Head in the clouds

From Surfers to Bribie Island stick carefully to the VFR route marked on the VTC, depending on the day there can be significant traffic - northbound don't cut the corner at the northern end of Moreton Island. And - keep a good ear on the radio, helicopters (!) are a-plenty. Training operations out of Coolangatta, Surf Rescue out of Coolie and Carrara, joyflights out of Seaworld, Dreamworld and Marina Mirage, private regular helicopter ops out of Currumbin, Oxenford, Pimpama, Surfers (Nerang River) and Paradise Point. Recreational flyers tend to gather around Jumpinpin and the North and South Stradbroke Islands' ocean beaches - busiest on Saturdays, not much on other days. There's no problem crossing the water at 3500' between Moreton and Bribie islands, just be aware of the wind direction on the day and how it affects your glide distance in either direction.

It's good to see that you're actively seeking knowledge to improve your performance in the event that things go wrong at some stage. Well done. Unfortunately we've had an unhealthy string of mishaps in the recent past, a good percentage of which might have been avoidable. The following threads contain invaluable information among the general discussion, well worth reading, and feel free to add to the discussions if you like. Turn Smart - starts with a video that EVERYONE should see. Understanding what this very experienced Ag pilot has to say, and applying it, will prevent becoming a statistic in the all-too-frequent base-to-final stall-spin scenario. Va - Manoeuvring Speed - has some very useful information in it, about an often poorly taught and much misunderstood subject. The above Va thread came about because of discussion about the consequences of inadvertent flight into VMC which was possibly the cause of the recent Barossa Valley crash - this tragic thread is a good heads-up about taking extra care where foggy/low cloud conditions exist or may develop. Do Vortex Generators Really Work? Is interesting if you have a curiosity about STOL and/or design for spin resistance.

From what you're saying here I assume you usually take off and climb straight ahead to 1000ft+ ? If you turn crosswind at 500ft you'd usually be in a far better/safer position in the event of EFATO after that point. This does vary according to the airfield and obstacles specific to the area of operation at the time but for example, if you were operating out of a strip cut out of a forest you'd do well to turn crosswind at 500ft and downwind shortly after that, then you'd be in a good position to complete the gliding circuit if the noise stops.

Welcome to the forum 01. If you have an EFATO after 1000ft you ought to be able to complete a smallish gliding circuit and land back on the departure strip into wind. You didn't do those in your training? A recent discussion here will give you an idea of peoples' various thoughts about EFATO lower than that.

I always choose a seat at the back because airliners have never been known to reverse into mountains. You can also keep an eye on the turbines from there if you're so inclined ...

Hi Rob, I hate to be a party pooper but I don't think you're ever going to find out 'what it is' because I'm pretty sure its something that someone dreamed up one restless day, so would be a one-off and not a recognisable 'type'. A lot of this sort of thing got built in the 1980s and most ended up just as this one obviously has, stored in or next to a barn, and usually because the builder didn't have the heart to take it to the tip, or the person he sold it to flew it once and scared himself so much he never got back in it again. This probably sounds harsh but I assure you it isn't intended to be, it's the absolute truth, I've seen it happen with lots of similar projects. The 'designer' usually has little or no engineering knowledge thought they've usually tinkered with everything from billy-carts to go-karts to old cars, and as a result of their well-placed fears that bits of the plane might not be strong enough and break in the air with disastrous consequences, they tend to add lots of strength here and there and of course that adds lots of weight. Unfortunately they often don't add lots of strength in a few critical areas. This form of 'eyeball engineering' as the Aussies called it or 'TLAR design' (That Looks About Right) as the Americans refer to it, results in a structure that is way heavier than it should be and so the flight characteristics can be horribly unfriendly if not downright dangerous. Added to that there is often little thought or knowledge applied to critical aspects like torsional stiffness of the wing and/or aerodynamic/mass balancing of control surfaces and so flutter with catastrophic consequences was not unusual in these types which had to fly fast due to their relatively high wing-loading. The fella that sold this particular example to you has clearly demonstrated what he considered its real value to be, in that it's evidently been standing out in the open for many years, judging by the green mould growing on the aileron in picture 4 and I'd hate to think what corrosion must be lurking in the internals of the wings. The small tube 'spars' (or perhaps they're false spars but if so I can't see how they're resolved back to the central spar except through the skins ...) look insignificant enough in the first place without adding the risk of corrosion ... Regardless of how little you paid for it I'm still a "grown man crying" for you, and hope you can get your money refunded because, apart from anything else it may well have been possible for the builder to get it registered back in the 1980s but you sure as hell won't stand a chance of registering it these days since you didn't build it. Below is a pic of a similar era 'one-off' that almost flew that particular day, but like so many of them I never saw it again ...

That one doesn't work either - try this instead ;-) It depends on how developed you mean, I'd have said you'd be in the unusual attitude of a spiral dive by the time you'd become excessively banked and allowed the nose to fall, from then on it's just a matter of how long you remain in that condition. Even so, my expose was only meant to demonstrate that suddenly finding yourself in an unusual attitude doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to reef the controls around even if suddenly there's ugly looking terrain staring you in the face. In my very unsettling experience it was interesting to note that I didn't move the controls until there was some logic in terms of which way to move them, and even then I only used them to the extent required to safely correct the situation. Had I just encountered an EFATO I would have instantly pushed the stick forward because my training was/is so ingrained as for that action to be absolutely instinctive, I would make that correction before thought even came into it. However, in the disorientation of the IMC incident there could not be any instinct involved until I'd worked out my attitude. On a different note I've often seen a quite different situation where students are actually quite forcibly taught to exceed the control deflection limitations while at cruise well above Va. For my GA licence I went to a school which was well regarded for turning out efficient commercial pilots, all of the instructors were ex-RAAF and it showed, everything was done to rote and a sharp rap over the knuckles resulted if any precise steps were missed. Consequently on Navex we would climb to exactly cruise altitude, level out, build speed to high cruise, reduce power and maintain altitude to within 50ft and keep wings level - or else. The altitude was no problem but keeping the wings precisely level on any day with even moderate Westerly winds coming over the ranges meant regular full aileron input and that was probably at 1.2Va plus ... In recreational flying I don't worry about constantly correcting roll from turbulence as the next bump will more than likely be in the opposite direction to the last one but many of the people I have flown with do work hard at correcting every turbulence induced deviation.

In case anyone hasn't seen it before, here is a great video showing the transporting of major components of the A380 from all over Europe and final assembly of them in France -

In red above - In my early flying days having stupidly suckered myself into a situation all too similar to what you're describing I don't have to imagine it at all, I remember it all too well. It's a very good example, John, and whilst I'm not suggesting every whiteout situation ends up the same, in my reality it wasn't quite like you describe. Obviously you're suggesting the 'victim' is in a spiral dive to the left because otherwise to see what you describe he would have to be spinning and the control column would then probably already be all the way back, and possibly already to the right as well. In my experience my first glimpse of anything - and this was only after a few seconds of white-out, perhaps around 15 seconds though it seemed very much longer - was of dark craggy rockfaces. I was in a spiral dive but there was absolutely no sensation of rapidly rising terrain, and not because of time slowing down and all that, but simply that the rate of descent in a spiral dive isn't great enough to provide any sensation of ground-rush until you get extremely low (much lower than would result in a wing panel being 1km away from the rest of the airframe) - try it for yourself, even at 500ft there's no ground-rush. Even in a spin there isn't any particular sensation of rapidly rising terrain unless you got very low indeed. Regarding the clockwise rotating terrain - I didn't have any large indication of rotating terrain, certainly the sight picture was very confusing because the terrain was moving but it wasn't obviously rotating rapidly or anything like that, after all I was turning, not spinning, and the rate of turn even at 60* bank doesn't initially give a strong indication of rotation. If you were in a spin it would of course. My first impression when I could see again was just one of complete confusion and disorientation, I was descending into a valley and the clouds were below the terrain so there was no visible horizon and without that I didn't notice that I was steeply banked. I expect I would have been flying very un-coordinated, more likely slipping rather than skidding, so the side pressure would have added to my disorientation. Perhaps if I'd descended over flat land and immediately had a horizon I would have worked it all out more quickly. I was in a Drifter and so had limited visual references too, and that probably didn't help but it certainly did help that it's a high drag and high strength airframe so wouldn't build up great speed too quickly and also is unlikely to shed the wings. Anyway, I didn't haul the controls anywhere, in fact I couldn't work out what to do. I didn't freeze in the sense of not being able to think what to do, it was just that with plenty of thinking about it I couldn't work out which way I was going so I couldn't react. It took just a few seconds probably and then I recognised that I had a large bank angle and then became aware of the loud wind in the wires and my training (glider - thank you GFA) kicked in and I rolled level and very slowly brought the nose up. Then I started shaking and had to spend the next while flying in cloud tunnels in an ever-shrinking valley as the low cloud descended further. As quick as the cloud came upon me it cleared away again and I could see my destination, Kilkivan, over a low saddle. It was an unspeakably frightening experience that I still 'see' in vivid detail. Lesson learned - when flying up valleys always look behind first, to see what's following, in case descending cloud prevents getting over the high end of the valley and you have to turn around. In my case a storm front was following me and when I turned around the rain was too heavy to break through with a timber prop. Even when it became essential and I tried to do so the stinging pain from the heavy rain on my exposed face in an open cockpit was unbearable, and that was quite apart from not being able to see anything in the rain except directly below. I quickly turned back but instead of breaking out of the rain again the cloud had descended further and enveloped me.

Rick, what exactly would you have people say in these emails? I think it's already been pointed out that the RAAus Constitution determines the structure of the governing body and the method used for transfer of information within the organisation. The organisation has a regular staff, an Executive board and an Board of Reps elected by the members. Once you've elected your area Rep he takes your views to the Board meetings, they're discussed there and voted on and actions taken accordingly. If you want to change the structure you need to change the constitution and to do that you need to have an agenda item approved for discussion and a vote at the AGM. That's it, there's nothing to email the "Ops people" about. I agree that online voting, as an additional option, would be a good thing and could easily enough be introduced into the RAAus members portal, that's the only thing I can think of that's worth bringing up with RAAus and the way to do that is to speak to your area Rep as above. Your Area Rep is Ross Millard (Maj Millard on this site) and his contact details are listed here. The real issue is that members need to get used to speaking with their Rep regularly, and the Reps aren't going to be chasing you, if you have something to say you need to be chasing them. I don't think you'll ever convince anyone that the members should vote on every decision that's made, otherwise there'd be no need of a Board of Reps but we'd need an office staff of hundreds. I can't imagine any organisation like that, well it wouldn't be an "organisation" would it?

You have a rather nasty habit of making insinuations and casting aspersions without backing them up. If you want to accuse someone of something at least have the guts to come out with the details, otherwise you'd be better off saying nothing. As has recently be demonstrated in Court, you can be sued for defamation, libel or slander just as readily if you post unsupported accusations on a forum or social media site, as if you write it in hard-copy or say it in public. Then you are relatively new to RAA which explains why you are incorrect in thinking the rules under discussion were "always there". However the advice you were given would have been correct, motor off operations can be done with the Chief Instructor - but what they failed to mention is that there is nothing stopping you doing them without the Chief Instructor too, except in the circuit perhaps ... The rule book? I imagine you are referring to the Operations Manual and the Technical Manual? No, RAA doesn't work quite like that at all. If you read the Order which provides the exemptions for the operation of the kind of aircraft that RAA certificated pilots fly - CAO95.55 Paragraph 6 General Conditions, Sub-paragraph 6.1, Part (d) states - "subject to the other conditions set out in this Order, the aeroplane must be operated in accordance with the requirements of the RAA Operations Manual;" Part (e) states "the aeroplane must be maintained in accordance with the maintenance standards set out in the RAA Technical Manual;" So the 95.55 exemption is extensive enough to mean that we don't actually operate within ALL of the GA regulations at all, we operate primarily in accordance with our Association's own Manuals, then within the further limitations specified in the 2011 Instrument of CAO95.55 and then, only if answers are not found within those documents, would we refer to the CARs. Otherwise we would all have to study the full CARs and CAOs as part of our training, as GA pilots are required to do.

A sign of the times perhaps? Hopefully a sign that cases of dementia is receding and general health is improving. The Gold Coast Sport Flying Club now has five members who have qualified for application to the USA's UFO club (United Flying Octagenarians). I remember when it was a matter for the National News when a pilot was still flying in their eighties, and we now have five of them in one club. Our first was Lloyd Salisbury, who was one of our Kooralbyn students in the 1980s, and recently another four (pictured below) have been added to the list - Alan Roberts, John Bailey (also a 1980s Kooralbyn student), Ray Morgan and Ray Jones. Any other flying octagenarians out there that people know of?

Hi Rick, I think online voting is the only way to go these days, many of us have forgotten what a stamp and a mailbox looks like. From your comment in another thread, I don't think our organisation has ever been as democratic as asking the membership to vote on specific rule changes, in any case not sufficiently for the poll results to be the decider one way or the other. Over the years, when important matters have been up for consideration it has been promulgated via the AUF/RAA magazine and members encouraged to speak with their area Rep regarding their views ion the matter and the Rep then takes that to the Board. If you want to change the entire system you need to request an agenda item for the AGM, for a change to the Constitution. You can't just suddenly expect the organisation's methodology to be changed on request, to include membership voting on every matter. As far as voting on this forum site is concerned, that would be impractical as it is privately run and with no mandate to provide open access to all of the RAA members. And although it's often thought by forum members that this is a site mainly for RAA people, I understand it is for all recreational fliers whether they are skydivers, aerobatters, hangies, trikers whether in HGFA or RAA, SAAA and anyone else in GA who flies for recreation too. More importantly we should consider the actual extent to which this site reaches the RAA membership. Our local flying club - Gold Coast - has upward of 100 members, most of whom have a plane and, although I don't know all the members by any means, I only know of a couple of others who frequent this site. Some may read in the background but don't post here. Most of our members are getting on a bit and don't hang around computers very much. Also, it isn't overly difficult to be awarded a week or more of holiday from the site and if you happened to be banned when a vote was being conducted it wouldn't be a fair poll. And if it is anything like most other forums there might be people who are, or in the future may become, RAA members but who have been banned from here for life. Even so, I quite agree that online voting should be introduced for the voting that we do have and there's no reason at all why it shouldn't be within the members portal on the RAA site, with the matter being promulgated and discussed here and in the Sport Pilot magazine. I'm not sure how long you've been around AUF and RAA, Deborah, but you may be assured that it hasn't "always been in the book", any mention of it is a relatively recent thing. Interestingly, having seen your location, we used to have dead-stick landing competitions at Barry Coutts' strip at Koo Wee Rup, as well as at Pakenham, Berwick, Leongatha, Tooradin ...

I think many of us over, say, 50 have been there done that too PM. Difference is, you don't seem to have noticed that times have changed and keep getting worse, as far as litigation is concerned. By all means do it your way but if you don't provide the warnings the courts will expect these days then hopefully you own nothing and control your assets through three levels of Company structure vested in a Discretionary Trust ... ?

Yes, I far prefer sitting up front, love gliders and Drifters for that reason but as you said, there's less reference - good reason not to clean every bug off the screen. I've always found a yawstring to be an excellent reference device, one of my students years ago improved on it even more. He had a bit of trouble with pitch reference tended to porpoise along a fair bit. He bought his own Drifter and promptly fitted a yawstring onto a base made from a telescopic radio antenna. Then he adjusted the length so that the yawstring was on his visual horizon, he was pretty tall so he couldn't just stick it to the windshield, but something along those lines might help you perhaps? Every sympathy with the getting the nerve back thing, not always as easy to get back on the pronking horse as we might wish. I'm sure you're aware that every forum member - and on HBA - is wishing you well with the forthcoming testing though! One step at a time and you'll soon be up there again. All the best to you, Alan PS - in the photos Avocet is looking as good as new, you've done a remarkable job of the rebuild.

Mike - I don't see very much of a dorsal fin at all but I do see that you've added a ventral fin at some stage. That might help directional stability and/or spin resistance but won't do anything for rudder effectiveness. A dorsal fin acts like half a delta wing lying on its side and when there is any non-linear slipstream, as in a slip or skid or landing in a crosswind, it produces a leading edge vortex which flows over the fin/rudder and helps to keep the airflow attached to the control surface. Have you flown it with the new fin yet?

I don't think this excellent Paul Bertorelli Avweb video ever got posted during the discussion. It's only a few minutes long and worth watching because Paul always looks at both sides of the equation. In this one he pretty much agrees with what several people said, the turn-back is not an impossible turn at all but certainly not recommended if it hasn't been well practiced -

I was Ozzie, but my real world may well be different from yours. Here in South East Queensland we don't have any Kosciuszkos, Blue Mountains or Flinders Ranges, and the humble 1000ft or so ridges that we do have are clad in rainforest. Consequently if you are slope soaring around here and ever get down as low as 500ft above the ridge you're pretty well committed to an outlanding if the donk decided to be stubborn to start, so you'd better have already moved yourself well out from the face of the slope too. In which case, either way you're not going to have a vertical or horizontal proximity-to-terrain issue. Another favoured slope soaring site is the lighthouse bluff at Byron Bay which is only 250ft above sea level but has a SE face and is ideal for soaring the prevailing SE winds. The strong lift there goes to well over 1000ft with beach in all directions for bomb-outs if required. I've never actually tried it but on a good day I reckon you could get to 2000ft a mile or two behind the ridge without working too hard. Why the grizzle about this Ozzie? I thought you were once a hangie weren't you?

I've downloaded a couple of the free g meter/accelerometer apps to my Android phone. They work fine and I've compared them against a calibrated mechanical(?) g meter and get exactly the same reading. Might be something that folk should consider doing as I'd reckon that most people wouldn't really know what 2 or 3 g actually feels like. There was a g meter in the glider I did aero and spin training with and after that I had a much better idea how much load I was putting on an airframe.

I've actually had a look to see if I can find some evidence that AoA indicators actually have done anything positive for the crash statistics but can't find anything that shows they do - do you have a reference? Instead of an instrument that shows your AoA, meaning you have to be looking at it at the time that things all start to go wrong, wouldn't a stall horn like those fitted to just about every GA plane be a better option? Cheap as chips and couldn't be lighter, just a tiny flap of aly on the wing's stalling stagnation point connected to a micro-switch and a buzzer. The thing is, as Frank was intimating, none of these things actually work, you have to learn to fly the plane safely using attitude instead. At times of stress the brain shuts out all these instrument and buzzer type of warnings - watch the video below and see how long and how loud this warning keeps going off and the pilot still didn't notice it - it's a classic example of why you should use checks rather than warning systems -

It's a very good point Oscar and I don't think most recreational pilots give it a moment's consideration. I went flying with a friend who has owned his J160 for years. he built it from a kit. He's an exceptionally 'thinking' sort of a pilot, gives a very thorough pax briefing (including all about his EFATO intentions(!)), does every check imaginable, very capable. He's a former QANTAS flight engineer who goes all the way back to the Connie days etc. We took off and departed on a fairly blustery day and as soon as we were at 2000ft, he levelled off and pushed it up to max permissible revs to show me how comfortably it would cruise at 130kts ... I mentioned Va and he said he wasn't planning on doing any tight manoeuvring at that speed, just gentle turns. I mentioned turbulence and he said no problem the Jabs are built strong! As far as my method is concerned, if I'm going somewhere and want to get there reasonably quickly I stay at Va until I'm in cruise and also above the inversion layer so I can be pretty well assured of smooth air - I described my heavy turbulence experience a few posts back so I tend to be a little once bitten, twice shy these days. Unless I really have to get somewhere fast I have a bit of a benefit regarding staying below Va because I just don't have this need for speed thing that so many seem to have. I tend to get to top of climb and then often even slow down and enjoy just boodling along and looking around, I'm rarely in a hurry. Too many years flying helicopters I guess.

That's all very well until something goes wrong and your pax gets hurt. I assume you're not immune from something going wrong? If that does happen the pax can sue you to the ends of the earth because you told them that by flying with you it'd be safer than going by road. Statistics will demonstrate that you mislead them and you will pay. From your comments so far PM I'd reckon you'd benefit from running these comments past a legal adviser ... to me you seem to be putting your head in a noose, so to speak.

I now see that you did, my apologies, I don't know why I didn't notice this thread earlier, I check all new threads and posts ... Maybe a moderator could combine them?

Thanks turbs, but that's pretty much all there is to it, for me the example allowed me to apply a little thinking and then easily understand and apply the formula which is well enough defined in the article on Va in that dubious fount of all knowledge - Wikipedia. If anyone hasn't read the articles linked to earlier in this thread, they'd do well to do so, they're all very informative. Unfortunately though, even having a good understanding of Va at various weights, and the reasons for it, isn't, on its own, going to save a great many lives. A few perhaps, but the vast majority of inflight structural failures don't come from people flying at Va at lower weights than MTOW and then hauling the controls around or hitting mega wind gusts. Even planes only rated for +3.8 and -1.5 are actually a lot stronger than most of us would want to put to the test. I recall an incident during my GA conversion, I had an ex RAAF instructor who was renowned for being tough as nails. We'd just departed Coolangatta (now Gold Coast International) and there was quite a strong Westerly blowing which is well known for producing very strong rotors off the Beechmont escarpment about 10-12 miles inland to the West. We'd just levelled off and reached cruise speed when we hit the most almighty turbulence I've ever experienced, we both cut both of our legs under the panel and had bloodied heads as well although we had the belts done up very firmly. The instructor started yelling on the radio about severe turbulence and 'Required' (not requested) an immediate return to the airport, a clearance which we promptly received. He checked the plane into the workshops for an inspection but of course nothing amiss with the airframe was found. We both had painful backs from the incident and I was still hobbling so went to my bone cruncher (chiropractor) for an adjustment the next day. On that occasion we would have been way over Va for the weight and had a strong gust that probably did take the AoA all the way to a momentary stall but the airframe still survived undamaged. There is a moderate amount of 'margin' built into all limits. The real problem with inflight structural break-ups doesn't come from instances such as we experienced, statistics indicate it comes from inadvertently exceeding Va in a spiral dive having become spatially disoriented, which would usually be due to loss of horizon reference i.e. inadvertent flight into IMC. An attempted rapid pull-out from the high speed dive and/or not levelling the wings first, seems to be the culprit. But as for how we prevent people inadvertently entering IMC I really don't know. I've done it twice and very nearly paid the price each time. Very sobering stuff I can tell you. I'll write up the incidents if anyone thinks someone else might learn from my errors.

Well it's clear that students aren't provided with any better understanding about Va these days, than we were when I first did my training. If I was a student now and having read this thread I don't think I'd know anything more than it'd be advisable to stay below the yellow arc when manoeuvring or in anything but still air. The following is similar to an explanation I came across some years ago and which doesn't contain any formula or graphs but which did provide me with a means of understanding what the formula defines. I concede that it may not be helpful to everyone though. I'll use something like a SuperCub for our example, since it is similar enough to the type of planes we fly, their design limit load and their speeds. Let's say our Cub is designed for a limit load, like many Cessna models, of +3.8g and -1.5g. Let's also dispel a popular myth before we go too far - most people would say that this plane is twice as strong in positive g as it is in negative g, but from a starting point of level flight at 1g it's about the same either way, given that it's intended to be flown upright. In stable flight it is experiencing 1g so it has a strength reserve of 2.8g until it yields/begins to fail in positive loading, and it has a strength reserve of 1g to get to zero g and then another 1.5g to get to -1.5g, so it has to experience a change of 2.5g until it yields in the negative sense. Anyway - so to demonstrate what's going on with the Va thing let's take our plane up to Va speed and at MTOW. At that speed and weight we will be flying at an AoA of, for discussion's sake, 9*, which means we can increase the AoA by another 6*before we reach the critical angle and stall the wing. Va, the design manoeuvring speed, is established on this basis, its the speed at which, if the wing's AoA is suddenly increased to the critical angle, where its Cl is greatest, it still can't generate enough extra lift to exceed the wing's limit load, and any greater angle of attack will cause the wing to stall. I have just seen Nobody's excellent description, so there's no need for me to go into such depth with this, as I would have otherwise, but I'll just finish the first example of the 'fully loaded' airframe. As we're now aware, the stall does in fact have everything to do with Va, and this part demonstrates it quite well I thought. So - our plane is flying along at 9* AoA and we meet up with an inflight refuelling tanker, for discussion's sake, and start filling our huge ferry tanks (which are located on the CG), we keep filling our tanks and flying at the same speed. To maintain height we have to keep increasing the AoA, and to maintain speed we keep increasing our power setting. Eventually our tanks are full of fuel and the aircraft is close to double the permitted MTOW, but she's just flying i.e. the wing is flying right at the critical angle, just before stalling. Due to the weight being twice what it was designed to be, the wing is loaded at the same as it would be if it was pulling 2g at the normal MTOW, so the wing has a margin of just 1.8g until it breaks BUT - if you pull back on the stick or hit a gust or some rising air the critical angle of the wing will instantly be exceeded and the wing will stall. That is why it won't be overloaded and break, nothing to do with inertia or momentum ... At a much lighter load, say 2/3 MTOW but still flying at the Va that should be used for MTOW, the wing will only be flying at about 4* AoA and heavy use of the elevator or a gust could increase the AoA to such an extent that the wing's Cl increases sufficiently to exceed the wing's limit load whilst still not reaching the stall, and hence the wing breaks off without the plane ever having had time to change its flightpath. So an actual reaction to acceleration forces i.e. change of direction, is not necessary to break the wing, just the instantaneous load increase will do it. I hope I've described it clear enough to help a student sometime. And thanks for yours Nobody!