Overspeed Recovery question

At 15:10 11 February 2015, Dan Marotta wrote:
How can you "inadvertently fly into the yellow range and kiss the red
range"? Sleeping at the helm? You have to have quite a nose down
attitude to get near the red line and it doesn't sneak up on you. It's
very noisy and pitch sensitive.

Don's advice below is excellent.


On 2/11/2015 3:20 AM, Don Johnstone wrote:
At 02:58 11 February 2015, wrote:
If you inadvertently fly into the yellow range and kiss the red range,
and

you get into the high speed vibration, what is the best way to slow
before

the wings depart the glider. My sense is to reach for the spoilers
and
slo
wly extend to slow. Any opinions on that matter?

A very experienced test pilot once told me, and several others, that if
you
were faced with exceeding VNE you should pull as hard as you can, even
if
it means exceeding max G load, to reduce speed as soon as you can to
below
VNE. Catastrophic structural failures due to excess G are very rare
unless
there are other factors, catastrophic failures due to flutter are
almost


inevitable.
There is no right answer, just a less wrong one and I would stress I
have
not had the opportunity to test this.
One of the requirements on a Grob 103 post major inspection test flight
was
to operate the spoilers at 70kts, having done this many times I would
not
recommend the spoilers option.


--
Dan Marotta


Once, while practicing aerobatics in my Pilatus B4, and entirely due to my

own clumsiness, I found myself in a 45 degree inverted dive and rapidly
approaching Vne. Fortunately, I did what I was trained to do, which was to

push hard until the nose was above the horizon, then roll out. It was all
captured on my cockpit mounted Go-Pro. This shows the momentary
hesitation while I overcame the instinct to pull. The ASI shows 130knots
(Vne) was just touched, and the accelerometer, after initially being
obscured
by my left arm rising to be firmly held against the canopy, showed -4g.

Had I pulled through, I would probably have exceeded Vne by 30knots.

On landing, the aircraft was thoroughly checked, and found to have suffered

no ill effects.

I am thankful for the thoroughness of my training, and for the robustness
of
the B4.