Overhead Break
As a civilian pilot, you might wonder what an
overhead break is, and why on earth anyone would want to do one. It really works best in a fast slippery aircraft
with retractable gear, but there are other uses for it as well.
A good example is the L39. At 250 knots at circuit
altitude, I line up with the runway I am going to land on, for a long
final. I might make a radio call such as
“3 miles initial”. I fly down the runway, in the direction I am going to land
on it, still at circuit altitude. At the
end of the (short) runway (for a long runway, 1/2 way down) I turn level
towards the downwind leg and pull around +4G’s.
How many G’s you need to pull depends upon the aircraft type, how fast
you are going, whether you put the boards out, and what power setting you are
using.
The idea is that with the same power setting that you are going to be using
during the approach, you bleed off enough speed in the level 180 degree steep
turn so that when you roll out on downwind you are right at the gear speed,
which in the L39 is 180 knots.
A showy variation on the above is when you dive to the surface overhead and
down the runway – instead of being at circuit altitude, normally 1000 AGL
piston and 1500 AGL jet - and instead of a level steep turn, you do a climbing
steep turn onto downwind. Not really of any great use, but can be fun
nonetheless, and it might get you laid.
I doubt it, though.
So, an overhead break is used to get one airplane established on the downwind
in landing configuration in a minimal amount of time. This can be handy for several
reasons.
An overhead break is very useful when you have many airplanes returning to the
airport at the same time. If you try to sequence them the civilian way, with
civilian spacing, you will be all day trying to get everyone on the ground, and
the radio will be a furball.
Normally you would have 2 or 4 aircraft approaching the airport. For left
traffic, they will get in right echelon, for right traffic they will get in
left echelon. The lead does all the radio calls. The 2 ship element or 4 ship
flight flies down the runway at circuit altitude as described above, then the
lead kisses off #2 with a hand signal
and does an overhead break as described above. You could use anything from 3 to
7 seconds, using a hand signal for the number of seconds. Then, #2 breaks, then
#3, then #4. If it is performed correctly, they are all spaced out evenly on
downwind – a thing of beauty - and touch down one after another on the runway.
With nosewheel aircraft, the landing is simple because everyone can see the
airplane in front of them. With tailwheel aircraft that are blind out the front
in the landing attitude, there must
be an established protocol or SOP for runway positioning on landing because you
are blind out the front. Crossing the runway to exit must be done carefully
with a guy behind you, who is blind out front.
This all sounds rather baroque, but is actually quite standard and very useful
when you have a gaggle of aircraft for some reason. I did it a couple days ago,
with a T-6 leading, me in a Pitts, a Christen Eagle, and an MX2. We took off in
elements of two and I did the rejoin as the second element lead. It all went quite well because all of us
understood the basics as described above, even though we had never flown
together as a flight.
--
acboyd@gmail.com Jan 2013