Steep turns and steep spiral

What this lesson is for: teaching steep turns and the steep spiral from the right seat, and being able to explain load factor and overbanking tendency in terms a Student can feel rather than compute.

These two maneuvers are together because they are one lesson in aerodynamics seen twice. Both are steep, both punish an unattended pitch, and in both the airplane will do something nobody asked for the moment you stop flying it.

Read:

• FAA-S-ACS-25, tasks AI.IX.A and AI.IX.B, in full. Write down the tolerances and the completion altitude for the spiral.
• FAA-H-8083-3C, the performance maneuvers chapter and the aerodynamics chapter on load factor.
• standards/MANEUVER-LESSON-SHAPE.md, addition 2.

Deliverable: Two things. First, write the preflight ground lesson you will teach on steep turns and the steep spiral. This is one of your seventeen P3 plans, covering a performance maneuver at private standards. Second, look up the maneuvering speed and the flap and gear limiting speeds for the specific airplane you will fly, in that airplane's own approved material, and bring them written down. Not from a study guide, not from the airplane you trained in.

That second one is graded, and it is graded because it is a habit rather than a fact. A number copied from another airplane is the exact error you will spend a career teaching Students not to make.

1. Load factor in a level turn, taught so it can be felt rather than computed.
2. Overbanking tendency, and where it comes from.
3. Steep turns: entry, holding altitude, and leading the rollout.
4. Why stall speed rises with bank, and why that sets the airspeed limit.
5. The steep spiral: a constant-radius glide around a point in a wind.
6. Engine management in a long glide, including clearing the engine.
7. The steep spiral as the shape of an emergency descent over a field you have chosen.
8. Teaching a maneuver where the Student's instinct is exactly wrong.

A Student in a steep turn who is losing altitude will pull.

Pulling tightens the turn, raises the load factor, raises the stall speed, and loses more altitude. The correct action is to reduce the bank first, then correct the pitch.

Every Student does the wrong thing. Telling them once on the ground is not the same as having the right sentence available in the one second it is useful. That sentence is what you are practicing today.

1. Teach your preflight ground lesson on steep turns and the steep spiral.
2. Demonstrate steep turns in both directions from the right seat, narrating throughout.
3. Demonstrate a steep spiral to the ACS standard, narrating throughout.
4. Talk your instructor through both while they fly them badly.
5. Teach clearing the engine as part of the glide, not as an afterthought.
6. Take the airplane at the threshold, out loud, three-way.
7. Critique, self-critique, then listen.

1. You deliver the preflight ground lesson on steep turns and the steep spiral, covering all seven items of the brief, and explain load factor and its effect on stall speed without using arithmetic the Student has to do in the airplane.
2. You fly steep turns in both directions to commercial pilot tolerances from the right seat while narrating continuously, and do not go silent through either roll-in or either rollout.
3. You fly a steep spiral to commercial pilot tolerances, maintaining a constant radius around the point through at least the number of turns the current AI.IX.B task requires, and clear the engine at the interval you briefed.
4. You talk the Simulated Student through a steep turn in which altitude is lost, and direct a reduction in bank before any change in pitch.
5. You name the overbanking tendency as the cause when the Simulated Student's bank increases, rather than only directing a correction.
6. You take the flight controls using the three-way exchange, out loud, in both directions, including at least once when the airplane was not offered.
7. You deliver a critique naming the error, its probable cause, and the correction for at least two of the errors flown.
8. You deliver a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

Standard 4 is the strict one. Bank first, then pitch, arriving in the second it is needed.

Falling short does not block lesson 29. No proficiency gate. It triggers the visibility rule in policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md.

• Teaching load factor as a number to memorize. A Student needs to know that steepening the turn makes the wing work harder and the stall arrive sooner. They do not need to do arithmetic while banked.
• Telling a Student to pitch when they are low in a steep turn. Bank first. Always.
• Flying the steep turn on the attitude indicator, and teaching it that way. It is a visual maneuver with an instrument cross-check, not the reverse.
• Rolling out late, in the demonstration and in the correction.
• Never clearing the engine in the spiral, or saying it once at the entry and never again.
• Entering the spiral without the altitude to finish it. Budget it before engine start.
• Constant bank in the spiral, so the radius grows and shrinks with the wind. That is lesson 27's error at a steeper angle, one week later.
• Going quiet through the roll-in.
• Quoting airspeed limits from a different airplane.

• Bank exceeds 60 degrees at any time.
• Airspeed exceeds the maneuvering speed for our actual weight today, or reaches 1.2 Vs1 slow, in either case without correction applied.
• Altitude passes 1,500 ft AGL descending in the steep spiral or any air work.
• A nose-low pitch in a steep turn is not corrected within two seconds.
• You increase load factor while the airplane is already outside the bank target.
• Either of us is unclear about who is flying the airplane.

Hard floor: all air work is terminated by 1,500 ft AGL. North Aero policy, and it is also what the current AI.IX.B task requires for the spiral. Read the task on the day and use the higher number.

The airspeed limit is stated as a rule rather than a number because it changes with weight and it belongs to the airplane we are flying. You bring it, from that airplane's own material, and you say it in the brief.

Positive exchange of controls, both directions, every time.

Three slots, all currently empty: VS-28-1 Exemplar on AI.IX.A, VS-28-2 Error on AI.IX.A, VS-28-3 Error on AI.IX.B.

This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled.