Are steep turns part of the IFR checkride / PTS?

MAKG1 said:
Did you read the whole message you replied to?

If the controller didn't tell you whether the target was high or low, you had no information to act, but it's usually better to climb or descend, to minimize your cross section.

You can climb a few hundred feet in a real hurry, almost as fast as you can turn it around in a canyon turn, but without anywhere near the disorientation risk.

Sometimes people forget we're not driving. We have altitude to play with, too.

Your cross section during a turn is several times larger than it is during even a very aggressive climb. If it's going to be close, your odds are much better to climb or descend.

Even an instruction to "do a 180" is not very helpful without a direction. Your odds are 50/50 that you'll turn toward the target.
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Like Kritchlow said, you seem to be suggesting a self-initiated climb in IMC while under IFR.

So you are implying that is a better course of action than taking the direction of the guy looking at both radar targets. Not smart.

And in actuality, the controller did give me a heading that was roughly 180 from the heading I was assigned when cleared for the approach.
 
Dead Stick said:
It all depends upon what you're flying. If you're flying something with TCAS II you'll likely get a TCAS commanded climb or descent well before ATC is aware of a conflict. As a general principle, I agree with what MAKG1 said. Sure, there are exceptions, but if the controller tells you do anything "in an extremely excited voice", you best action might be to simply bend over and kiss your sorry arse goodbye.
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Huh? The controller gave him a turn. Jesus people... Controller gives you an instruction to avoid traffic, and we have people wanting to do different things??

Kiss your arse goodbye?? My goodness. I've heard this from controllers several times in my career. I guess I should be glad I didn't kiss it goodbye and just give up..??
 
Fearless Tower said:
Like Kritchlow said, you seem to be suggesting a self-initiated climb in IMC while under IFR.

So you are implying that is a better course of action than taking the direction of the guy looking at both radar targets. Not smart.

And in actuality, the controller did give me a heading that was roughly 180 from the heading I was assigned when cleared for the approach.
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No, you got a suboptimal instruction and followed it. You'll likely never know how close you were, but an "excited" voice at any time in IMC indicates a very likely error on the controller's part.

I'll ask you to consider what would warrant a 180 deg turn in IMC. Not collision avoidance unless it's hostile. Maybe terrain avoidance, but that implies several other errors.
 
Any 180 degree turn to avoid traffic seems odd, unless you are going into another controllers airspace (controller fault). It seems 90 degrees would be optimal??
 
Kritchlow said:
Any 180 degree turn to avoid traffic seems odd, unless you are going into another controllers airspace (controller fault). It seems 90 degrees would be optimal??
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I think people are getting hung up on 180.

In reality it was two or three successive headings that really amounted to a 360. I use 180 to illustrate the initial quick turn. He initially told me to turn right and then gave me an initial heading that was maybe 120+ degrees right and then kept me turning to 180 than a full 360. Bigger point being that this was not a situation where you wanted to do a slow leisurely turn.

This was in the San Diego Bravo. I was cleared for the ILS 28R to MYF. A 90 degree turn would have put me heading straight at Miramar. May have created a different conflict, dunno. Also, once he turned me away, he needed to get me back around to resequence me. Essentially what happened was a Southwest 737 took off from SAN and missed the handoff from initial Departure to Approach and was a in climbing turn heading right at me approaching MYF and not talking to anyone.

My simple point is, that was clearly a case where the ability to conduct a steep turn in IMC was important. The last thing you'd want to do in that situation is change altitude for a turning/climbing contact that is coming at you, especially when the controller has a better picture than you do.

Here is an AOPA article written about why steep turns used to be included in the instrument PTS (written in 2002):
http://flighttraining.aopa.org/magazine/2002/May/200205_Commentary_Checkride.html

The hypothetical example they give in the article is very similar to what happened to me.
 
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Well, I have to admit, I don't understand the concept of being asked to turn "immediately" by a controller and then taking your sweet time to actually make the turn. :dunno:

Consider the midair collision between a Cessna 150 and a F-16 on July of this year. From the report:

At 1100:26, the controller advised the F-16 pilot, "turn left heading 180 if you don't have that traffic in sight." The pilot responded by asking, "confirm 2 miles?" Eight seconds later, the controller stated, "if you don't have that traffic in sight, turn left heading 180 immediately." Over the next 18 seconds, the track of the F-16 began turning southerly.


There may very well have been a different outcome if the F-16 pilot had actually turned "immediately" when asked.
 
nddons said:
I could swear that I did them on my IR check ride in 2010, but I could be wrong. It was not something that stands out. Timed and compass turns, and unusual attitude recovery sure do.
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Or you could be remembering correctly. I just took a commercial helicopter ride and did a 360 degree autorotation. Never trained for one and it's definitely not in the pts. I'm sure if I botched it I would have passed since it's not in the pts. But I made it work and it was fun. Just because it's not in the pts doesn't mean it never happens on a ride.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
Or you could be remembering correctly. I just took a commercial helicopter ride and did a 360 degree autorotation. Never trained for one and it's definitely not in the pts. I'm sure if I botched it I would have passed since it's not in the pts. But I made it work and it was fun. Just because it's not in the pts doesn't mean it never happens on a ride.
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Wow. Very cool. Congrats on your commercial helicopter ticket.
 
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