Note: due to Copyright by "Viral Hog" of original source video I'm unable to monetize this video. YT will kick me off the platform after 3 copyright strikes, I currently now have 2 (in 90 days) This is too important not to pass on...support Patreon.
The female jumper who came out last commented on the original source video. She said she didn't bail but had nothing to hold on to. Was thrown around and ended up on the floor by the door and when she tried to get up, she was thrown out. Bruised but OK and jumped the next day!
This happened to me on a jump load in FL in the 90s. I was last out of a Queen Air, in a 2 way, after a 5-6 way before us. One minute I was in the doorway, the next I did a face plant on the floor and couldn't get out of the damn a/c. I recognized the stall/spin as it was happening but just couldn't get out of the door (above me then below me than above me...) . Thankfully the pilot recovered and we went back up to altitude. I asked later "WTF?" and he said "traffic". Checked that one off my bucket list. Only 8 lives to go.
Meow !!! 8 left..I'm sure you felt like that. "Traffic" ? Was he flying behind a 757 ? Nice one. You should have asked him if he meant "highway traffic".
So you're a meat missile with 8 lives left. I once asked a parachutist why he felt ok jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft. His answer "Have you seen how our pilots fly?" After watching this I finally get what meant.
When I was working toward my ATP, I flew King Airs and Caravans for a skydiving school/club. Jumpers perpetually complained to the boss because we would not pull the left engine on the King Air to idle for exactly the reasons Juan discusses here. Lots of pilots love the KA but even it's most ardent admirers do NOT want to get it into a spin. Fortunately, the old man backed us up. After my time, he dumped the King Airs in favor of Caravans and a Kodiak. Not as fast but a whole lot more forgiving. They also give you a great way to get the floaters to stop hanging on the rail. It is usual to put your foot on the left wheel brake. This lets the forward jumper put their foot on it for stability. Those folks start dawdling around out there? Just release the brake. Bye bye.
I saw a jumper have that falling off the wheel experience from a C-180, but unintentionally due to a failed brake. I reached out to give it an extra spin, the pilot stomped the toe brake to no avail. I told him "Have fun landing this!" and went out the door.
The last jumper out was Jana Neimoller. She said she was was initially thrown around the aircraft with nothing to hold on to, and ended up flat on the floor near the door. Then was thrown out involuntarily.
I know this is an old video, but I just saw it and it brought back memories of being in a C90 that stalled on approach at 2500’ AGL in IMC. We were a medivac coming back to our home field after a transport. ATC had kept us high due to being between two larger airports, and the PIC was angry with ATC because of this. He had the gear down, full flaps, and throttles at idle to slow down and attempt to lose altitude in order intercept the localizer. Problem is that when he did pickup the localizer he pulled back, lifting the nose and the IAS dropped to 70kt. Things got quiet, stall horn was screaming and the wings buffeted. Now we had issues with this pilot in the past, so luckily on this flight there was an observer pilot in the right seat who took the controls, nosed over hard, and firewalled the throttles. The recovery was quick, and we went missed, but landed safely on the next approach. The worst part is the PIC would not admit that he stalled the AC. He was terminated on the spot.
Flying jumpers in a Twin Otter, yes, we would reduce power on the left engine to reduce prop blast, and use rudder to compensate. I wouldn’t go to idle, just reduce it some.. you don’t want the left prop be be a disk, you still want some air flowing through to help the jumpers “fly” their exit. Pretty normal. The jumpers also need to be aware about causing an AFT CG that could cause controllability problems. The Otter happens to be a more forgiving plane than the Kingair though. There was a similar incident in the PNW where one half of the Horizontal Stab came off in recovery. That plane got fixed, and eventually went to to get destroyed in the Hawaii accident.
Former jump pilot with A90 and BE-99 experience: too many people got aft on this one, pilot would have had to fly so fast to keep that many people on the tail they would have blown off. Poor recovery after spin entry, but I blame the jumpers for loading up the tail too much. Not a lot of elevator authority at slow speeds and a narrow CG range in the Beech's, gotta fly 100-120kts to have big ways hangin on the tail with less flap
Juan, I have been a non-pilot aviation enthusiast for three decades now, Military and civilian aviation. Your videos are credible and entertaining, the concern you show for everyone in the sky, and the science you include has improved my aviation education immensely! You can’t really measure what never happens, but undoubtedly your work has and will make aviation safer for all. Thank you for that.
"RECOVER!" lol...as a retired AF pilot (B-1 and B-52), I loved (or had an LSD flashback!) hearing your tone during the 'recover' commands at the beginning of the video. I understand you were a T-38 FAIP or instructor, and anyone who went through UPT can distinctly remember the 'recover' commands from the IP! Thanks for your great videos.
Thanks Juan for taking the time to educate us non-jumper pilots about a very basic yet important topic here: basic airmanship! FLY THE AIRPLANE! I don't care if you have 100 or 30,000 hours, basic aerodynamics prevail over us all!
Having flown the King Air and the De Havilland Twin Otter I can attest to the fact that the King Air is not really a good jump plane (for the reasons demonstrated in this video). The Otter is a great airplane for this activity because of its high wing and very low stall speed. The engine and prop configurations on both aircraft are the same, PT-6 Pratt and Whitney. When the power is reduced to idle, on either aircraft, it is like putting on the brakes. The deceleration is very pronounced. The way this guy was flying the aircraft he was just asking for a stall/spin.
Yep, cut my teeth skydiving out of the Otter. Twelve pax plus the Master. Pilot took it to about 70 knots almost at stall at every opening point. She's a great workhorse and perfect for the job.
Juan as a skydiver and a single engine prop pilot I can't thank you enough for the analysis. I'd imagine all the drag on the port side engine, while decreasing thrust on that engine would be a set up for disaster. While the pilot may have wanted to avoid the prop wash on the skydivers sitting outside the airframe, increasing the chances of a premature deployment and getting wrapped in the empennage (which would take everyone down) and I don't fly twins. Feels like a recipe for disaster if not performed correctly, the pitch up was an issue given asymmetric trust, I'm not an expert at Twins in any way and never trained in them. Your analysis is pretty spot on, I've been enjoying your channel for a while and appreciate this breakdown. I learn so much on your channel, I hope you keep it up and also break down these situations as well. Much appreciation for you.
I think "disking" of the prop means fully "fine" as a windmilling fine prop will act like a disk generating maximum drag which would exasperate the asymmetric configuration.
I imagine the five (then four) skydivers left inside the aircraft during the spin(s) would've been flopping around the cabin. Lucky that at some point they didn't all crash into the cockpit! Great report Juan! Loved the the T stuffer at the end!
Also lucky no canopies were inadvertently deployed inside the aircraft. Good work by the cameraman. Probably demanded to be on the next load for free as this messed up his jump with the team.
The pilot appeared to be going way too slow on jump run; just for the ease of the jumpers. No need to slow down that much as the first jumper out would normally climb forward and block the wind for the others coming out. I recall climbing out of Mike Mullins' Super King Air at 21,000 ft at the World Free Fall Convention with no issues.
Mullins has -34s on his king air. He could probably shut the left engine down and still easily fly jump run at 90 kts. I did that 21k jump at Quincy one year. Great fun.
With 20+ years in the sport I've always had the highest respect for our pilots. They operate under difficult and demanding conditions. Serving drop zones the world over every weekend without incident. It's a bit of a shame that the only time they hit the headlines it's usually negative press. More power to them I say, and blue skies! We are all learning every day :-) Thanks Juan, as always, brilliant content!
With nearly 50 years as a professional pilot and being USAF trained, I along with many other pilots think the reputation of jump operations and their pilots is sketchy at best. I'm sure you think your pilots are great. Passengers usually do. This pilot in his deposition demonstrated a severe lack of knowledge of aerodynamics. In the pilot world, jump pilots are thought of as hot dogs. Quite often they are relatively low time pilots working cheaply to build twin turbine time. And of course you only read about the negative incidents. But there shouldn't be so many. This is why Juan said that the NTSB and FAA have been paying close attention to jump operations.
@@zak2u2 While you are correct on most of that let's not forget that Jump Pilots probably have superior stick and rudder skills compared to most magenta line pilots. I did a summer of doing Jump ops and my landing landings and coordination vasily increased. They definitely fall on the gypsy side of flying but some of those guys can do incredible things with their aircraft.
@@rotten007pig How did those stick and rudder skills work for this guy. Couldn’t even get out of a spin properly without inducing a secondary and third stall. Sketchy af
My Son is a Skydiving Instructor at Yolo County Airport. I will be sending him this link. They use a Caravan out there, however he travels all around and many places use the King Air.
I guess they were just talking about this at "The Drop Zone". He was saying the King Air's are know to stall with a big load in the back. Said they weren't ment to fly that slow. That is why they use a Caravan.
Recipe for a disaster (or such): - Put 16 people on board a King Air B-90 (the maximum certified number of pax for this model is 13, including pilot and co-pilot); - Slow down to 90 - 95 KIAS at high altitude (the "normal" Vref speed for a B-90 is ~100 KIAS on a stable straight flight approach); - Fly with no oxygen on a depressurized aircraft above 13,000 ft and "feel the joy"; - Totally neglect stall speed vs altitude range (the stall speed for landing configuration is 76 KIAS, but at ~5,000 feet and MLW, not at 16,000 AGL and who knows how heavy it was) - Fly with a crowd of "hi-drag" people holding onto a handrail OUTSIDE the aircraft, on the same side as the critical engine (left). - Do not read and throw all aircraft manuals out thru the window at the first opportunity you have, including that yellow "Beechcraft Safety Information" booklet which says a King Air should never be flown in a full stall condition as this is the ONLY guaranteed condition to avoid a spin on this aircraft type. The result, as far as I am concerned, was a real miracle, with its pilot trying to get out of a stall + spin pulling yoke back and sideways completely and oscillating wildly several times.🤦♂️ I honestly don't believe this aircraft is "undamaged", based on what we could see clearly: I've seen other King Air 90s in milder situations that suffered several bendings and warpings on wing and nacelles that could not be repaired (for unsuspecting future buyers: this is the 1968 Beechcraft B90 King Air S/N LJ-431 with registration number ZS-OHB which will probably be selling pretty cheap...). Considering the type of flight (skydiving) I can't say I'm "surprised" with such events... it seems that adrenalin is always required (and enjoyed) here.
Years ago I was asked to pilot a skydiving club Cessna 182. Plane was fine but I was not comfortable with the number of divers they liked to cram into it. I would've loved the hours and money but it wasn't worth the risk.
CPT. Roberto, Your assessment is brilliant and well stated. Your suspicions about being undamaged is more than likely right. Many rental aircraft for example get bent by stupid pilots, with no experience, blundering into bad weather, and by the grace of God survive and bring the aircraft home park it in the line and never say a word; But the next unsuspecting poor guy The rent that plane has no idea that it's weakened and subject to potentially a disastrous end. I started skydiving back at the beginning with Jacq Estelle (parachutes Incorporated) in Orange Massachusetts. I can tell you for sure, this is one guy that won't go busting through a cloud layer ever again. This whole video is a bunch of crap from the start. Nothing more than the recipe or a big headline. Your assessment is spot-on and I congratulate you sir. 🛫🇺🇸🛬
Very good points, especially regarding weight and altitude performance since all affect the stall performance. While you're at it, what is the Vfe for full flaps ?
In all the operations I have flown in, we always reduced the power to minimize propwash and sacrificed altitude if we couldn't maintain enough stall margin. At least in the singles I fly (Pilatus PC-6, Cessna 182) the decent rate is not that excessive that the skydivers will notice the altitude loss from start of drop to finish. I usually just request the next 500ft higher flight level and drift down during the drop.
Juan, in about 1986 I had a coworker who was a former military pilot, with huge hours (even worked on the Mercury splashdown recovery missions), explain the intimate details of a four-point roll. I was fascinated by how the rudder became your pitch control during "that" moment in the maneuver. If I ever finish my flight training and acquire a single-engine land certificate, and type out in an appropriate aircraft, I'll have to try that, lol. Thanks for your insight into yet another level of aviation! Love your generosity and knowledge. Cheers from Texas!
@blancolirio just quick as I know it. In the USA you are required as a pilot of a jump plane to have a parachute and at least basic jump qualified. I don't know on a King but the Twin Otter you don't do any of that asymmetric thrust just both props back 80%. As usual you are spot on and great video.
Hey Juan, king air 200 and 90 guy here. I’m kinda blown away by the way they have this procedure written. I think what I have to say about this incident is that people are reading “course pitch” what you should read is FEATHER. The reason it took one engine to “spool up” is cause the left engine with prop feathered needs more time for the prop to come OUT OF FEATHER and go into positive pitch. It takes time. Anybody that knows the king air or indeed the pt6 will tell you that it takes time to bring that prop from feather to full fine and ready to pull. And that would be reflected in the differential thrust described in the written article. BE90 speeds that are relevant VF 174 VFE130 VMC93 Something like that The 200 is better in every way. And the 300 is probably better than that and so on. Coming from a northern gravel king air guy.
In one of Juan's frame grabs early in the recovery attempt, you can see that the port propellor pitch is finer than the right. Having a twin engine food processor sharing the same airspace with my unprotected carcass would scare the hell out of me.
Oh yes I was making the same point before I saw your reply about the "feather" condition of the left engine. I think some multi engine and constant speed prop operations recurrent training might be due here.
@@DARANGULAFILM I can possibly explain that. When you have a propeller feathered and ask it to go to full fine while adding full power the propeller has a tendency to overspeed. King air 90 props are meant to be governed between I think 2200 and 1900 rpm. So when you shove it from feather… around 400 rpm to fine… around 2200 rpm. The thing has a bit of momentum, if you will towards the high pitch. The prop will momentarily over speed before the governors catch up. Mechanical connections and mechanical logic. It all takes time. That’s why we have governors. 3 actually and if you’re suggesting that the right hand prop was in a “finer or more high pitch state” I don’t what to tell you. Something is wrong. Because to perform this manoeuvre without one engine ready to go I.e. high rpm(fine pitch), seems silly to me. I understand you have thousands of feet to recover but I was always tought to operate these airplanes and any airplane in an envelope that they can work. This seems to be pushing that envelope to the max and in this case beyond. What if those divers inside had whacked their had and gotten hurt and the other obvious what if’s that arise.
Well when we did parachute jumps at Sun N Fun for a few years in the 90’s that is basically what we did in the DC3. I asked another operator and they do the same thing. You have to pull the power on the side they jump from. We stayed 10% above VMC and were in a slight decent..
I am glad nobody died. But it is one of your funniest videos. You always say the ingredients for a spin, which is stall and yaw. I appreciate that you keep saying it. You want to save lives.
T-2 for the Navy. We would do a coupled vertical entry to get an inverted flat spin. It would uncage your eyeballs but was a great confidence builder in spin recovery .
I suppose I am not the only one to notice that it starts to 'go south' exactly when the last parachutist comes out (yellow helmet) and positions themselves further out from the fuselage than the others and thus blocking any remaining airflow to the port elevator.
@@JimNortonsAlcoholism actually my buddy flies a 100 for a sky diving company and they brief strongly about location relative to divers in the event of unintended separation. So while he may not have know if they were to his left , right, front, or back. I imagine he had good intentions to continue his decent and maneuver away from the area of the initial stall. Maybe he did maybe he didn’t I don’t know. But I do know this type of situation is briefed.
@@alberttarica8106 I my experience, following an inadvertent spin, unless you are a test pilot super being, the mind is concentrated on one thing. WTF happened, followed very quickly by assess and recovery. Any delay in starting the recovery is governed by the time needed to process the aforementioned WTF moment. I have only spun inadvertently once, it had a strong pucker factor but scared the crap out of the other 4 gliders climbing in the thermal beneath me :-)
Yes he had a wild ride for quite a bit.- 'meat missiles' I'd never heard that one. We had a parachutist fall to her death at Ardmore NZ ~1977ish . Crazy drop zone located just west of aerodrome full view from the tower. That was a strange day.
Almost hit some skydivers over Temecula. Was climbing out of John Wayne in a A320. The TCAS advised me to descend but I could see the guys jumping out so I chose to climb. Thank goodness for TCAS
@@JBAutomotive794 don’t know. ATC hadn’t given me any warning. It was just east of the ridge near Lake Elsinore around 15000. My copilot was at the controls and initially about to start her TCAS response. I had a visual on the AC and could see the guys jumping out ahead of us. I took the controls and started an immediate climb
@@Riverplacedad1 Although helpful and their main job is to separate traffic and make sure IFR routes are dished out and followed, I would still expect a pilot to check the VFR map when making a flight plan. Especially with a CoPilot to share the workload i would be checking that map like crazy if they sent me off my already planned out path. We live in a world today with so much advancements in technology we almost have "set it and forget it" aircraft, that its easy to get complacent and get farther away from actively flying the aircraft vs riding in it and unfortunately we see accidents due to it. Dan Gryder will show up and make a video about us if we screw up and then tacos will get stolen and it will be a huge thing.... we all need to be careful out there guys. 🇺🇸🍻
@@JBAutomotive794 well we were under ATC control and NWA dispatched flight plan. I’m not sure if ATC should have had us higher or the other aircraft had violated his protected airspace (or if there even was one). This was 20 years ago. I filed a report and never heard anything from it
@@Riverplacedad1 completely understand, however I have doubts that a group of skydivers would jump out in a random spot out of a perfectly flying airplane. I have a feeling it was a Marked spot on the VFR map. Although you were under a given Vector and altitude, they were not the ones flying the plane. I am still studying hard and have zero hours of stick time so my opinions are not very valid, however I don't ever plan on getting in an airplane without ever planning out a route the night before carefully using the VFR maps, especially in unfamiliar route on a cross country trip. Modern planes have very good moving maps that should be current, but some good old fashioned studying and putting pencil to paper will always be a good fallback. I really hope to fly one day soon and grab a hamburger will y'all at an airport Cafe. Thanks for having a cool discussion with me.
Looks like there’s more than normal climbing out the door. That also means there are people moving back towards the door inside to follow the people outside moving cg way back. Last time I jumped a king that size, usually 4 out the door.
You’re absolutely spot on! As a skydiver and former pilot, I’ve seen many times that jumpers pile up in the door and on the outside grips. Even with signs in the cabin “no more than x jumpers behind this line”. These guys are hyper focused on a well timed exit and ignore everything else.There is normally heavy buffeting due to the disturbed airflow over the tail with jumpers hanging outside which can mask a pre stall buffet. Due to substantial drag increase, its almost impossible to do this without a rate of descend or adding substantial amount of power. Doing a final jumprun this close to stall speed and below vmca is begging for it! I can not imagine that this has not happened a good number of times already, only this time is was caught on social media. In the skydiving centres in parts of the world I’ve been, the pilot lives in a bubble and formation jumpers do a exit dry run on a mock up with zero consideration for airplane controllability (“that’s the pilots job”). Briefing folks!!
Lod dude to enhance the learning effect, I would suggest placing it on top of a two feet deep tub filled with cow dung mixed with urine for the right viscosity. What do you think?
@@skydive1424 - Nah, health hazard for the next lift - they usually start to gas-off above nine grand anyway, so why add to the pong? However, the idea of a mock door & rails on a remote control 'bull riding' machine does appeal . . . think 'reverse stick-shaker' : )
Center of Gravity and airflow disruption has always been a factor in flying jumpers. Some jump pilots and some jumpers understand these effects and do a good job of compensating. Other pilots and jumpers are less knowledgeable and less safe. A particularly difficult jump plane that I jumped a few times back in my mis-spent youth was the Lockheed Loadstar. The exit door was quite far back. Too many jumpers near the door on exit could stall the aircraft...there were fatalities.
@@dennisparks3692 Mid 70s at "the Gulch". I don't think they ever had an actual crash there, but I had friends who bounced off the tail in a stall event. The fatal Lodestar crash or crashes were elsewhere. The Lodestar stall tendency was well known and jumpers were briefed on how to exit without having too many people behind a specific line, well forward of the door.
I had a chance to fly as a passenger in a Cheyenne II from Burbank to SLC. I knew both the pilots who had not flown together before. On final in SLC, there was a significant cross wind and the pilot said 'let me show you a trick' to the second pilot; instead of using rudder, he simply backed off the thrust from one engine and was very proud of how nice a normal attitude on final was compared to lots of rudder and slip. But on short final, the tower called for a 'go around', and without hesitation the pilot went full throttle on both engines. Problem was that one engine spooled up quicker than the other and the airplane really went sideways (thought we were gonna die). Not sure how he saved it but it took all the rudder there was along with a few prayers. Both pilots were sweating bullets when we finally got on the ground.
Juan . . . I always enjoy your analysis of aviation events, especially those where pilot input to controls plays an important role in the results. From a fellow member of the "Once a T-37 IP" association, I can usually see your Tweet IP background come through clearly. When I saw the Stall+Yaw=Spin title, I knew I was in for some more Tweet induced wisdom!
“Bring me a bucket of prop wash.” I’ve been around pilots of all stripes (some with stars) plus I have my PPC and I’ve never heard that one before. You’re a true gem, Juan.
I don't have a lot of experience flying jumpers and what I do have is in a single engine, but the notion of putting the left prop to full flat pitch is insane. Glad to see I wasn't the only one to notice the two secondary accelerated stalls in the recovery. After posting a comment on another video I heard from someone who knows the pilot claiming he's very careful. After listening to your break down I'll stick with my original thoughts. I'd also say he was lucky he didn't try to cobb the power on the recovery. No two PT-6's spool at the same rate!
Hi all, This pilot made a mistake and owned it in his lengthy and detailed explanation. More words equal more fuel for criticism. I've jumped out of many KA's, but have never seen 6 on the step. Did the pilot know so many were to exit at once? If not, he is ill equipped to give the thumbs-down during their climb-out; too late. At most DZs I've jumped at, it would fall on jumpers to inform pilot or S&TA before takeoff, or fall on management to limit group size for exits. Max 4-5 jumpers for CG reasons seems like a reasonable way to prevent this from happening again. While this was a close call, and unacceptable, it does not seem to come from a place of negligence on the part of the pilot, and he does not deserve all the blame. Good jump pilots of twins always try to minimize prop blast. Try flying jumpers, and try out 100+ knot prop blast while standing on the step. Pilots in the States wear a parachute because FAA regs say all passengers including pilot must wear a parachute when the door is open during flight. Thanks Juan for your thoughts and excellent content, I love your channel.
Great camera work from the jumper. Nice recovery from the pilot. Use to watch the tweet birds inflight training all day over west alabama. It was like a high altitude air show. Now its talons roaring over all day in fake combat. Awsum to watch....but it sure does let me know I'm old...lol. Keep it high Juan. Fly safe.👍
@@steve83333 Funny, you come across as a cocky know it all with that comment. Would you recover from a spin by putting alieron AWAY from the spin, then keep on trying to do that not once, not twice, but three times? Because this "pilot" did... Face it, the guy panicked and froze once it spun. The aircraft wanted to fly straight after the first spin recovery, but he kept horsing on the controls and trying to enter into more spins...
I am a skydiver. Many years ago I jumped out of a stalled King Air at a private dropzone near Wildwood, FL. The takeoff on that flight was also extremely dicey because the King Air barely missed the treetops on the west end of the runway. In skydiving circles, King Air has a notorious reputation for stalls on jump run.
Been watching that video the past day over and over! That's about the best footage of a stall / spin and recovery I've ever seen! Crisp and clear, and the camera was on the aircraft the entire time, even climbing out from it! Must've been one hell of a ride for the skydivers!! Great info as always, Juan. I knew aft CG played into this, but I didn't even think of the guy's bodies all blocking the effectiveness of the elevator. Interesting! I also never knew they put one engine to idle. Even with my limited and fairly newfound aircraft knowledge, that sounds sketchy to me, too. The guys should be ready and expect prop blast when that door opens on a twin! Loved that training vid, too - MAN that looks like a wild ride!! I often wonder if I could keep it together long enough to save my life in that situation. Gotta love TH-cam. Strikes for EVERYTHING. :(
I've never spun a T-37 .. we didn't have them in the RAF, but I have spun a Jet Provost on several occasions. I suspect that would be fairly similar .... rate of descent somewhere in the region of 16,000 fpm.
@ 7:55 (still pic) look at the prop pitch of both engines. To me they're set different. Right engine grabbing more air than the left. Your thoughts Juan.
Not a king air guy here, but rather a spin demo pilot at Randolph in the mid late 90s. Had the pleasure to see some inverted spins at Edwards in a previous gig in an A37. We were chasing them from a T38. Seemed to me it took quite a bit of effort to even get into the inverted spin, and the likelihood that would happen in a tweet seems low to me, yet possible if deliberate enough. Idle-neutral-aft. Pretty much kills the inverted spin right there. Your left in a dive, easy to recover. The tweet would recover stick only or rudder only. 2 of the 6 demos in the spin demo ride. Just wasn’t as efficient as the regular boldface method. (The test guys were getting into an inverted spin by rolling upside down, then doing an inverted stall with feeding rudder as they approached the stall. The result was kind of a cartwheel looking thing into an eventual inverted spin, usually, and they had to hold the stick forward to keep it from recovering. With the airflow issues at altitude and that high pressure ratio engine, they often lost one or two engines as a result, to be restarted after the recovery. The reason I state this is that I have heard tales of IPs and students saying they were in an inverted spin in a tweet, and that is highly unlikely as the setup is pretty lengthy and deliberate. The ones that usually claim it say that they held the stick forward too long in the normal spin recovery and overshot the recovery cone to the negative, or inverted, side. While it may have looked a lot like an inverted spin, I would classify this as more of an inverted snap roll, although technically still aggravated by a large difference in lift between wings, at this point your total speed would have been pretty high and once you pull back a little on the stick the rolling would stop. So to say you were in an inverted spin in that case would be like saying that an upright snap roll was also a spin... Similar, but not my idea of a traditional "spin". I'm sure folks will say I'm wrong, which ain't uncommon... In all cases, regardless of how you got there, once you are inverted and getting tossed around in a negative environment, it ain't a fun ride). I rambled too long there... Looks to me like the king air here kept aggregating his recovery. Probably more freaked out at the dive than anything. And I’d bet he still had asymmetric thrust at that point, so a deep secondary stall was resulting in more of a snap roll than an actual secondary “spin”. Still basically the same thing. Idle…Break the stall, kill the rotation, you’ll come out. Take your time in the dive recovery. Glad they didn’t hit any jumpers during this little snafu. Makes for good stories. Danger Builds Character!
Tweet IP here . . . inverted spin twice (both unintentional, since it was a prohibited maneuver). First was with a "spin pilot" while at PIT. I screwed up one of the stick only recovery attempts and left it full fwd too long while still in a normal spin. Slipped right into a full neg g inverted stall (and still spinning) ended up in inverted spin. In step 3, I went stick full fwd to decelerate the spin, then snapped it full aft. Nose came around and was in a straight stall. Just pushed the stick fwd and flew it out. The second time was with a student, and like in the first he held the stick full fwd too long and right into the inverted spin. I took the controls and just like the first time, step 3 popped us right out.
@@gordonelwell7084 the old negative spiral, I believe. Not the most comfortable ride😀. But technically you can’t get into a negative spin from an upright spin in the course of any of the recoveries demonstrated in a spin ride or by a student. In a stabilized upright spin the jet just doesn’t have enough inertia in the pitch axis to traverse to a negative stall as it transits the spin recovery cone. Negative, yes, spiral, kind of, inverted stall, no, thus not a negative (inverted) spin. As your pitch transits the spin recovery cone you almost instantly recover from the stall, and in that attitude you pick up a lot of speed through the transit of the cone. I suppose if you aggravated the forward pitch long enough eventually you could get there, it that would be several thousand feet and like an additional 30 or 45 seconds. In a student environment (not a test environment) this would be ridiculous to sit through, and nothing to gain by this experience. And flirting with an ejection altitude. Where I will agree with you is that the ensuing ride is a shitty feeling. And it’s very abrupt. It’s basically oranges and apples to discuss what it was anyway, as obviously it’s mis applied recovery by the pilot. Easy to do, not fun to ride through. And makes for great stories from back when we were still cool.
@@markg7963 I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Step 5 says "stick abruptly full forward one turn after applying rudder", then step 6 is "controls neutral after spinning stops and recover from dive". I just know that on both of my episodes, it was step 5 applied for an extended period that left us in the spin. I distinctly recall starting the boldface over after being in the inverted event, but in step 3, I intentionally put the stick full forward first (which decelerated the spinning) and only then executing the rest of step 3 (stick abruptly full aft and hold). I believe that if I had not decelerated the spinning by going full forward first, then the abruptly full aft would not have had enough authority to stop the spinning inertia and the ejection could easily been the next step. You are correct that both events really chewed up lots of altitude. I still think of myself as cool, but not in the same way . . . I'm cool today because I managed three great kids, and watch two great grandkids arrive on the scene. On a side note, my son is a US Navy test pilot instructor and he matter-of-factly told be one afternoon on how he had to take the controls of an F-18F from a test pilot student to get them out of an inverted flat spin. Brought back all my great memories!
@@gordonelwell7084 hey man, that’s awesome passing down the profession. I’ve got a great idea, let’s buy a tweet out of the boneyard, fix it up, and go spin the shit outta that thing while we laugh our asses off. Inverted, upright, it no matter, we be flying all over this bi%&^😂
Forgive me Juan but with right rudder to counter act the thrust of the right engine there would be no yaw. The ball would be centered. The displaced rudder would cause drag but the airplane would be in balanced flight with correct use of the rudder. That's what is done in a single engine scenario, which is essentially what is being induced in this case. The yaw came because they went too slow to maintain Vmc air thus reducing the rudder effectiveness so that yaw allowed the advancing wing to lift and the retreating wing to stall.
The only aircraft I intentionally spun was a Piper Tomahawk with my instructor. Neither of us knew at that time that the Traumahawk had that nasty habit of unrecoverable attitudes. We had a blast and survived - I learned how to recover from a spin and more importantly, how to avoid getting into one in the first place. I still think spin training in the right aircraft should be part of the curriculum for the private ticket. Medically grounded now so it really doesn't matter what I think ;-) Love the channel Juan!
I've gone spinning in a Cessna 152, best times of my life. Better than sex, especially because you can tell your parents about it as often as you want. The 152 enters and recovers exactly when you want, like it's on rails. I've only got 20 hrs in (need a better job), but I think I've spent at least 2 of them just whirling around. My instructor thinks it's a blast, too, so we do it on nearly every flight even if its just practicing touch and goes (obviously far away and above 3k ft). Sorry you've gotten grounded, man. That's a huge bummer.
What would be the right aircraft to learn spin recovery in? My daughter just finished her private pilot and she only ever flew a Skyhawk. She has also flown a Piper Cherokee (a friend's plane). Her school didn't offer a ton of aircraft types anyway, but even so none of the others were available to the private pilot students.
Kudos to pilot for enabling recovery and no loss of life. Everyone’s an expert at I told you so!! That was one heck of a ride for the five remaining with a good amount of g and push back as they went down!! They had a ohh gosh this it it moment!
I'm neither a pilot nor a jumper, but as I watch the thing with the twirly meat choppers fall amidst the "meat missiles," I can't help but suspect there's an element of uncontrollable luck involved until the pilot regains control authority. So glad no one was hurt, and all metal remained as the factory formed it.
I used to think that jumping out of a perfectly good airplane was not a god idea, now I'm seeing why they have parachutes on. . . ( see the pilot report )
Full coarse = feathered. Disking [sic] is reducing the drag (and yaw) on left engine. Unfortunately, it requires some time for the prop to come out of the full coarse position which probably exacerbated the recovery.
Good analysis Juan. That Pilot was outside the limits and nearly cleaned up skydiver and himself. The Cessna 310s and 402Bs in a flat spin are a death trap for the exact reason you specified. The mains tip tanks become sustaining spin weights.
The skydive video came up on my TH-cam feed and I immediately hoped for the blancolirio treatment. Thanks for not disappointing me, Juan! Hard to imagine a pilot with a chute on would be able to climb out of an aircraft when it's in such a dramatic spin.
There's a very simular video, floating around somewhere, of a King Air stall that occured over the Perris California DZ sometime in the early to mid 90s. Some jumpers just ended up with a story to tell in the bar later that evening. That was the same plane used in the movie 'Point Break' BTW.
I totally agree with Yuan. It was the first thing I said when reading the pilot account. I have 900 hrs drop flying experience We used to operate the C402 for skydiving here in Auckland, New Zealand. It, like the C90 Kingair are fast aircraft and it is a lot harder to control at 90kts. Deliberately configuring a twin aircraft for asymmetric flight in a high workload phase of flight flying slow and dealing with changing C of G is like trying to clear a jammed live bullet out of your hand gun chamber while pointing the gun into your face. You don’t need to do this. My 8 way team would stack 5 jumpers outside on the 402 with the other 5 jumpers linked in the door and I was “front float” being the guy closest to the relative wind and yes it was hard work but you got used to it.
This popped up on my stalkbook feed a few days ago, great camera work from the jumper with the camera. As you said, pulling the left engine along with the additional drag on the left side from the jumpers and then the aft CofG change was just a recipe for disaster..luckily they were able to walk away from it.
This may have already been mentioned in the 777 comments but I believe the pilot uses "course prop" on the left prop to minimize asymmetric drag by having flat blades. As he mentioned the no 1 is at flight idle there would not be any issue w prop blast on the jumpers.
Don’t forget that VMC will decrease with altitude. Not as much as in a normally aspirated engine. But a turbine engine will also have less power up at 14,000’. So that VMC comes right down to stall speed and crosses over. The airplane may stall before VMC and then it’s an instant spin. Just like we’re seeing. We used to limit the amount of rudder a student could put in for the VMC demo because we wanted him to see the VMC roll before it stalled and spun.
@@rickt.1870 That's what I was thinking. They were probably supposed to come out right away but couldn't because of the spin. That's what I was thinking with the snap rolls. They were piled in a corner.. CG all messed up.
I really enjoy your professionalism and your real emotions coming through. I'm not a pilot but have driven race cars. Really appreciate what you do. God Bless you!
I saw a similar video and it was a high wing plane. Also saw one that was a Porter. This other single the pilot was reported to SACAA for more stall spin training as was the Pilatis Porter pilot. I was always mindful of stall awareness when I flew sky divers
Great analysis Juan. These guys set themselves up for disaster. Also not exactly a stellar spin recovery. Glad everyone walked away from this one. Also good that the king air wasn't bent.
Moderate right-aileron input: 00:34 I estimate a weight of 10,000 lbs for the King Air 90, with 1800 lbs for the initial wave of skydivers with clothing and equipment, assuming 1 female and 8 male South Africans. Positioning of the skydivers outside the left door moves the center of mass leftward. This minimizes left-yawing tendency due to their form drag, but increases left-yawing tendency from thrust of the right engine. The offset cg/weight adds to the left-rolling tendency. All 10 skydivers (including the straggler) would be positioned quite aftward, which reduces effectiveness of the empennage in both yaw and pitch. Large right-aileron input: 00:45 (before spin) The skydivers' positions aft of the left wing root increases pressure upwind of them, spoiling some of the lift near the left wing root. In cruise, the roll moment is somewhat balanced by a reduction of left-elevator downforce, due to blanking/drafting. However, when the pilot commands pitch forward, asymmetrical lift on the elevator increases left-rolling tendency. TLDR: In this configuration, Vmca is higher than standard.
Years ago I flew into an airport several times that had a King Air C-90 that flew skydivers several times a day. While in the pattern once he dropped out of the sky at a crazy amount of vertical speed, recovered and landed like he was landing on an aircraft carrier. Worst part about it is that he never talked on the radio. Stupid cowboy pilot. I was not happy about the incident at all.
I think the pilot saying discing means the flat plate area of the prop as it creates drag. I'm not sure that's even a thing. However it would ease the assymetry somewhat to increase the pitch of the left prop
A lot of aerodynamics effects were involved here and such a kind of stunt on a KingAir would have been normally carried out by a test pilot on test aircraft. We can’t stopped be reminded, again and again, of aerodynamics principles and here, we have a good ( and well explained) exemple. Mistakes don’t end up in disaster all the time but this one was a close call!
For what it's worth. Back in the day, I jumped 182's, 206's, CASA's, and King Air 90's, and 100's. When I stopped jumping I had over 800 jumps. NEVER did I see a King Air use more than 1-notch of flaps on jump run. I NEVER saw a pilot idle one of the engines. I am a private pilot also, so I know a bit of what I was seeing. I was always nervous when I jumped being a pilot as I was along for the ride. The first 1000 agl is also a bit of a nervous time as if the plane has any problems we have to ride it down. Above 1000 agl, the PIC may tell us to get out using our reserves. But, never was I afraid on the jump run. Most of the time we were at 90-100 knots on jump run. And, twins always made me nervous the first 1000 agl. Most times you have no idea how many hours the PIC has in twins. Love your YT channel, great stuff!
Wow, If memory serves correctly there was a "floater limit" on almost every airplane I ever jumped.. first thing I said was "there's too many people out the door!" when I saw this.. idk about jump run power settings.. seems like a dumb idea to me too.. way back in the '80's tho when I was a JM.. maybe people just stopped caring..? things seem to be going downhill everywhere.. That last guy to get out cracked me up, I wanna buy him a beer! I woulda got out too after the second recovery attempt.. Great survival instinct. 🙂
Thanks Juan. I enjoy your videos and your level of professionalism during your analysis. I’m A&P, along with aspiring pilot and I feel that you are spot on with this one brother! Keep it up.
I dropped meatballs for a bit building time in a C90 with the Blackhawk PT6’s. I was never taught or asked to reduce power on the left engine. We would approach the DZ around 100kts, if I recall correctly, power back near idle, turn the green light on and pitch for 90kts. Flying that slow with asymmetric thrust with a shifting cg is a bad idea. It’s not a matter of if you will enter a spin, but when you will enter a spin.
This configuration is daft at a very fundamental level. Added to that, way too much CG shift on a relatively small a/c with so many meatbombs hanging out. A good efficient exit stream - or a larger a/c is needed.
That type of spin due to asymetric thrust happened to me on my rc Model cessna 310 (72" WS). One of the engines stalled and I wasn't able to recover since it happened very close to the ground shortly after take off. It ended upside down in some tall grass with both props broken, the landing gear broken, one of the tip tanks smashed and a cracked windshield. I still have it and repaired it mostly but haven't flown it since that happened. I want to convert it to electric. so maybe things like that don't happen again.
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Note: due to Copyright by "Viral Hog" of original source video I'm unable to monetize this video.
YT will kick me off the platform after 3 copyright strikes, I currently now have 2 (in 90 days)
This is too important not to pass on...support Patreon.
WOW! Thanks Juan!!!🙏
Juan, terrifying! I wanted to be a pilot but often get sick on USAF fixed/rotory wing.
Yikes ! Stakes are high here please stay on ; keep a good thing going . Good story though !
Great channel .
Can Hog take the strike away
I am most impressed with the cameraman's solid filming of the event.
That’s a very good point. Considering how many videos there are where the person holding the camera points it away from the event as it happens …
Yep! "And the Oscar for camera work goes to..." 😀👍
Awesome point - you know you've got a good one when you completely forget that the camera is attached to a meat bomb hurtling towards the earth lol
The camera flyer is experienced. He is keeping his eye on the plane to avoid colliding with it in freefall.
While falling out of an airplane no doubt
The last exiting skydiver was probably thinking it's safer outside than inside!
No - she got thrown out.
Without a doubt his intention was to get the hell out.
@@Drew625in2une her intentions wasn't really relevant because she got thrown out from not being able to hold on to anything.
we always think that. Once above 1000ft.
I’m outta here …
The female jumper who came out last commented on the original source video. She said she didn't bail but had nothing to hold on to. Was thrown around and ended up on the floor by the door and when she tried to get up, she was thrown out. Bruised but OK and jumped the next day!
Thanks!
surviving an airplane ejection is not a common thing.
This happened to me on a jump load in FL in the 90s. I was last out of a Queen Air, in a 2 way, after a 5-6 way before us. One minute I was in the doorway, the next I did a face plant on the floor and couldn't get out of the damn a/c. I recognized the stall/spin as it was happening but just couldn't get out of the door (above me then below me than above me...) . Thankfully the pilot recovered and we went back up to altitude. I asked later "WTF?" and he said "traffic". Checked that one off my bucket list. Only 8 lives to go.
Traffic? Yeah, right .... smh
Meow !!! 8 left..I'm sure you felt like that.
"Traffic" ? Was he flying behind a 757 ? Nice one. You should have asked him if he meant "highway traffic".
I suppose it's marginally more feasible than "I swerved to avoid a pothole".
So you're a meat missile with 8 lives left.
I once asked a parachutist why he felt ok jumping out of a perfectly good aircraft.
His answer "Have you seen how our pilots fly?"
After watching this I finally get what meant.
...traffic..... Juan just flew by in a triple 7....
Shout out to the videographer, he kept focus on the subject quite well. Experienced
Yes!!
It does make for an awesome video. Glad its not my King Air.
Almost like it was planned….
@@Repinnc well, the first one to jump has the video has the camera that part was planned, the stall was not.
@@Repinnc Any pilot or student pilot watching the tribulations of this King Air knows it was completely unplanned. Fly safe.
When I was working toward my ATP, I flew King Airs and Caravans for a skydiving school/club. Jumpers perpetually complained to the boss because we would not pull the left engine on the King Air to idle for exactly the reasons Juan discusses here. Lots of pilots love the KA but even it's most ardent admirers do NOT want to get it into a spin. Fortunately, the old man backed us up. After my time, he dumped the King Airs in favor of Caravans and a Kodiak. Not as fast but a whole lot more forgiving. They also give you a great way to get the floaters to stop hanging on the rail. It is usual to put your foot on the left wheel brake. This lets the forward jumper put their foot on it for stability. Those folks start dawdling around out there? Just release the brake. Bye bye.
Hahahahaha
Brilliant
@@ronconrad3507
You make it sound like everyone has a choice.
I'll just fly a 777 since we can just pick and choose.
@@bruce2357 some do have a choice what are you talking about?
I saw a jumper have that falling off the wheel experience from a C-180, but unintentionally due to a failed brake. I reached out to give it an extra spin, the pilot stomped the toe brake to no avail. I told him "Have fun landing this!" and went out the door.
The last jumper out was Jana Neimoller. She said she was was initially thrown around the aircraft with nothing to hold on to, and ended up flat on the floor near the door. Then was thrown out involuntarily.
Yea once the group spread out a little there were more than 6 bodies in the air not including the camera man.
I know this is an old video, but I just saw it and it brought back memories of being in a C90 that stalled on approach at 2500’ AGL in IMC. We were a medivac coming back to our home field after a transport. ATC had kept us high due to being between two larger airports, and the PIC was angry with ATC because of this. He had the gear down, full flaps, and throttles at idle to slow down and attempt to lose altitude in order intercept the localizer. Problem is that when he did pickup the localizer he pulled back, lifting the nose and the IAS dropped to 70kt. Things got quiet, stall horn was screaming and the wings buffeted. Now we had issues with this pilot in the past, so luckily on this flight there was an observer pilot in the right seat who took the controls, nosed over hard, and firewalled the throttles. The recovery was quick, and we went missed, but landed safely on the next approach. The worst part is the PIC would not admit that he stalled the AC. He was terminated on the spot.
Flying jumpers in a Twin Otter, yes, we would reduce power on the left engine to reduce prop blast, and use rudder to compensate. I wouldn’t go to idle, just reduce it some.. you don’t want the left prop be be a disk, you still want some air flowing through to help the jumpers “fly” their exit. Pretty normal. The jumpers also need to be aware about causing an AFT CG that could cause controllability problems. The Otter happens to be a more forgiving plane than the Kingair though. There was a similar incident in the PNW where one half of the Horizontal Stab came off in recovery. That plane got fixed, and eventually went to to get destroyed in the Hawaii accident.
Former jump pilot with A90 and BE-99 experience: too many people got aft on this one, pilot would have had to fly so fast to keep that many people on the tail they would have blown off. Poor recovery after spin entry, but I blame the jumpers for loading up the tail too much. Not a lot of elevator authority at slow speeds and a narrow CG range in the Beech's, gotta fly 100-120kts to have big ways hangin on the tail with less flap
Wtf you mean poor recovery ??? He recovered and did not kill anyone. If you recovered right away he might have hit a diver.
Use a 200 or 350. That T tail makes a huge difference in C of G.
Juan, I have been a non-pilot aviation enthusiast for three decades now, Military and civilian aviation. Your videos are credible and entertaining, the concern you show for everyone in the sky, and the science you include has improved my aviation education immensely! You can’t really measure what never happens, but undoubtedly your work has and will make aviation safer for all. Thank you for that.
Wow... just Wow! Hell of a report Juan! Those photos from the past at the end were a real treat! Keep it up bro!
Juan, when you said "meat missles" I just about fell out of my chair laughing! I had never heard that term before. You are awesome.
I missed the missile comment .
@@blueskyliao8480 He was talking about the skydivers right at the beginning of the video.
i was laughing so hard i couldnt even repeat it to my wife
I've never heard meat missiles before, but have heard meat bombs plenty of times.
"meat missile". Heard that a few limes. MISS ILE 🤣
Thank You Juan!!! You are... THE BEST, at breaking it down!!! YT's policies... SUCK!!!
"RECOVER!" lol...as a retired AF pilot (B-1 and B-52), I loved (or had an LSD flashback!) hearing your tone during the 'recover' commands at the beginning of the video. I understand you were a T-38 FAIP or instructor, and anyone who went through UPT can distinctly remember the 'recover' commands from the IP! Thanks for your great videos.
Thanks Juan for taking the time to educate us non-jumper pilots about a very basic yet important topic here: basic airmanship! FLY THE AIRPLANE! I don't care if you have 100 or 30,000 hours, basic aerodynamics prevail over us all!
Having flown the King Air and the De Havilland Twin Otter I can attest to the fact that the King Air is not really a good jump plane (for the reasons demonstrated in this video). The Otter is a great airplane for this activity because of its high wing and very low stall speed. The engine and prop configurations on both aircraft are the same, PT-6 Pratt and Whitney. When the power is reduced to idle, on either aircraft, it is like putting on the brakes. The deceleration is very pronounced. The way this guy was flying the aircraft he was just asking for a stall/spin.
Agree. The Otter is superior in this respect.
Cessna caravan is also a good jump plane
@@teddrewflack400 Correct on that.
Yep, cut my teeth skydiving out of the Otter. Twelve pax plus the Master. Pilot took it to about 70 knots almost at stall at every opening point. She's a great workhorse and perfect for the job.
But DC9/MD80 is best xD
Juan as a skydiver and a single engine prop pilot I can't thank you enough for the analysis. I'd imagine all the drag on the port side engine, while decreasing thrust on that engine would be a set up for disaster. While the pilot may have wanted to avoid the prop wash on the skydivers sitting outside the airframe, increasing the chances of a premature deployment and getting wrapped in the empennage (which would take everyone down) and I don't fly twins. Feels like a recipe for disaster if not performed correctly, the pitch up was an issue given asymmetric trust, I'm not an expert at Twins in any way and never trained in them. Your analysis is pretty spot on, I've been enjoying your channel for a while and appreciate this breakdown. I learn so much on your channel, I hope you keep it up and also break down these situations as well. Much appreciation for you.
I think "disking" of the prop means fully "fine" as a windmilling fine prop will act like a disk generating maximum drag which would exasperate the asymmetric configuration.
Windmilling is when the aircraft's momentum is used/wasted turning the prop, even minimal engine output means no windmilling.
I imagine the five (then four) skydivers left inside the aircraft during the spin(s) would've been flopping around the cabin. Lucky that at some point they didn't all crash into the cockpit! Great report Juan! Loved the the T stuffer at the end!
True, if you study the video the remaining jumpers would have been pushed aft and remained there due to g force and gravity push.
And you can bet there were some stained shorts...
@@badmonkey2222 looks so damn scary
Also lucky no canopies were inadvertently deployed inside the aircraft. Good work by the cameraman. Probably demanded to be on the next load for free as this messed up his jump with the team.
The pilot appeared to be going way too slow on jump run; just for the ease of the jumpers. No need to slow down that much as the first jumper out would normally climb forward and block the wind for the others coming out. I recall climbing out of Mike Mullins' Super King Air at 21,000 ft at the World Free Fall Convention with no issues.
Did the same exiting a 402
So you think going too slow led to the stall?
Mullins has -34s on his king air. He could probably shut the left engine down and still easily fly jump run at 90 kts. I did that 21k jump at Quincy one year. Great fun.
Yep I made 21 jumps in a day at Skydive Marana in Arizona during a boogie with Mullins king air. Never got out of his plane below 17000. Good times!!
With 20+ years in the sport I've always had the highest respect for our pilots. They operate under difficult and demanding conditions. Serving drop zones the world over every weekend without incident. It's a bit of a shame that the only time they hit the headlines it's usually negative press. More power to them I say, and blue skies! We are all learning every day :-) Thanks Juan, as always, brilliant content!
With nearly 50 years as a professional pilot and being USAF trained, I along with many other pilots think the reputation of jump operations and their pilots is sketchy at best. I'm sure you think your pilots are great. Passengers usually do. This pilot in his deposition demonstrated a severe lack of knowledge of aerodynamics. In the pilot world, jump pilots are thought of as hot dogs. Quite often they are relatively low time pilots working cheaply to build twin turbine time. And of course you only read about the negative incidents. But there shouldn't be so many. This is why Juan said that the NTSB and FAA have been paying close attention to jump operations.
@@zak2u2 While you are correct on most of that let's not forget that Jump Pilots probably have superior stick and rudder skills compared to most magenta line pilots. I did a summer of doing Jump ops and my landing landings and coordination vasily increased. They definitely fall on the gypsy side of flying but some of those guys can do incredible things with their aircraft.
@@zak2u2 You nailed it.
@@rotten007pig How did those stick and rudder skills work for this guy. Couldn’t even get out of a spin properly without inducing a secondary and third stall. Sketchy af
Sharing this to help other jump pilots is priceless.
I agree. That procedure is insane.
Don't fly with a coffee cup here.
Unless you are Bob Hoover, who never let that ball get off center, no matter how many engines were operating!
My complements to the skydiver with the camera. He quickly realized that his attention needed to be on the aircraft not the other divers.
My Son is a Skydiving Instructor at Yolo County Airport. I will be sending him this link. They use a Caravan out there, however he travels all around and many places use the King Air.
Bad idea… use a single engine with the prop on the front
I guess they were just talking about this at "The Drop Zone". He was saying the King Air's are know to stall with a big load in the back. Said they weren't ment to fly that slow. That is why they use a Caravan.
Recipe for a disaster (or such):
- Put 16 people on board a King Air B-90 (the maximum certified number of pax for this model is 13, including pilot and co-pilot);
- Slow down to 90 - 95 KIAS at high altitude (the "normal" Vref speed for a B-90 is ~100 KIAS on a stable straight flight approach);
- Fly with no oxygen on a depressurized aircraft above 13,000 ft and "feel the joy";
- Totally neglect stall speed vs altitude range (the stall speed for landing configuration is 76 KIAS, but at ~5,000 feet and MLW, not at 16,000 AGL and who knows how heavy it was)
- Fly with a crowd of "hi-drag" people holding onto a handrail OUTSIDE the aircraft, on the same side as the critical engine (left).
- Do not read and throw all aircraft manuals out thru the window at the first opportunity you have, including that yellow "Beechcraft Safety Information" booklet which says a King Air should never be flown in a full stall condition as this is the ONLY guaranteed condition to avoid a spin on this aircraft type.
The result, as far as I am concerned, was a real miracle, with its pilot trying to get out of a stall + spin pulling yoke back and sideways completely and oscillating wildly several times.🤦♂️
I honestly don't believe this aircraft is "undamaged", based on what we could see clearly: I've seen other King Air 90s in milder situations that suffered several bendings and warpings on wing and nacelles that could not be repaired (for unsuspecting future buyers: this is the 1968 Beechcraft B90 King Air S/N LJ-431 with registration number ZS-OHB which will probably be selling pretty cheap...).
Considering the type of flight (skydiving) I can't say I'm "surprised" with such events... it seems that adrenalin is always required (and enjoyed) here.
Years ago I was asked to pilot a skydiving club Cessna 182. Plane was fine but I was not comfortable with the number of divers they liked to cram into it. I would've loved the hours and money but it wasn't worth the risk.
I used to jump out of a Cessna 182 and we had crammed 6 jumpers and one pilot, was uncomfortable as getting to 10,000 lol
CPT. Roberto,
Your assessment is brilliant and well stated.
Your suspicions about being undamaged is more than likely right.
Many rental aircraft for example get bent by stupid pilots, with no experience, blundering into bad weather, and by the grace of God survive and bring the aircraft home park it in the line and never say a word;
But the next unsuspecting poor guy
The rent that plane has no idea that it's weakened and subject to potentially a disastrous end.
I started skydiving back at the beginning with Jacq Estelle (parachutes Incorporated) in Orange Massachusetts.
I can tell you for sure, this is one guy that won't go busting through a cloud layer ever again.
This whole video is a bunch of crap from the start.
Nothing more than the recipe or a big headline.
Your assessment is spot-on and I congratulate you sir.
🛫🇺🇸🛬
Very good points, especially regarding weight and altitude performance since all affect the stall performance. While you're at it, what is the Vfe for full flaps ?
Airplanes are flown on INDICATED air speed (read: dynamic pressure), no need to compensate for altitude as far as the aerodynamics are concerned.
In all the operations I have flown in, we always reduced the power to minimize propwash and sacrificed altitude if we couldn't maintain enough stall margin. At least in the singles I fly (Pilatus PC-6, Cessna 182) the decent rate is not that excessive that the skydivers will notice the altitude loss from start of drop to finish. I usually just request the next 500ft higher flight level and drift down during the drop.
Forty years ago a Lockheed Lodestar full of jumpers went in near Arlington, WA, under similar circumstances; a stall-spin. Only a few jumpers got out.
I remember that, I wasn't jumping up there, but down at sheridan around the same time
Juan, in about 1986 I had a coworker who was a former military pilot, with huge hours (even worked on the Mercury splashdown recovery missions), explain the intimate details of a four-point roll. I was fascinated by how the rudder became your pitch control during "that" moment in the maneuver. If I ever finish my flight training and acquire a single-engine land certificate, and type out in an appropriate aircraft, I'll have to try that, lol. Thanks for your insight into yet another level of aviation! Love your generosity and knowledge. Cheers from Texas!
@blancolirio just quick as I know it. In the USA you are required as a pilot of a jump plane to have a parachute and at least basic jump qualified. I don't know on a King but the Twin Otter you don't do any of that asymmetric thrust just both props back 80%. As usual you are spot on and great video.
Hey Juan, king air 200 and 90 guy here. I’m kinda blown away by the way they have this procedure written. I think what I have to say about this incident is that people are reading “course pitch” what you should read is FEATHER. The reason it took one engine to “spool up” is cause the left engine with prop feathered needs more time for the prop to come OUT OF FEATHER and go into positive pitch. It takes time. Anybody that knows the king air or indeed the pt6 will tell you that it takes time to bring that prop from feather to full fine and ready to pull. And that would be reflected in the differential thrust described in the written article.
BE90 speeds that are relevant
VF 174
VFE130
VMC93
Something like that
The 200 is better in every way. And the 300 is probably better than that and so on.
Coming from a northern gravel king air guy.
In one of Juan's frame grabs early in the recovery attempt, you can see that the port propellor pitch is finer than the right. Having a twin engine food processor sharing the same airspace with my unprotected carcass would scare the hell out of me.
Thanks Andy!
Oh yes I was making the same point before I saw your reply about the "feather" condition of the left engine. I think some multi engine and constant speed prop operations recurrent training might be due here.
These kind of dumb4ss3d procedures get passed down from one low-time pilot to another and are even requested by the jumpers.
@@DARANGULAFILM
I can possibly explain that.
When you have a propeller feathered and ask it to go to full fine while adding full power the propeller has a tendency to overspeed. King air 90 props are meant to be governed between I think 2200 and 1900 rpm. So when you shove it from feather… around 400 rpm to fine… around 2200 rpm. The thing has a bit of momentum, if you will towards the high pitch. The prop will momentarily over speed before the governors catch up. Mechanical connections and mechanical logic. It all takes time. That’s why we have governors. 3 actually and if you’re suggesting that the right hand prop was in a “finer or more high pitch state” I don’t what to tell you. Something is wrong. Because to perform this manoeuvre without one engine ready to go I.e. high rpm(fine pitch), seems silly to me. I understand you have thousands of feet to recover but I was always tought to operate these airplanes and any airplane in an envelope that they can work. This seems to be pushing that envelope to the max and in this case beyond. What if those divers inside had whacked their had and gotten hurt and the other obvious what if’s that arise.
Well when we did parachute jumps at Sun N Fun for a few years in the 90’s that is basically what we did in the DC3. I asked another operator and they do the same thing. You have to pull the power on the side they jump from. We stayed 10% above VMC and were in a slight decent..
Awesome report Juan.
He’s like a twin engine washing machine.
Stall, spin-recover-rinse shorts-repeat.
I am glad nobody died. But it is one of your funniest videos. You always say the ingredients for a spin, which is stall and yaw. I appreciate that you keep saying it. You want to save lives.
Juan, Keep teaching spin recovery. Saving lives !
T-2 for the Navy. We would do a coupled vertical entry to get an inverted flat spin. It would uncage your eyeballs but was a great confidence builder in spin recovery
.
I love how casually he described everything. "Nose up and here wo go. Stall. Spin. recover. Stall. Quarter turn, recover. Spit another one out..." lol
Same 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I suppose I am not the only one to notice that it starts to 'go south' exactly when the last parachutist comes out (yellow helmet) and positions themselves further out from the fuselage than the others and thus blocking any remaining airflow to the port elevator.
The movement of center of gravity had at least equally big importance for this incident.
@@MikkoRantalainen Exactly what I saw and thought.
Somehow you don't ever miss much when it comes to safety and planes so thank you once again for this good information.
This really illustrates the loss of altitude during a stall spin. That plane outran the skydivers like they were the ones with wings.
Wings not flying during a stall, it’s just a metal cage of death plummeting to the ground.
Yes but one would also hope that he pilot would not try to recover initially due to the threat of impacting a jumper.
@@alberttarica8106 don't think the pilot had any idea about where he was in relation to the divers at that point. He was just along for the ride.
@@JimNortonsAlcoholism actually my buddy flies a 100 for a sky diving company and they brief strongly about location relative to divers in the event of unintended separation. So while he may not have know if they were to his left , right, front, or back. I imagine he had good intentions to continue his decent and maneuver away from the area of the initial stall. Maybe he did maybe he didn’t I don’t know. But I do know this type of situation is briefed.
@@alberttarica8106 I my experience, following an inadvertent spin, unless you are a test pilot super being, the mind is concentrated on one thing. WTF happened, followed very quickly by assess and recovery. Any delay in starting the recovery is governed by the time needed to process the aforementioned WTF moment. I have only spun inadvertently once, it had a strong pucker factor but scared the crap out of the other 4 gliders climbing in the thermal beneath me :-)
Must've been a wild ride for the skydivers left inside the plane. That last jumper finally had enough of these shenanigans and left :)
Yes he had a wild ride for quite a bit.- 'meat missiles' I'd never heard that one. We had a parachutist fall to her death at Ardmore NZ ~1977ish . Crazy drop zone located just west of aerodrome full view from the tower. That was a strange day.
He was a she and didn't jump voluntarily she was tossed out by the snap back, she jumped the next day.
Wow!
Almost hit some skydivers over Temecula. Was climbing out of John Wayne in a A320. The TCAS advised me to descend but I could see the guys jumping out so I chose to climb. Thank goodness for TCAS
Was it not a marked jump zone on the VFR map?
@@JBAutomotive794 don’t know. ATC hadn’t given me any warning. It was just east of the ridge near Lake Elsinore around 15000. My copilot was at the controls and initially about to start her TCAS response. I had a visual on the AC and could see the guys jumping out ahead of us. I took the controls and started an immediate climb
@@Riverplacedad1 Although helpful and their main job is to separate traffic and make sure IFR routes are dished out and followed, I would still expect a pilot to check the VFR map when making a flight plan. Especially with a CoPilot to share the workload i would be checking that map like crazy if they sent me off my already planned out path.
We live in a world today with so much advancements in technology we almost have "set it and forget it" aircraft, that its easy to get complacent and get farther away from actively flying the aircraft vs riding in it and unfortunately we see accidents due to it.
Dan Gryder will show up and make a video about us if we screw up and then tacos will get stolen and it will be a huge thing.... we all need to be careful out there guys. 🇺🇸🍻
@@JBAutomotive794 well we were under ATC control and NWA dispatched flight plan. I’m not sure if ATC should have had us higher or the other aircraft had violated his protected airspace (or if there even was one). This was 20 years ago. I filed a report and never heard anything from it
@@Riverplacedad1 completely understand, however I have doubts that a group of skydivers would jump out in a random spot out of a perfectly flying airplane. I have a feeling it was a Marked spot on the VFR map. Although you were under a given Vector and altitude, they were not the ones flying the plane.
I am still studying hard and have zero hours of stick time so my opinions are not very valid, however I don't ever plan on getting in an airplane without ever planning out a route the night before carefully using the VFR maps, especially in unfamiliar route on a cross country trip. Modern planes have very good moving maps that should be current, but some good old fashioned studying and putting pencil to paper will always be a good fallback.
I really hope to fly one day soon and grab a hamburger will y'all at an airport Cafe. Thanks for having a cool discussion with me.
Looks like there’s more than normal climbing out the door. That also means there are people moving back towards the door inside to follow the people outside moving cg way back. Last time I jumped a king that size, usually 4 out the door.
If you pause there are 8 people in the air after the initial stall not counting the caneraperson....
Wow!
I can't seem to get enough of your input.
Keep on keeping us safe up there. 👊
You’re absolutely spot on! As a skydiver and former pilot, I’ve seen many times that jumpers pile up in the door and on the outside grips. Even with signs in the cabin “no more than x jumpers behind this line”. These guys are hyper focused on a well timed exit and ignore everything else.There is normally heavy buffeting due to the disturbed airflow over the tail with jumpers hanging outside which can mask a pre stall buffet. Due to substantial drag increase, its almost impossible to do this without a rate of descend or adding substantial amount of power. Doing a final jumprun this close to stall speed and below vmca is begging for it! I can not imagine that this has not happened a good number of times already, only this time is was caught on social media. In the skydiving centres in parts of the world I’ve been, the pilot lives in a bubble and formation jumpers do a exit dry run on a mock up with zero consideration for airplane controllability (“that’s the pilots job”). Briefing folks!!
Exit training aid: A 'known tipping point' swiveling mock-up that dumps them all on the hangar floor now & then? : )
Lod dude to enhance the learning effect, I would suggest placing it on top of a two feet deep tub filled with cow dung mixed with urine for the right viscosity. What do you think?
@@skydive1424 - Nah, health hazard for the next lift - they usually start to gas-off above nine grand anyway, so why add to the pong?
However, the idea of a mock door & rails on a remote control 'bull riding' machine does appeal . . . think 'reverse stick-shaker' : )
Lod dude 😂😂😂
Center of Gravity and airflow disruption has always been a factor in flying jumpers. Some jump pilots and some jumpers understand these effects and do a good job of compensating. Other pilots and jumpers are less knowledgeable and less safe. A particularly difficult jump plane that I jumped a few times back in my mis-spent youth was the Lockheed Loadstar. The exit door was quite far back. Too many jumpers near the door on exit could stall the aircraft...there were fatalities.
was that back in the 80's ?
@@dennisparks3692 Mid 70s at "the Gulch". I don't think they ever had an actual crash there, but I had friends who bounced off the tail in a stall event. The fatal Lodestar crash or crashes were elsewhere. The Lodestar stall tendency was well known and jumpers were briefed on how to exit without having too many people behind a specific line, well forward of the door.
I had a chance to fly as a passenger in a Cheyenne II from Burbank to SLC. I knew both the pilots who had not flown together before.
On final in SLC, there was a significant cross wind and the pilot said 'let me show you a trick' to the second pilot; instead of using rudder, he simply backed off the thrust from one engine and was very proud of how nice a normal attitude on final was compared to lots of rudder and slip.
But on short final, the tower called for a 'go around', and without hesitation the pilot went full throttle on both engines. Problem was that one engine spooled up quicker than the other and the airplane really went sideways (thought we were gonna die). Not sure how he saved it but it took all the rudder there was along with a few prayers.
Both pilots were sweating bullets when we finally got on the ground.
I spent many years teaching the King Air 200. You nailed it. Well done.
At 0:51 there are 8 skydivers visible - plus 1 with the camera, that makes 9 total in the initial exit.
Juan . . . I always enjoy your analysis of aviation events, especially those where pilot input to controls plays an important role in the results. From a fellow member of the "Once a T-37 IP" association, I can usually see your Tweet IP background come through clearly. When I saw the Stall+Yaw=Spin title, I knew I was in for some more Tweet induced wisdom!
“Bring me a bucket of prop wash.” I’ve been around pilots of all stripes (some with stars) plus I have my PPC and I’ve never heard that one before. You’re a true gem, Juan.
I had a similar moment, 3rd generation aviation family and never ONCE heard that gem.
I don't have a lot of experience flying jumpers and what I do have is in a single engine, but the notion of putting the left prop to full flat pitch is insane. Glad to see I wasn't the only one to notice the two secondary accelerated stalls in the recovery. After posting a comment on another video I heard from someone who knows the pilot claiming he's very careful. After listening to your break down I'll stick with my original thoughts. I'd also say he was lucky he didn't try to cobb the power on the recovery. No two PT-6's spool at the same rate!
Hi all,
This pilot made a mistake and owned it in his lengthy and detailed explanation. More words equal more fuel for criticism.
I've jumped out of many KA's, but have never seen 6 on the step. Did the pilot know so many were to exit at once? If not, he is ill equipped to give the thumbs-down during their climb-out; too late.
At most DZs I've jumped at, it would fall on jumpers to inform pilot or S&TA before takeoff, or fall on management to limit group size for exits. Max 4-5 jumpers for CG reasons seems like a reasonable way to prevent this from happening again. While this was a close call, and unacceptable, it does not seem to come from a place of negligence on the part of the pilot, and he does not deserve all the blame. Good jump pilots of twins always try to minimize prop blast.
Try flying jumpers, and try out 100+ knot prop blast while standing on the step.
Pilots in the States wear a parachute because FAA regs say all passengers including pilot must wear a parachute when the door is open during flight.
Thanks Juan for your thoughts and excellent content, I love your channel.
Hi Juan, nothing like a Pro to explain these things to us!
George
Ummm, except he has no clue about KingAir skydiving operations. Lots wrong in this video.
I just saw that video yesterday, the pilots view out the front window must’ve been a hell of a sight in a King Air.
Great camera work from the jumper. Nice recovery from the pilot. Use to watch the tweet birds inflight training all day over west alabama. It was like a high altitude air show. Now its talons roaring over all day in fake combat. Awsum to watch....but it sure does let me know I'm old...lol. Keep it high Juan. Fly safe.👍
Thank you for your well done report.
I thought the second engine only leads you to the scene of the crash.....
I have never seen a King Air spin before. I swallowed hard watching the plane enter the secondary stalls. Kudos to the pilot for recovering the plane.
I actually think the aircraft recovered without the help of the pilot.
That was pure ass luck. The pilot deserves no applause. He put the aircraft into that position through ignorance.
The cocky know it all's have spoken above. I agree with you, Kudos to the pilot for pulling it out of disaster.
@@steve83333 Funny, you come across as a cocky know it all with that comment. Would you recover from a spin by putting alieron AWAY from the spin, then keep on trying to do that not once, not twice, but three times?
Because this "pilot" did... Face it, the guy panicked and froze once it spun. The aircraft wanted to fly straight after the first spin recovery, but he kept horsing on the controls and trying to enter into more spins...
Excellent job by camera man!
I am a skydiver. Many years ago I jumped out of a stalled King Air at a private dropzone near Wildwood, FL. The takeoff on that flight was also extremely dicey
because the King Air barely missed the treetops on the west end of the runway. In skydiving circles, King Air has a notorious reputation for stalls on jump run.
Been watching that video the past day over and over! That's about the best footage of a stall / spin and recovery I've ever seen! Crisp and clear, and the camera was on the aircraft the entire time, even climbing out from it! Must've been one hell of a ride for the skydivers!!
Great info as always, Juan. I knew aft CG played into this, but I didn't even think of the guy's bodies all blocking the effectiveness of the elevator. Interesting! I also never knew they put one engine to idle. Even with my limited and fairly newfound aircraft knowledge, that sounds sketchy to me, too. The guys should be ready and expect prop blast when that door opens on a twin! Loved that training vid, too - MAN that looks like a wild ride!! I often wonder if I could keep it together long enough to save my life in that situation.
Gotta love TH-cam. Strikes for EVERYTHING. :(
Not just strikes: _Robostrikes!_
No human thought involved.
Their strikes against Juan (and some others) shows how far they are from functional AI.
@@77thTrombone Yep, they use that a lot. It would be a much better system if they put a little more human review into it.
I've never spun a T-37 .. we didn't have them in the RAF, but I have spun a Jet Provost on several occasions. I suspect that would be fairly similar .... rate of descent somewhere in the region of 16,000 fpm.
T-37: 11,000 fpm in the slowest rotating spin mode, much higher in accelerated spin . . .
Great video Juan....
Thank you for sharing the clip from the past
Best regards always......Rudy
@ 7:55 (still pic) look at the prop pitch of both engines. To me they're set different. Right engine grabbing more air than the left. Your thoughts Juan.
Not a king air guy here, but rather a spin demo pilot at Randolph in the mid late 90s. Had the pleasure to see some inverted spins at Edwards in a previous gig in an A37. We were chasing them from a T38. Seemed to me it took quite a bit of effort to even get into the inverted spin, and the likelihood that would happen in a tweet seems low to me, yet possible if deliberate enough. Idle-neutral-aft. Pretty much kills the inverted spin right there. Your left in a dive, easy to recover. The tweet would recover stick only or rudder only. 2 of the 6 demos in the spin demo ride. Just wasn’t as efficient as the regular boldface method.
(The test guys were getting into an inverted spin by rolling upside down, then doing an inverted stall with feeding rudder as they approached the stall. The result was kind of a cartwheel looking thing into an eventual inverted spin, usually, and they had to hold the stick forward to keep it from recovering. With the airflow issues at altitude and that high pressure ratio engine, they often lost one or two engines as a result, to be restarted after the recovery. The reason I state this is that I have heard tales of IPs and students saying they were in an inverted spin in a tweet, and that is highly unlikely as the setup is pretty lengthy and deliberate. The ones that usually claim it say that they held the stick forward too long in the normal spin recovery and overshot the recovery cone to the negative, or inverted, side. While it may have looked a lot like an inverted spin, I would classify this as more of an inverted snap roll, although technically still aggravated by a large difference in lift between wings, at this point your total speed would have been pretty high and once you pull back a little on the stick the rolling would stop. So to say you were in an inverted spin in that case would be like saying that an upright snap roll was also a spin... Similar, but not my idea of a traditional "spin". I'm sure folks will say I'm wrong, which ain't uncommon... In all cases, regardless of how you got there, once you are inverted and getting tossed around in a negative environment, it ain't a fun ride). I rambled too long there...
Looks to me like the king air here kept aggregating his recovery. Probably more freaked out at the dive than anything. And I’d bet he still had asymmetric thrust at that point, so a deep secondary stall was resulting in more of a snap roll than an actual secondary “spin”. Still basically the same thing. Idle…Break the stall, kill the rotation, you’ll come out. Take your time in the dive recovery.
Glad they didn’t hit any jumpers during this little snafu.
Makes for good stories. Danger Builds Character!
Tweet IP here . . . inverted spin twice (both unintentional, since it was a prohibited maneuver). First was with a "spin pilot" while at PIT. I screwed up one of the stick only recovery attempts and left it full fwd too long while still in a normal spin. Slipped right into a full neg g inverted stall (and still spinning) ended up in inverted spin. In step 3, I went stick full fwd to decelerate the spin, then snapped it full aft. Nose came around and was in a straight stall. Just pushed the stick fwd and flew it out. The second time was with a student, and like in the first he held the stick full fwd too long and right into the inverted spin. I took the controls and just like the first time, step 3 popped us right out.
@@gordonelwell7084 the old negative spiral, I believe. Not the most comfortable ride😀. But technically you can’t get into a negative spin from an upright spin in the course of any of the recoveries demonstrated in a spin ride or by a student. In a stabilized upright spin the jet just doesn’t have enough inertia in the pitch axis to traverse to a negative stall as it transits the spin recovery cone. Negative, yes, spiral, kind of, inverted stall, no, thus not a negative (inverted) spin. As your pitch transits the spin recovery cone you almost instantly recover from the stall, and in that attitude you pick up a lot of speed through the transit of the cone. I suppose if you aggravated the forward pitch long enough eventually you could get there, it that would be several thousand feet and like an additional 30 or 45 seconds. In a student environment (not a test environment) this would be ridiculous to sit through, and nothing to gain by this experience. And flirting with an ejection altitude.
Where I will agree with you is that the ensuing ride is a shitty feeling. And it’s very abrupt. It’s basically oranges and apples to discuss what it was anyway, as obviously it’s mis applied recovery by the pilot. Easy to do, not fun to ride through. And makes for great stories from back when we were still cool.
@@markg7963 I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Step 5 says "stick abruptly full forward one turn after applying rudder", then step 6 is "controls neutral after spinning stops and recover from dive". I just know that on both of my episodes, it was step 5 applied for an extended period that left us in the spin. I distinctly recall starting the boldface over after being in the inverted event, but in step 3, I intentionally put the stick full forward first (which decelerated the spinning) and only then executing the rest of step 3 (stick abruptly full aft and hold). I believe that if I had not decelerated the spinning by going full forward first, then the abruptly full aft would not have had enough authority to stop the spinning inertia and the ejection could easily been the next step. You are correct that both events really chewed up lots of altitude. I still think of myself as cool, but not in the same way . . . I'm cool today because I managed three great kids, and watch two great grandkids arrive on the scene. On a side note, my son is a US Navy test pilot instructor and he matter-of-factly told be one afternoon on how he had to take the controls of an F-18F from a test pilot student to get them out of an inverted flat spin. Brought back all my great memories!
@@gordonelwell7084 hey man, that’s awesome passing down the profession. I’ve got a great idea, let’s buy a tweet out of the boneyard, fix it up, and go spin the shit outta that thing while we laugh our asses off. Inverted, upright, it no matter, we be flying all over this bi%&^😂
@@markg7963 I'm in!
Forgive me Juan but with right rudder to counter act the thrust of the right engine there would be no yaw. The ball would be centered. The displaced rudder would cause drag but the airplane would be in balanced flight with correct use of the rudder. That's what is done in a single engine scenario, which is essentially what is being induced in this case. The yaw came because they went too slow to maintain Vmc air thus reducing the rudder effectiveness so that yaw allowed the advancing wing to lift and the retreating wing to stall.
The only aircraft I intentionally spun was a Piper Tomahawk with my instructor. Neither of us knew at that time that the Traumahawk had that nasty habit of unrecoverable attitudes. We had a blast and survived - I learned how to recover from a spin and more importantly, how to avoid getting into one in the first place. I still think spin training in the right aircraft should be part of the curriculum for the private ticket. Medically grounded now so it really doesn't matter what I think ;-) Love the channel Juan!
I've gone spinning in a Cessna 152, best times of my life. Better than sex, especially because you can tell your parents about it as often as you want. The 152 enters and recovers exactly when you want, like it's on rails. I've only got 20 hrs in (need a better job), but I think I've spent at least 2 of them just whirling around. My instructor thinks it's a blast, too, so we do it on nearly every flight even if its just practicing touch and goes (obviously far away and above 3k ft).
Sorry you've gotten grounded, man. That's a huge bummer.
What would be the right aircraft to learn spin recovery in? My daughter just finished her private pilot and she only ever flew a Skyhawk. She has also flown a Piper Cherokee (a friend's plane). Her school didn't offer a ton of aircraft types anyway, but even so none of the others were available to the private pilot students.
Jahna Nair you can get a lot better advice from much better sources than me. Ask anywhere on the internet and you'll get plenty of suggestions. 😜👍🏻
Kudos to pilot for enabling recovery and no loss of life. Everyone’s an expert at I told you so!! That was one heck of a ride for the five remaining with a good amount of g and push back as they went down!! They had a ohh gosh this it it moment!
I'm neither a pilot nor a jumper, but as I watch the thing with the twirly meat choppers fall amidst the "meat missiles," I can't help but suspect there's an element of uncontrollable luck involved until the pilot regains control authority.
So glad no one was hurt, and all metal remained as the factory formed it.
I used to think that jumping out of a perfectly good airplane was not a god idea, now I'm seeing why they have parachutes on. . . ( see the pilot report )
Sorry, but I can't laud this pilot nor his organization.
@@zak2u2 No one will hold it against you for not, I hope! Some pilots would have lost control.
Top South African Pilot , no lose of life.
Thank You for what you do Juan!
Full coarse = feathered. Disking [sic] is reducing the drag (and yaw) on left engine. Unfortunately, it requires some time for the prop to come out of the full coarse position which probably exacerbated the recovery.
Good analysis Juan. That Pilot was outside the limits and nearly cleaned up skydiver and himself. The Cessna 310s and 402Bs in a flat spin are a death trap for the exact reason you specified. The mains tip tanks become sustaining spin weights.
The skydive video came up on my TH-cam feed and I immediately hoped for the blancolirio treatment. Thanks for not disappointing me, Juan! Hard to imagine a pilot with a chute on would be able to climb out of an aircraft when it's in such a dramatic spin.
There's a very simular video, floating around somewhere, of a King Air stall that occured over the Perris California DZ sometime in the early to mid 90s.
Some jumpers just ended up with a story to tell in the bar later that evening.
That was the same plane used in the movie 'Point Break' BTW.
I totally agree with Yuan.
It was the first thing I said when reading the pilot account.
I have 900 hrs drop flying experience
We used to operate the C402 for skydiving here in Auckland, New Zealand.
It, like the C90 Kingair are fast aircraft and it is a lot harder to control at 90kts.
Deliberately configuring a twin aircraft for asymmetric flight in a high workload phase of flight flying slow and dealing with changing C of G is like trying to clear a jammed live bullet out of your hand gun chamber while pointing the gun into your face.
You don’t need to do this.
My 8 way team would stack 5 jumpers outside on the 402 with the other 5 jumpers linked in the door and I was “front float” being the guy closest to the relative wind and yes it was hard work but you got used to it.
This popped up on my stalkbook feed a few days ago, great camera work from the jumper with the camera. As you said, pulling the left engine along with the additional drag on the left side from the jumpers and then the aft CofG change was just a recipe for disaster..luckily they were able to walk away from it.
This may have already been mentioned in the 777 comments but I believe the pilot uses "course prop" on the left prop to minimize asymmetric drag by having flat blades. As he mentioned the no 1 is at flight idle there would not be any issue w prop blast on the jumpers.
looks like 9 skydivers were at the exit, can see 8 falling + the one with the camera
Don’t forget that VMC will decrease with altitude. Not as much as in a normally aspirated engine. But a turbine engine will also have less power up at 14,000’. So that VMC comes right down to stall speed and crosses over. The airplane may stall before VMC and then it’s an instant spin. Just like we’re seeing. We used to limit the amount of rudder a student could put in for the VMC demo because we wanted him to see the VMC roll before it stalled and spun.
Imagine the ride the 4 had inside the plane through the spin and stalls. That may have added to the recovery challenges.
@@rickt.1870 That's what I was thinking. They were probably supposed to come out right away but couldn't because of the spin. That's what I was thinking with the snap rolls. They were piled in a corner.. CG all messed up.
I really enjoy your professionalism and your real emotions coming through. I'm not a pilot but have driven race cars. Really appreciate what you do. God Bless you!
I saw a similar video and it was a high wing plane. Also saw one that was a Porter. This other single the pilot was reported to SACAA for more stall spin training as was the Pilatis Porter pilot. I was always mindful of stall awareness when I flew sky divers
As always another great video and explanation. Great filming by the jumper.
Great analysis Juan. These guys set themselves up for disaster. Also not exactly a stellar spin recovery. Glad everyone walked away from this one. Also good that the king air wasn't bent.
Ask yourself, if you were in those conditions, would you recover from an unforseen stall of that magnitude any better ?
Moderate right-aileron input: 00:34
I estimate a weight of 10,000 lbs for the King Air 90, with 1800 lbs for the initial wave of skydivers with clothing and equipment, assuming 1 female and 8 male South Africans. Positioning of the skydivers outside the left door moves the center of mass leftward. This minimizes left-yawing tendency due to their form drag, but increases left-yawing tendency from thrust of the right engine. The offset cg/weight adds to the left-rolling tendency. All 10 skydivers (including the straggler) would be positioned quite aftward, which reduces effectiveness of the empennage in both yaw and pitch.
Large right-aileron input: 00:45 (before spin)
The skydivers' positions aft of the left wing root increases pressure upwind of them, spoiling some of the lift near the left wing root. In cruise, the roll moment is somewhat balanced by a reduction of left-elevator downforce, due to blanking/drafting. However, when the pilot commands pitch forward, asymmetrical lift on the elevator increases left-rolling tendency.
TLDR: In this configuration, Vmca is higher than standard.
Years ago I flew into an airport several times that had a King Air C-90 that flew skydivers several times a day. While in the pattern once he dropped out of the sky at a crazy amount of vertical speed, recovered and landed like he was landing on an aircraft carrier. Worst part about it is that he never talked on the radio. Stupid cowboy pilot. I was not happy about the incident at all.
I think the pilot saying discing means the flat plate area of the prop as it creates drag. I'm not sure that's even a thing. However it would ease the assymetry somewhat to increase the pitch of the left prop
A lot of aerodynamics effects were involved here and such a kind of stunt on a KingAir would have been normally carried out by a test pilot on test aircraft. We can’t stopped be reminded, again and again, of aerodynamics principles and here, we have a good ( and well explained) exemple. Mistakes don’t end up in disaster all the time but this one was a close call!
For what it's worth.
Back in the day, I jumped 182's, 206's, CASA's, and King Air 90's, and 100's. When I stopped jumping I had over 800 jumps. NEVER did I see a King Air use more than 1-notch of flaps on jump run. I NEVER saw a pilot idle one of the engines. I am a private pilot also, so I know a bit of what I was seeing. I was always nervous when I jumped being a pilot as I was along for the ride. The first 1000 agl is also a bit of a nervous time as if the plane has any problems we have to ride it down. Above 1000 agl, the PIC may tell us to get out using our reserves. But, never was I afraid on the jump run. Most of the time we were at 90-100 knots on jump run. And, twins always made me nervous the first 1000 agl. Most times you have no idea how many hours the PIC has in twins.
Love your YT channel, great stuff!
Wow, If memory serves correctly there was a "floater limit" on almost every airplane I ever jumped.. first thing I said was "there's too many people out the door!" when I saw this.. idk about jump run power settings.. seems like a dumb idea to me too..
way back in the '80's tho when I was a JM.. maybe people just stopped caring..? things seem to be going downhill everywhere..
That last guy to get out cracked me up, I wanna buy him a beer! I woulda got out too after the second recovery attempt.. Great survival instinct. 🙂
Yeah, he thought that plane was going down!
Thanks Juan. I enjoy your videos and your level of professionalism during your analysis. I’m A&P, along with aspiring pilot and I feel that you are spot on with this one brother! Keep it up.
holly molly, I was afraid if the plane comes back on the divers and hit them!!
Props to the pilot for regaining control! My goodness that was scary!!
That’s was a young dashing, Juan Browne, at the end!
Great timing Juan as I just started my Multi-Commercial. My MEI and I will be talking about this incident....
I dropped meatballs for a bit building time in a C90 with the Blackhawk PT6’s. I was never taught or asked to reduce power on the left engine. We would approach the DZ around 100kts, if I recall correctly, power back near idle, turn the green light on and pitch for 90kts. Flying that slow with asymmetric thrust with a shifting cg is a bad idea. It’s not a matter of if you will enter a spin, but when you will enter a spin.
This configuration is daft at a very fundamental level. Added to that, way too much CG shift on a relatively small a/c with so many meatbombs hanging out. A good efficient exit stream - or a larger a/c is needed.
I'll bet the guys inside were fighting to see who could get out the door first.
That type of spin due to asymetric thrust happened to me on my rc Model cessna 310 (72" WS). One of the engines stalled and I wasn't able to recover since it happened very close to the ground shortly after take off. It ended upside down in some tall grass with both props broken, the landing gear broken, one of the tip tanks smashed and a cracked windshield. I still have it and repaired it mostly but haven't flown it since that happened. I want to convert it to electric. so maybe things like that don't happen again.
WOW! Juan, when that stall broke I was half expecting at least one shy diver to be cut to ribbons. God had his hand on all participants.