Pre takeoff controls check

While a seemingly simple regulation, the lack of applying it over the years has caught out a number of pilots. Its application has also saved an unknown number of pilots.

Over the years there have been a number of documented cases of flight controls being jammed, disconnected or even reversed.

History records the classic 1958 case of the hurried assembly of a Percival EP. 9 that took off from Moorabbin with the elevator reversed.

The aircraft climbed steeply and stalled in. More recently, a prototype F-117 Nighthawk suffered the same problem on a test flight. Sometimes aircraft design does not prevent reverse control installation and pilots and engineers can overlook the most obvious.

In the US there have been several cases of a Cessna taking off with the control column gust lock still in place and the pilot being unable to free it.

At Mangalore there was the SV Rustler aircraft that the builder had rushed to complete.

When finished he was seen to do a pre-flight exercise of the controls. The aircraft took off and crashed. The ailerons had been reversed. The pilot had not looked at the control surfaces to check that they were moving in the correct sense.

This writer can still recall the pilot of an Auster who, with shaking hands, confessed that he had just made a circuit with a gust lock on the rudder.

No doubt there has been more than one Cessna that has taken off or been stopped from taking off because a gust lock was on the fin and rudder.

In recent months the weekly ATSB listing had an E-190 return to the ramp when a post startup check detected a control problem, a failed bearing in the control column. A Cessna 402 had elevator problems in flight due to a small rivet that had lodged in the elevator mechanism.

A Cessna 550 was on a post maintenance flight when the crew experienced abnormal rudder and elevator movements.

The aircraft landed safely.

Another older save was the Osprey amphibian that was facing down the runway when the test pilot found that the ailerons were not connected! A Beech 18 was about to takeoff at Mascot when the pilot found that the failure of a welded fitting at the base of the control column resulted in no elevator control.

There has long been a requirement that after a flight control surface has been removed and refitted a dual inspection must be carried out to ensure that the surface has been reinstalled correctly and in the right sense. Rushing a maintenance job on an aircraft involving flight controls is one time when problems can occur due to not enough care and attention to detail.

Another area of flight control obstruction is the common failing of pilots not removing a knee pad or desk off their lap for the takeoff or landing.

Should sudden and full control use be required, such as in an engine failure situation, that pad or lap desk may prevent control application. Ipad users take note.

Freight not properly secured on the front seat of a dual control aircraft is yet another problem area with the possibility of jammed flight controls.

Aerobatic aircraft pilots usually make a very detailed inspection of the interior of their aircraft to ensure that there are no loose objects in the lower fuselage that may jam the controls when they are needed the most – a good reason to wear a flight suit with zip pockets for those loose objects.

Australia has mild weather compared to some countries, but we still get frost and ice on the wings of aircraft that have been left outside during cold weather. Ice adds weight and ice and frost change the aerofoil shape of the wing, typically resulting in a longer takeoff run and a higher stall speed.

Ice and frost must be removed before flight.

For a pilot taking delivery of an aircraft straight out of maintenance, it can be a good policy to ask if any control surface has been touched and even then to make a thorough check of the controls. Take nothing for granted. You may not get a second chance.

As instructors we need to drive home the message – check controls immediately before flight for full free and correct sense.

As one experienced pilot once said, “Rules are written in blood”.

Regulation 244, check controls before flight, would have to be a good example of that. n Contact Dave by email at flyer02@optusnet. com. au

A Percival EP.9 took off with the elevator reversed. It climbed steeply and stalled in.