Chandelles, lazy eights, and eights on pylons

What this lesson is for: teaching the three commercial performance maneuvers from the right seat, and being able to say what each one is actually training rather than only how it is flown.

This is the hardest flying in the program. You are being told that in advance on purpose. If your commercial checkride was some years ago, these three are where the rust will be, and a second attempt at this lesson is a normal outcome rather than a mark against you.

Read:

• FAA-S-ACS-25, tasks AI.IX.C, AI.IX.D, and AI.IX.F, in full. Write down the tolerances for each.
• FAA-H-8083-3C, the performance maneuvers chapter, all three maneuvers.
• standards/MANEUVER-LESSON-SHAPE.md, addition 2.

Deliverable: Three things. First, write the preflight ground lesson you will teach on these three maneuvers. This is one of your seventeen P3 plans, covering a performance maneuver at commercial standards. Second, for each of the three, write one sentence saying what skill it trains, in words you would say to a commercial student who asked why they have to do it. Third, work out pivotal altitude for two groundspeeds you expect today, and bring the working, not just the answer.

A candidate who only knows the procedure will teach the procedure, and a commercial student will quite reasonably ask why they are paying for it.

1. The chandelle's 90 degree point, and why everything is set before it.
2. Coordination as the airspeed decays and the torque effects rise.
3. The lazy eight's four reference points, and the symmetry that exposes the errors.
4. Teaching a maneuver with no constant to hold onto.
5. Pivotal altitude, where it comes from, and why it changes during the maneuver.
6. Correcting a pylon with pitch rather than with bank.
7. What the wind does to all three.
8. Teaching something you are still rebuilding yourself.

When the pylon appears to move forward or back, you fix it with altitude, not with bank. Pitch changes altitude, and altitude is what holds the pylon steady, because pivotal altitude is set by groundspeed and groundspeed is changing all the way round.

Correcting with bank is what everybody does first. It does not work, and being able to say why in one sentence is what this part of the lesson is for.

You may be demonstrating a maneuver today that you have not fully rebuilt. That is a real instructing situation, and it has a professional answer.

Say what you are correcting, as you correct it. "I am carrying a little right yaw here, watch what I am doing with my feet." That is stronger teaching than a confident silence, and it is a standard you are assessed on today. Students can tell when they are being bluffed, and the bluff costs more than the imperfection.

1. Teach your preflight ground lesson on all three maneuvers.
2. Demonstrate chandelles in both directions, narrating.
3. Demonstrate lazy eights, narrating.
4. Demonstrate eights on pylons at the correct pivotal altitude, narrating.
5. Talk your instructor through each of the three while they fly them badly.
6. Take the airplane at the threshold, out loud, three-way.
7. Critique, self-critique, then listen.

Three maneuvers in ninety minutes is tight. If we only get to two, we fly the third at the start of the next lesson. We do not rush them.

1. You deliver the preflight ground lesson on the three commercial performance maneuvers, covering all seven items of the brief, and state for each maneuver what skill it is training rather than only how it is flown.
2. You derive pivotal altitude from groundspeed in front of your instructor, and explain in one sentence why it changes during the maneuver.
3. You fly chandelles in both directions, lazy eights, and eights on pylons to commercial pilot tolerances from the right seat while narrating continuously, with no silence longer than five seconds.
4. You talk the Simulated Student through a pylon correction, directing a pitch change rather than a bank change, and name altitude as the reason.
5. You narrate your own demonstrations honestly, naming a correction as you make it rather than describing the maneuver as though it were going to plan.
6. You name the symmetry of the lazy eight as the diagnostic, telling the Simulated Student what the second half reveals about the first.
7. 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.
8. You deliver a critique naming the error, its probable cause, and the correction for at least two of the errors flown.
9. You deliver a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

Falling short does not block lesson 30. No proficiency gate. It triggers the visibility rule in policy/REMEDIATION-VISIBILITY.md, and this is the lesson most likely in the whole program to trigger it. Repeating it is normal.

• Teaching the procedure and never saying what it trains.
• Pivotal altitude remembered as one number. It is a function of groundspeed, and groundspeed changes all the way round the turn.
• Correcting a pylon with bank.
• Adding bank progressively through the chandelle's first half instead of setting it by the 90 degree point.
• Yaw left uncorrected as the chandelle slows down.
• Diving at the chandelle completion to get the airspeed back.
• A lazy eight whose slowest point is not its highest point. The most common error in the maneuver.
• Lazy eights taught as a shape to trace.
• Narrating as though it is going well when it is not.
• Fixating on the pylon and losing the scan, at low altitude. Same error as lesson 27, one lesson later.

• Airspeed reaches 1.2 Vs1 at the completion of a chandelle or at the top of a lazy eight without correction applied.
• Bank exceeds 60 degrees at any time.
• Yaw goes uncorrected through a full chandelle.
• Altitude passes 1,500 ft AGL descending during chandelles or lazy eights.
• Altitude passes 500 ft AGL descending during eights on pylons.
• Neither of us has looked away from the pylon for a full circuit.
• Either of us is unclear about who is flying the airplane.

Two hard floors today, because we fly at two altitudes: 1,500 ft AGL for chandelles and lazy eights, 500 ft AGL for the pylon work. Both North Aero policy, not regulation. Pivotal altitude for the day is worked out in the brief and will usually be above the pylon floor, in which case that is your working altitude and the floor is only the limit.

Positive exchange of controls, both directions, every time.

Four slots, all currently empty: VS-29-1 Exemplar on AI.IX.D, VS-29-2 Error on AI.IX.D, VS-29-3 Error on AI.IX.F, VS-29-4 Error on AI.IX.C.

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