(Story) Muscle Memory

[Jamesdub]

One of those ‘quick attention getting’ flights.

Yesterday I had the rare privilege of flying with one of my two flying sons in our Commander. Both are career Army Aviators, Rich my eldest’ is about to retire after 27 years a/duty. His current posting is flying UC-35’s (Citation’s) out of Dobbins ARB, prior to that he flew RC-12’s (King Airs) and the Armed Scout Helo.

After spending the weekend with his family we filed an IFR from North Atlanta to Enterprise Al with Rich in the left seat. It was a real treat acting like a crew vs. the single pilot IFR that is the usual practice.

As it turned out we ended up getting a ‘visual’ but had to fit ourselves in between two slow 152’s doing pattern work. Rich did well with the traffic separation and on a very stabilized final I noticed we were still at 10* flaps, so I added another notch totally upsetting his stable approach. He extended our touchdown point with a smooth landing but on rollout he ‘forcefully’ pushed forward on the yoke driving the nose way down from my usual rollout sight picture.

I could only envision Jim’s 78” Hartzell eating asphalt as I ‘politely’ informed him we normally go the opposite direction with the yoke on landing. . . . He grinned and reported, ‘Muscle Memory’. Guess they land the jets a bit differently . . .
No harm no foul, but it did get my attention.


Be safe out there . . . John

 

[rringgold]

Re: (Story) Muscle Memory

When talking to an Air Wisconsin MD-80 pilot a while back, he mentioned that he no longer
uses his father’s Mooney because he caught himself trying to cross the fence at 120 knots!

 

[JimParker256]

Re: (Story) Muscle Memory

When I first started flying fixed wing, I had the opposite problem... My "helicopter muscle memory" kept trying to maintain a "brisk walk" rate of closure right down to the touchdown point - at zero ground speed. My CFI almost had a heart attack the first time it happened...

My brain knew better, but 1500 hours of helicopter time had trained my right arm pretty well. The laws of "primacy" (what you learn first you learn best) and "recency" (what you've practiced most recently you remember best) impacted me here, since I was flying Army helicopters a lot more often than I my fixed wing training was occurring.

Nowadays, it's no longer an issue, even with the "stick" in the Citabria...

But on the plus side, I never felt like I needed to lower the nose to accelerate during takeoff in a fixed-wing, which apparently is something of an issue for many helicopter pilots transitioning to fixed-wing flying...

For the non-helicopter pilots, taking off in a helicopter requires forward cyclic pressure (to lower the nose to tilt the rotor disk forward) to accelerate the aircraft, then requires just a bit more forward cyclic as you begin to fly out of the downwash (the "donut" of rotor wash surrounding the helicopter at a hover). As that happens, the forward part of the rotor disk more efficient (translational lift) which tends to pitch the nose up slightly.

Just one more thing helicopter pilots process and respond to automatically after a few hours... Fun stuff! Wish I could afford to own/fly a helicopter!

 

[BUFDRVR]

Re: (Story) Muscle Memory

I have to fight the urgency to control centerline on approaches & landing with rudder alone. Nearly 4,000 hours of B-52 time and that's how I flew her for approaches & landings. I just used yoke to keep the wings level. This doesn't work in a non-swept wing aircraft!

Mike