Thread: Canyon Turns
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  #10  
Old March 11th 04, 06:50 PM
MikeM
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C J Campbell wrote:
The 55 degree steep turn is a required commercial maneuver. As you have
noted, it is harder than the 45 degree turn required of private pilots. It


A "canyon" turn has nothing to do with a "required commercial maneuver"!
It is a last ditch manuver to get out a bad situation.

Altitude loss may be acceptable, if you have some excess to begin with.

If the canyon is narrow, start the turn as close to one wall as you dare,
about two wingspans. You should have been near the "updraft" wall before
you figured out that you need to turn around.

If you have some excess speed, first pull up into a zoom which gains
altitude, and bleeds off the speed. Canyons are usually wider higher up.

As speed decays to 1.2Vs, deploy ~15 deg of flaps, roll away from
the canyon wall to a 45-60 deg bank, use lots of rudder, dont
pull elevator until the nose drops to about 20 below horizontal.

Since you started the turn with the nose up (in the zoom), you will
be most of the way around by the time the nose has dropped.

Roll out parallel to your original course. You will feel a small
g force as you pull out of the slight dive; you can modulate the
pull out by controlling elevator back pressure.

Done this way, you will finish the turn over the center of the
canyon, where presumably the floor of the canyon is "deeper",
so you have more ground clearance.

Starting from an airspeed of ~100mph, I can turn my 182 around
in a horizontal space of about 10 wingspans, while gaining
100 to 200 ft of altitude. btw- I have practised this dozens of
times. My airplane is hangared about 10 miles from some very deep,
very long, very narrow glacier-cut canyons. Have you ever skiied
at Alta, UT? Ever flown Lake Clark Pass in AK?

MikeM
Skylane '1MM