Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?

pilotinstitute.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 248 posts

Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?

#61

Post by qup »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #60
qup wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you lose visual, you got 180 seconds to live on average Holy shit, why!? Are these planes crashing into the ground? It seems to me (an ignorant layman) that you would exit the clouds and have some time to regain control. I have no doubt that the planes are crashing, given the fatality rate, but why is it so unavoidable that they crash after entering clouds? Edit: found a little on the link referenced: " often en…

People's instinct and intuition are EXTREMELY incorrect in situation of your sight obscured while flying an airplane (and untrained and even trained personnel are extremely ill-equipped to judge their spatial awareness and capabilities in blind situations). People end up trusting their body reflexes that have evolved for very different situation and absolutely lie to you. When an airplane turns, the actual G forces u…

Are the clouds ground-level? I'm just wondering what happens between exiting the cloud and impacting the ground.

Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?

#62

Post by shakow »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #60
qup wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you lose visual, you got 180 seconds to live on average Holy shit, why!? Are these planes crashing into the ground? It seems to me (an ignorant layman) that you would exit the clouds and have some time to regain control. I have no doubt that the planes are crashing, given the fatality rate, but why is it so unavoidable that they crash after entering clouds? Edit: found a little on the link referenced: " often en…

People's instinct and intuition are EXTREMELY incorrect in situation of your sight obscured while flying an airplane (and untrained and even trained personnel are extremely ill-equipped to judge their spatial awareness and capabilities in blind situations). People end up trusting their body reflexes that have evolved for very different situation and absolutely lie to you. When an airplane turns, the actual G forces u…

Probably a stupid question, but why can't these lost pilots just maintain their attitude indicator in the middle, fly straight, grit their teeth, and wait to get out of the cloud?

Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?

#63

Post by nullfield »

brucethemoose2 wrote: post #6

This page is SEO-ey, with the "how to" question titles and padding and such. I would have instinctively skipped it coming from Google. ...Which is really sad, because it actually reads like a earnest author just trying to make their informative page visible.

The site is one of the places authorized by the FAA to do required TRUST certificates for non-Part 107 drone flights, and Greg here is a well-regarded instructor-so quite legit and all.

You can also get the non-flying part of a private pilot’s license through them.

Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?

#64

Post by NikolaNovak »

qup wrote: post #61
NikolaNovak wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People's instinct and intuition are EXTREMELY incorrect in situation of your sight obscured while flying an airplane (and untrained and even trained personnel are extremely ill-equipped to judge their spatial awareness and capabilities in blind situations). People end up trusting their body reflexes that have evolved for very different situation and absolutely lie to you. When an airplane turns, the actual G forces u…

Are the clouds ground-level? I'm just wondering what happens between exiting the cloud and impacting the ground.

Sometimes they can be. A lot of times people without IFR enter clouds because situation is worsening - so after a few minutes, cloud/fog might reach ground, or you might fly to a place where clouds are lower.

Other times, you get your airplane in a situation / position where, when you do exit a cloud, you don't have enough altitude to correct it. Some airplanes have various types of spins you can enter that you cannot exit or cannot exit quickly. As well, people can remain very disoriented when they exit the cloud if they are in a spin, or they can panic and provide incorrect control input.

Think about cars - people can accidentally induce understeer or oversteer when they encounter unexpected lose surface, and unless they've had training and practice, they frequently will do the wrong thing even when they're aware of situation and problem. Similarly, people can exit the clouds in a stall or spin, and due to panic or incorrect thinking or inexperience or even lack of oxygen, they can continue producing incorrect input. For example, if you're in a simple stall and losing altitude - the absolutely correct thing to do is to point your stick/airplane DOWN, gain speed, and then regain control. But it takes practice and conviction to do that when you're close to ground and falling. Spin recovery can be more intricate (depending on the airplane), with stick, rudder, and throttle inputs that your primitive brain may not register are conducive to immediate goal of "don't hit ground". It's one thing to practice things 4,000ft in the air on a clear day with instructor with you; and another when you're 600 ft from the ground, your airplane is spinning, you can barely ascertain which direction it's spinning, the sound is overwhelming, passengers are screaming, and you're panicking :Even extremely qualified airline pilots have numerous times provided textbook incorrect control input in critical situations :(

Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?

#65

Post by NikolaNovak »

shakow wrote: post #62
NikolaNovak wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People's instinct and intuition are EXTREMELY incorrect in situation of your sight obscured while flying an airplane (and untrained and even trained personnel are extremely ill-equipped to judge their spatial awareness and capabilities in blind situations). People end up trusting their body reflexes that have evolved for very different situation and absolutely lie to you. When an airplane turns, the actual G forces u…

Probably a stupid question, but why can't these lost pilots just maintain their attitude indicator in the middle, fly straight, grit their teeth, and wait to get out of the cloud?

Not at all stupid! Very real question that's been asked by aviation safety agencies around the world for decades!

Sometimes there are genuine issues with instruments. As well, note that most GA airplanes operate their crucial instruments and gyros via vacuum pump and they need to be re-calibrated after a while even in regular flight.

But I believe much more frequently, inexperienced humans distrust their instruments and trust their instincts/guts/feelings/body more. It's very very unnerving for inexperienced pilot to lost their sense of sight, ALL of their body is telling them they're turning and need to correct it, and some 1972 vacuum gyro is telling them they're going straight and don't touch anything.

Other times, things just accumulate, little drifts and changes and influences. Let's say that you're in cloud and trust your instruments, but after a while for whatever reason your VSI (Vertical Speed Indicator) is showing that you're descending 500ft/minute. What control inputs do you provide to correct that, without any visual references? There are right and wrong answers and integrating the basic six instruments, building correct mental picture of your position and angle and direction from these very limited and separate instruments, without visual reference, for long periods of time, is more tricky for untrained personnel than may be immediately obvious :-/

Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?

#66

Post by teraflop »

shakow wrote: post #62
NikolaNovak wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People's instinct and intuition are EXTREMELY incorrect in situation of your sight obscured while flying an airplane (and untrained and even trained personnel are extremely ill-equipped to judge their spatial awareness and capabilities in blind situations). People end up trusting their body reflexes that have evolved for very different situation and absolutely lie to you. When an airplane turns, the actual G forces u…

Probably a stupid question, but why can't these lost pilots just maintain their attitude indicator in the middle, fly straight, grit their teeth, and wait to get out of the cloud?

It's not really a stupid question. In theory, you could do that, but it's not that easy in practice. First of all, the attitude indicator alone is not sufficient -- you need to pay attention to the entire instrument panel, including airspeed, vertical speed and turn coordinator, and mentally synthesize a complete picture of how the aircraft is moving.

Moreover, anybody who can fly a plane should intellectually know how to read an attitude indicator. But it takes a lot of training to be able to trust that indicator, when you have powerful sensory evidence that makes you instinctively feel the aircraft is doing something that it's not.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_illusions_in_aviation and note the long list of accidents at the bottom.

Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?

#67

Post by K0balt »

lsh123 wrote: post #53
quasarj wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying into a cloud is a big risk? They're everywhere!

There are studies about non-instrument pilots entering clouds (instrument meteorological conditions or IMC in aviation lingo): - in 60 secs the plane control is lost (though still recoverable); - in 90 secs the plane is in an unrecoverable attitude; - in 180-270 secs the plane breaks up or hits the ground. An example of someone who lived to tell the tale: http://www.37000feet.com/report/879711/new-in-type-private-p..…

Mmmmm I’m going to take exception to this.

It is certainly possible (and easy) to become disoriented in IMC.

But every private pilot has at least a couple of hours of simulated instrument time and should be capable of navigating their aircraft back out of a cloud.

You are taught, if you have a competent instructor, to ignore your senses and rely on the instruments in such situations, as well as recovery from unusual attitudes by instruments alone.

I don’t doubt that people forget their training or don’t keep current however.

Also, there is no such thing (for light aircraft) as an unrecoverable attitude that results in impacting the ground a minute and a half later.

Any properly loaded certificated light aircraft can be recovered from any attitude if you have that much time.

It takes a max of about 10 seconds to recover an aircraft from any unusual attitude and reestablish straight and level flight.

A spiral dive (the typical situation with loss of visual reference) it might take 15 seconds since you have to bleed off the speed you picked up.

There might be some extremely low drag aircraft that might be a bit more problematic in that regard, but they are typically also capable of much higher VNE limits.

Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?

#68

Post by bondarchuk »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #64
qup wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the clouds ground-level? I'm just wondering what happens between exiting the cloud and impacting the ground.

Sometimes they can be. A lot of times people without IFR enter clouds because situation is worsening - so after a few minutes, cloud/fog might reach ground, or you might fly to a place where clouds are lower. Other times, you get your airplane in a situation / position where, when you do exit a cloud, you don't have enough altitude to correct it. Some airplanes have various types of spins you can enter that you canno…

Even with all these explanations I'm still totally unclear on how flying in a cloud gets you an 86% fatality rate. It's difficult and counterintuitive, things can go wrong with instruments etc.., but what exactly makes a crash a near-certainty in this situation?

Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?

#69

Post by bragr »

itsyaboi wrote: post #47
dghughes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of mentioning daytime in the article had me worried. Also there is no flying in an aerodrome and hopefully the person knows what an aerodrome is. Or near hospitals since many are restricted for helicopter air ambulances. Or anywhere near anything military. I briefly took some flying lessons and there is an enormous amount to know both the flying part and the ground school part.

Aerodrome? Is this a euro-specific rule?

No, just a more generic and all encompassing term than airport.

Re: What planes can you fly without a pilot’s license?

#70

Post by dmoy »

itsyaboi wrote: post #47
dghughes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of mentioning daytime in the article had me worried. Also there is no flying in an aerodrome and hopefully the person knows what an aerodrome is. Or near hospitals since many are restricted for helicopter air ambulances. Or anywhere near anything military. I briefly took some flying lessons and there is an enormous amount to know both the flying part and the ground school part.

Aerodrome? Is this a euro-specific rule?

Think like US equivalent of class B, C, or D airspace. Or maybe even smaller airfields too idk exactly how it works there
Post reply on HN