VFR, Video and Movies

Ed Wischmeyer

There’s “lotsa” reasons to be glad you don’t try to fly recreationally in Europe. First, the Europeans love rules. Lotsa rules. Lotsa tests. Second, a need to control. Some decades back, I got a flight in England, and you could not take off nor land without permission over the radio. Where I flew, permission was given by a gal in a hut with one window that did not face the runway. 

Last is ATC. The concept of one European ATC – not sure where that concept is now – got a good whack upside the head with BREXIT, that is, the UK leaving the European Union by a very close vote from the UK citizenry. The latest casualty is LPV approaches which will not be available after June 25 because the EU wants to charge the UK too much. Wonder if Uncle Sam will strike a deal… just wondering.

In the U.S., we have ADS-B for collision avoidance. In the UK, they have a handful of systems that are mutually incompatible… In other words, you can only see airplanes that have the same system that you do. Go figure.

Ed Wischmeyer will be presenting a forum at Sun ‘n Fun this year, in the AOPA pavilion, talking about loss of control and the Expanded Envelope Exercises® (E3).

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Over the past few years, I’ve shot videos from the RV-9A , sometimes just to document flight tests, sometimes for various presentations. Two lessons:

First, the workload can quickly get out of hand if you have to fly the plane, talk on the radio and fuss with the camera. It works much better if you have a videographer to handle the camera aspects. It also helps to have a laptop in the hangar so that you can get feedback right away on what shots worked, what you should try next time, and… what wasn’t recorded because the camera shut off, either accidentally or on its own. Or, more insidiously, what was recorded except for the audio. 

But, if you’ve got the camera details figured out, you can do it solo. On my plane, I can use the right side screen to display the video full screen and all I have to do is align the camera when I have time – easy if the camera is above the instrument panel, but hopeless if it’s behind your shoulder.

Today was a solo shoot. What made it work was that I had seen the videos from the day before and knew enough to not touch anything. First was a deliberate runway overshoot at a small, country airport. Trouble is that the runway wasn’t prominent in the video as I discovered when I was done for the day, back at the hangar on the laptop.

Coming back to Savannah, I asked for a base entry to a two-mile final for a video shoot, if they had time. Approach surprised me by saying that they always had time for me. (I work hard at being a good citizen).

Anyhow, I got the base entry and did all the funny things I needed to do for a good video. When I was on short final, they asked if I could make (turn off on) taxiway B1. Wish they’d asked sooner, but it was a dynamic situation with me, a King Air behind and a helicopter in between. I told them B2 was assured, B1 was questionable. Despite the demands of flying the plane to get the good video, I made B1. It’s nice when your A game is working, especially on request.

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One of the seemingly most glamorous but actually boring jobs is being a movie extra. These days, the movie “Devotion” is being shot in and around Savannah, GA. It’s a wonderful, true story about two Navy fighter pilots in the Korean war, one black, one white, close friends, in an era where such was unusual and questioned. A friend has the book and says great things about it.

In the movie, there are at least two Grumman Bearcats (saw them take off from KSAV the other day), four Corsairs (my avionics guy sent me a picture of the four of them in his hangar), and a Sea Fury. This week, that airport is closed during daylight hours so that the movie won’t have light aircraft inappropriately in the movie, neither visually nor acoustically.

I’ve volunteered to fly a Bearcat for them, or even a Corsair, but somehow they haven’t called me back. I must have given them my phone number wrong. I think I’ll be visible in the movie, though, as an extra – in one scene, in the far background, probably out of focus, walking away from the camera. Hi, Ma…

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Sun ‘n Fun is coming up and I’ll again be presenting a forum, but this time with a twist – I’ll be presenting Tuesday in the AOPA pavilion, talking about loss of control and the Expanded Envelope Exercises® (E3). Some of you readers may recall that I’ve been working on this subject for the last five years, with gradually increasing recognition. Richard McSpadden, executive vice president, wrote about E3 in the April issue of AOPA Pilot. AOPA put together a really nice three-minute video that you can find on Youtube by looking for my name. There’s also my 90-minute presentation on Youtube on the same subject, and as far as I’m concerned, it pretty much writes the book on general aviation loss of control. (Expanded Envelope Exercises on Youtube)

One measure of success is whether you’ve added words and phrases to the lexicon, and I’ll claim three. First is “cognitive unavailability,” meaning that the pilot has so much going on that he is cognitively unavailable to adequately process all of the cues already available to fly the airplane safely. The aviation psychologists have identified a dozen or more phenomena that I think give rise to cognitive unavailability. That phrase is in the title of a webinar somebody else is presenting in two days.

The second phrase is Low Speed Spiral (LoSS). Aerodynamically, it’s much the same as a base to final steep turn with inadequate back pressure, but the significance is that it quickly leads to a very unusual attitude, loss of control and major altitude loss. Because this phenomenon is unacknowledged, it doesn’t show up in the accident statistics, but… The evidence is that LoSS is of significance comparable to stall/spin. And I’ve found three conference papers that discuss unusual attitudes as a cause of loss of control.

The third phrase is the most significant, and it has been copied. Why all this safety research? “To help keep our friends alive.” When there’s an opportunity, I add the phrase, “created in the image of God.”