Jim Davis

Don’t you hate disclaimers? Those notes, in seven languages, that say, “WARNING. Servicing this device in the bath may lead to injury or death.” The word device covers anything from an electric lawn-mower to a vibrator.

However, I regret that I must now issue one.

Low flying can be dangerous. Whatever I say about it may be out of date or incorrect. So when you are charged with killing five church-goers or frightening a herd of turkeys, it’s no use crying to mommy, or to the beak, and saying, “But Jim said it was okay…”

Definition: Low flying is flying lower than 500ft agl.

The regulations in most countries say that low flying must not cause a nuisance or danger to persons or property on the surface. So if anyone complains, then you have been a nuisance, you have contravened the regulations. You can be fined, have your licence put through CAA’s confetti machine, be chucked in the slammer, or all three.

Then there’s a whole lot more stuff about minimum heights over congregations, towns, military places and game-reserves. You need to look them up and avoid them.

Oh, and there’s one more that’s not in the regs but should be in your head. Lakes, bodies of water and rubbish dumps harbour birds – so don’t be silly.

Actually rivers are seriously dangerous as they are the homes of:

  • Birds
  • Valleys
  • Overhead wires
  • Cable cars
  • Foefie slides
  • Resorts full of admirers you can wave to as you sail into the cables.

In South Africa low flying is part of the PPL course but it’s dual only. Solo low flying is prohibited. I’ll tell you a story about that shortly.

Everyone gets taught low flying as part of their PPL. I think this has merit because it says, we know you are going to do it (legally or otherwise) so here are the tools to do it safely.

This part has led to a number of accidents – mostly youngsters showing off and flying into the rising or setting sun and slamming into powerlines.

In Australia you don’t get low flying training as part of your PPL, and you are not allowed to do it. However, in 2019, CASA introduced a low-level operational rating – separate from ag and mustering endorsements. It’s to train pilots for powerline inspections, gas pipe inspections and the like. Previously there was no specific endorsement for this and therefore no requirement to demonstrate competency. You needed permission from CASA and that was about it.

Why go low?

There are three main reasons for low flying:

  • Because you want to – sightseeing, game-spotting, mustering, photography, powerline or pipeline inspections, and so on.
  • Because you have to – normally because of bad weather, low cloud and poor visibility.
  • Tactical/military flying. Under this heading a slightly lower priority is placed on safety. Joe’s magnificent painting shows the sort of flying your country encourages you to do in times of strife.

You use different techniques for each of these.

If you are low flying just because you feel like it, then you need to maintain at least normal cruise speed. This gives you good manoeuvrability for clearing wires that may suddenly appear, or rising ground that can take you by surprise.

Always cross ridges of high ground at an angle so you can turn away if necessary.

If you have been forced down by bad weather and the visibility is poor, then fast is not good. You don’t want obstacles appearing out of the murk too quickly. It’s best to use your normal climb speed and set your flaps to the take-off position. This gives you a decent view over the nose, reasonable manoeuvrability and a better chance of seeing what you are going to hit.

There was a case a while ago when a C210 going coastwise from East London to Durban had to get down to 50’ along the beach to stay below the cloud. Even then the viz was poor. He thought it was fine to bat along at 180 mph – no wires and no rising ground. I guess he hadn’t given much thought to seagulls or kite fishermen – but they were not the cause of his downfall. The coast curved round to the right then suddenly came to a headland where it ducked abruptly back to the left. The aircraft was going too fast to follow it round, so the pilot suddenly found himself out of sight of the coast. The immediate danger is that it’s almost impossible to judge your height over open water. You have no identifiable size reference to tell you whether the waves are ripples of monsters.

However, even this didn’t catch him out. He turned sharply left to look for the coastline and flew slap into a cliff – killing all four occupants instantly. Had he chucked out some flap and reduced speed to 100 mph to allow for the poor viz he would have been in a far better position to follow the coast. Also that would have vastly reduced any bird damage if he had smacked a 4 lb seagull.

Heads up for instructors

Here’s a checklist of 27 items you need to brief your pupe on before you go low flying:

  • The legal implications.
  • The choice of a good area.
  • Position of the sun.
  • Wind strength and direction.
  • Density altitude.
  • Passenger briefing.
  • Fuel selection and pump.
  • Trim.
  • Possible conditions for carb icing.
  • Power and mixture settings.
  • Engine cooling.
  • Poor VHF range.
  • Location of birds (lakes, rubbish dumps etc).
  • Avoidance of birds.
  • Rising ground.
  • Loose articles.
  • Harnesses.
  • The dangers of wires.
  • The dangers of valleys.
  • The dangers of open water.
  • The dangers of large expanses of sand.
  • Airspeed/groundspeed relationship.
  • Apparent skid and slip in turns.
  • Keeping your hand on the throttle.
  • Maintaining a constant lookout, particularly ahead.
  • Distractions – inside and outside the cockpit.
  • Low-level navigation.
  •  

Air instruction

After you have gone through these safety precautions and chosen a good area, your instructor will take you down to a low safe height and point out what she is doing.

She will keep one hand on the stick and the other on the throttle all the time. If she needs to change tanks, change frequency or do anything else, she will climb to 500ft before taking her hand off the throttle or dealing with the distraction or talking on the radio.

She will have the trim set nose-up so that she must positively hold the aircraft down. She will only look ahead and will not be tempted to join in the sightseeing that the passengers may be doing.

The Racecourse pattern

A major part of your low flying training will cover the effects and illusions of wind at low altitude. She will start off by flying into wind at cruise speed – say 120 mph on the ASI. If there is a 20 mph wind this will give you a groundspeed of 100 mph. You soon get used to the speed that the ground is going past, and you can feel that the controls are firm and effective.

Next, she will do a 180° turn, say to the left. During the turn the wind will carry you to the left and you will feel as if you are slipping into the turn. You will be tempted to try and correct this by using a boot-full of left rudder. Don’t do it. A quick glance at the ball will tell you that all is well (give or take half a ball) – and there is far more important stuff to attend to.

When you roll out of the turn you will be flying downwind. You will still have 120 mph on your ASI but the ground will be rushing past at 140 mph.

Remember that on the into-wind leg you got used to a groundspeed of 100 mph. So suddenly going 40% faster is going to seem all wrong. You will tend to throttle back and reduce airspeed until the ground is going by at a familiar 100 mph. But when you do this you will have a soggy and dangerous airspeed of only 80 mph. So don’t be tempted to reduce power when you go downwind – no matter what it feels like.

Now you are going to do another 180° turn to the left to complete the racecourse pattern. In this turn you will seem to be skidding and will again be tempted to play with the rudder. Don’t do it.

Racecourse pattern summary

Keep your eyes outside. The power setting will look after your airspeed, and the ball will look after itself.

Larry and the Cub

I called my mate Larry Beamish to say I am writing an article on Low Flying. There was a long silence, then a massive burst of laughter, “So you want to talk to the expert?” Some years ago he flew his Cub into power lines and walked (actually staggered) away.

Larry, a hugely experienced and well-respected pilot, was exceedingly lucky. He only committed two of a whole bunch of possible crimes. I’ll tell you about them in a moment, but Larry’s first mistake was to do an impromptu beat up. Doing anything unplanned near the ground has the potential for disaster.

Larry had just completed a routine for the crowd at a model aircraft gathering. There was a delay before the next act so he decided to do a ‘filler’ to keep the folks amused. Think of ‘filler’ as ‘killer’, and you have got it in one. Airshow fillers have a deadly reputation – because they are often spur of the moment deals.

Anyhow, Larry had been performing along the north/south runway and decided to switch to the east/west one. For a moment he imagined the airfield was a real one – not a model aircraft sized one that looked real. So he assumed there would be no power lines on the approach to the runway. And that’s where mistake number two crept in. There were power lines – he had fallen into that terrible trap of assuming.

There’s also an illusion of being high when you look at quarter sized runways.

Never Assume

The SACAA used to have an objectionable little testing officer who was always waving his finger at people and saying, “To assume makes an ASS of U and ME”. I wanted to strangle him, but he was quite right. I assumed you checked the fuel, I assumed you brought a map, I assumed you got hold of the met. Okay, I assume you’ve got the picture by now.

Despite the number of low flying accidents, it’s legal, it’s safe, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun – as long as you stick to the rules and do it intelligently.

Wires are the main problem – either you don’t see them at all, or you see them too late.

On my first encounter with wires, I am flying O for Orange, a Mark III Lancaster in Guy Gibson’s 617, Dam Busters, Squadron. I swoop down to 60ft so that the two spotlight beams combine to form a circle on the water. I aim for the centre of the Möhne dam wall. Tracers from the towers stream directly at me and skim just past the cockpit. The aircraft rocks in the night sky as bursts of flak get dangerously close.

Actually that’s not quite true. My mount is Bravo November Romeo, the Pretoria Flying Club’s J3 Cub. And I am maybe 10ft above the waters of the Bronkhorstspruit dam. At the last second I pull up and rocket over the wall at nearly 65mph. What a man.

I have 32hrs in my logbook and I am invincible. When I tell my buddy about it he wants to know whether I went under or over the wires that run from one tower to the other. ‘Wires?’ I say, ‘What wires?’

As I mentioned, Dual Only means no Dam Busters stuff even if

  • You are Guy Gibson.
  • You think you are Guy Gibson.
  • You want others to think you are Guy Gibson.

You may think all this talk of flying into things is a bit unlikely – hell you can see what’s in front of you so why fly into it?

Let me tell you about three low flying accidents that spring to mind.

Cessna 172 ZS-JYV

A foreign, 21 year old, Com student who had just got his PPL at Heidelberg, loaded two of his fellow students into the aircraft.

A farmer said he watched the aircraft doing low flying over his fields. However one of the passengers said they were practicing forced landings into the setting sun. No matter, the aircraft hit high tension wires 20’ above the field. It then smacked into the ground, nose-down 50 metres further on.

All on board suffered serious injuries and the pilot was sent to hospital in Egypt with critical head injuries.

140 Cherokee ZS-JZN

A pilot who had just earned his PPL took off from George late one afternoon. 20 minutes later ATC received a call to say the aircraft had crashed in the Mossel Bay area.

Same again he flew into high tension wires with the sun in his eyes.

He was uninjured but the aircraft, which used to belong to me, now rests in a kiddies’ playground in Oudtshoorn.

Cherokee 180

The aircraft took off from 43 Air School Port Alfred late one afternoon with three foreign, hour-building pilots on board.

They returned to Port Alfred sometime later with the most extraordinary problem. They had been playing silly-buggers over the sand-dunes and somehow managed to wipe the nosewheel off the aircraft without touching the main wheels. Unbelievable – but it happened.

Sand-dunes are as dangerous as waves in the sea. You have nothing with which to judge their height. Never underestimate them – I very nearly sailed into one on the approach to Walvis Bay.

Secret note for instructors only

I have trained a hell of a lot of students and not one has ever had a low flying accident. My secret is that I make the low flying exercise into the most unpleasant flight of their lives.

I like plenty of wind, plenty of turbulence and the sun low.

It’s good to have the aircraft trimmed a bit nose-up for low flying, but I insist on making it uncomfortably so. This means that the student is physically battling to keep the aircraft low, and I am pushing him to get lower into the region of stronger turbulence.

I then pretend to spot something interesting out of the left window. If he even glances that way I shout at him to keep his eyes ahead.

You can make it even more unpleasant if it’s a hot day and you keep the ventilation closed so that the sweat runs down his face and he can’t wipe if off because he has to have his hands on the stick and the throttle. Very soon the pupe is begging to end the exercise and climb back to a sensible height.

I hate doing this, but it works. The pupe leaves knowing that low flying is not for him.