency Maneuver Training: Controlling Your Airplane During a Crisis, everything is distilled to the most basic, easily understood and remembered level.

This simple approach is important, because it may be years before a pilot actually has an opportunity to use the skills learned during EMT or IRT, and after that period of time only the most basic, simple instructions will be remembered by the pilot. The recovery techniques taught can be summarized in three or four words.

Each step is in quotes because APS believes in the importance of a pilot actually saying each step in sequence before he performs that step, and recent research confirms the effectiveness of that approach. Besides remembering and executing the recoveries correctly, the training emphasizes accomplishing about a half-G push initially, and what if feels like to pull up in the recovery close to the maximum G force allowed in your airplane. They also point out that if you find yourself upside down, it really doesn’t matter which way you roll, and its better to get started in the “wrong” direction than to hang there upside down trying to determine the shortest way to the right side up. To their credit, APS offers excerpts from their training materials on their website (www.fcitraining.com) for anyone to copy or download.

The actual flight training can be startling to say the least. Just as simulators supply valuable training because they are often somewhat harder to fly than a real airplane, the Extra 300 offers a worst-cast scenario that will make a believer out of any pilot. The instructors are careful to have the pilot enter each maneuver using real world scenarios, so the cross-control stall is entered by simulating a pilot trying to tighten a turn by adding rudder, while keeping the wings from banking further using the ailerons. The result in the Extra 300 is a sudden snap roll to the inverted position. This is a more radical maneuver than you would experience in most general aviation airplanes, but is very realistic of what might happen in a wake turbulence encounter. The ability to consistently keep your head while you say and accomplish the appropriate steps to recovery is a good indication you would survive a similar situation in real life.

For the pilot this can be “upset” training in more ways than one. The airplane is stocked with a liberal supply of barf bags, referred to as “boarding passes.” I have never thrown up in an airplane before. I even used to teach aerobatics, but that was in a Great Lakes biplane, which has nowhere near the performance of the Extra 300. During my previous two flights in the Extra 300 fours years ago I felt quite queasy, but I attribute that to a lack of food, especially on the first flight, and a faint exhaust smell that would sometimes enter the cockpit during maneuvers. This time I made sure I had something to eat before we flew, but I still started feeling queasy almost from the first maneuver. Even though we never exceed normal category G force and we took a couple of breaks, the feeling got stronger and stronger, and pretty soon I was reaching for the “boarding pass”.

My instructor, Clark “Otter” McNeace, indicated that some pilots feel better after they empty their stomachs, but for me that was not the case. I just couldn’t focus my mind on the maneuvers any more. However, the value of the training was clear to me, as well as the importance of the approach taken by APS to require a pilot to complete the visual curriculum before attempting to recover solely on instruments. Perhaps if I had had the same opportunity to ease into the program I might have been able to last longer or even avoid the use of the bag entirely.

I can heartily recommend APS’s very professional approach to Emergency Maneuver Training and Instrument Recovery Training to any pilot. It is hard to imagine anyone not feeling much more capable of handling whatever might happen to them in an airplane, and APS has stories from students who have literally found themselves upside down on final due to wake turbulence. It is a credit to the effectiveness of this training that they lived to send APS a report on their successful recovery from a situation that has resulted in deaths of other pilots.

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"The APS Emergency Maneuver Training program is far more comprehensive than the majority of 'other' courses offered out there. In my opinion, the equipment used by APS and the experience level of its instructors are especially well-suited to the corporate and airline training market."  Rich Stowell - NAFI Master CFI - Aerobatic Author: Emergency Maneuver Training:  Controlling Your Airplane During a Crisis