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your AOA!” The L-39 is apparently very sensitive to pitch and I have effortlessly brought the nose down 20 degrees below the horizon. Though a little excessive, I think I have done my training proud.
Now fully recovered from our stall I am asked, “How’s your barrel roll?”
I laugh and opt to let the master show me the ropes first. Dan takes the controls and we pitch 20 degrees nose up and then comes a hard bank right and the world below fills the canopy. I do my best to track Dan’s control inputs as the aircraft continues to roll before bringing us back to straight and level flight.
“Beautiful,” is all I can summon. Now it’s my turn. I pitch up just as Dan did and begin my roll to the left. We are up and over the top quickly but my roll rate isn’t keeping up with the pitch as it should.
“Roll,” I hear through the headset. “Roll, roll, roll.”
With Dan’s help, I get the roll caught back up just in time to bring the nose up to the horizon. I complete the maneuver in what I would characterize as a valiant first effort. With precious jet fuel burning, we quickly move on to the aileron roll.
“Pitch up 10 degrees, neutralize the elevator and then just roll it as hard as you can,” Dan instructs.
Refusing to be accused of not flying the aircraft like a fighter jet a third time, I commit to the maneuver. I push the stick as hard as I can to the left and feel it hit the stop and I hold it there. The airplane rolls rapidly around its longitu- dinal axis, and I find that my eyes have a hard time keeping track of the roll rate. But I am able to catch the roll just in time to level the wings as we approach 0 degrees of roll.
“Nice, try it to the right now,” Dan says. He doesn’t have to tell me twice.
Next, Dan takes the airplane and com- pletes his version of a course reversal which involves a 90-degree bank and a 3 G pull. With the sudden onset of G’s, I feel my head start to drop and I imme- diately begin pressure breathing to try to keep the blood in my head from being pulled to my feet. We roll out on a north heading and Dan begins briefing me for the unusual attitude portion of the flight.
“You have two conditions: high energy and low energy. If you are high energy, the appropriate response is to roll wings
level and then bring the nose up to the horizon and pull power if you have to for airspeed. Low energy, you want to simul- taneously add full power, roll into a knife edge and let the nose fall to the horizon.”
This is all information that as a flight instructor and a professional pilot I have heard and said countless times. But as Dan starts putting me through the wringer of rolls and G’s, most of my logical thinking is pushed aside as I try to keep from blacking out. Just when IthinkIcantakenomoreandIam
utterly disoriented, Dan gives me back the flight controls. I open my eyes and all I see is blue sky. Instincts take over and I roll the airplane into a knife edge and let the nose drop down to the horizon where I level it out and return to straight and level flight.
“What happened to your pow- er?” Dan asks.
I realize that in the heat of the mo- ment, in a maneuver I have performed hundreds of times in aircraft and simula- tors, I forgot one of the crucial steps of
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Jet Journal June 2019 / TWIN & TURBINE • 23