What blancolirio isn’t telling you | Deadly Simi Valley Crash [RV-10 N626PB]

November 626 Papa Bravo make your

approach radio check. Yeah, I need some

back. The plane keeps turning on.

On Saturday the 3rd of May, we had a

Vans aircraft RV10 experimental

homebuilt aircraft go down while

attempting an instrument approach into

Camaro. The aircraft was flying from

Lancaster to Camaro where he apparently

lost control in the weather while

attempting to intercept the IIAF Jurrex

for the Arnav Zulu runway 26 at Camaro.

Oh, okay. Hey everyone, meet me Kevin

here. I've got a lot to talk about

regarding this Bronco area review video

of a crash that actually happened 10

minutes from my hometown airport. We're

going to talk about exactly what I

believe Bronco did not tell you in this

video. Now, I want to give you a fair

disclaimer before I get started because

you might think that this is designed to

hate on our Brona or the videos that

I've done on pilot debrief. And the

answer is no. It's simply to add

perspective with what I think is unique

insight. These are great channels. I

love watching them. I credit them for

helping get me into aviation, wanting to

be a safe pilot. And the only reason I'm

making this video is to add perspective

to what I think happened here, but was

not talked about. And that's what I'm

going to do today. I fly the Phenom

300E. It's a 2021 model with a Garmin

3000. Yes, that means I'm PPL rated. I'm

PIC typed in the Phenom 300. I'm

obviously instrument rated. I don't have

as many hours as many other people in

the space. I want to be respectful of

that. So, I'll give you my opinion, but

I want to qualify it by saying I'm about

50 hours in jet in type and maybe about

350 on top of that for other, you know,

uh, prop planes, mostly the Cirrus, by

the way. Great plane. That said, what

I'm observing here is obviously somebody

who essentially flew stick the entire

flight. This isn't a big deal. It's

pretty obvious that this is not an

autopilot uh, flight path. Uh so when we

understand that I think what we can find

as we get closer to the accident site is

that a form of autopilot may have

mistakenly been enabled that led to the

girrations of the individual's controls.

See, Brachio Bravo tells us, "Hey,

anytime you're having problems with

control of the aircraft, get to the

lowest level of automation you can.

Disengage everything and just fly the

damn plane." And I couldn't agree more

with him. In fact, approaching this very

same approach while I was doing my

multi-engine training. I was on the

Arnav Zulu 26 and the trainer I was with

told me, "Oh, by the way, this plane

does not have Wasps." And I'm like,

"Wait, what? You told me earlier it

did." And he's like, "Oh, yeah. Oops.

Sorry." And I'm like, "Great. So, we can

actually do the our Nav Zulu." My

initial reaction because this is my home

airport is fine. Let's go mist now and

climb. Okay. we'll just go missed early

and we'll just resequence. No problem.

That was in a multi-engine piper. The

point of this is I totally agree with

the advice of if you're task saturated,

you're overwhelmed, disconnect AP, go to

the lowest level of automation, fly the

damn plane and stay flying. But what I

actually think how happened here and

Bronco Liio suggested that this

individual was s starting to sound task

saturated by shortening his responses

before the crash to ATC. What I think

happened here and this is my speculation

is the individual attempted to turn on

autopilot because they were overwhelmed.

One of the reasons I think that they

were overwhelmed was because when you

look at the plan, we know that the

initial approach fix for Jurx is 4,000

ft. We know that we have terrain at 243

ft. We know that uh we had the Kobe uh

Kobe Bryant crash just slightly below uh

the approach path here. Uh, and we know

not only through listening to ATC, but

we know through our um, uh, you know,

flight plan that 4,000 feet is what we

need to be above. But that's actually

not what the individual had as he was

approaching the initial approach fix.

What we had was 4,000 ft, 3850, 3,800,

3775,

3725. Then we get a climb again. Then we

get a climbing right turn. Then we get a

descending right turn and this is where

the individual complains and suggests,

"Hey, I don't know what's going on. The

plane keeps turning." November 626, Papa

Bravo, make your approach, radio check.

Yes, I need to come back to them. The

plane keeps turning on and November 626

Papa Bravo. Roger. Say altitude.

And six Papa Bravo, you're coming in

broken and unreadable. Say again.

626 Papa Bravo approach.

So six prop papa Bravo says rather

casually, "I need some vectors. This

airplane keeps turning." Well, who's in

charge of the airplane at this point? Is

he allowing the airplane to fly him? Is

he allowing the automation to take over

at this point?

When you get in these sort of situations

with your automation, it's time to

downgrade the automation to meet the

task at hand. If the automation is not

doing what you want it to do, assuming

he's even on autopilot or he's not

getting the instrument approach to

sequence correctly to the next way

points, he needs to manually fly the

aircraft, maintain aircraft

control, and then regain control of the

situation, regain control of the

automation secondary to flying the

aircraft. I believe what happened and

this is again my speculation but I think

it's a lesson. I think the individual

became task saturated was not prepared

maybe didn't even brief this approach

and while trying to brief or review the

approach at the same time as flying the

plane. They reached over and turned on

autopilot which they had not been using.

So unlikely had it set up appropriately

for the rest of the flight just based on

what we could see on track here. And

when they turned on the autopilot, they

did something and made a mistake that a

lot of new pilots do. And there's

actually very little training in this. I

think the individual mistakenly turned

on roll mode on autopilot. That is, they

weren't on heading mode. They weren't on

uh any kind of glide path. They weren't

on an autopilot, nothing. They were

simply on autopilot roll mode. So, what

does that look like? Well, on the

scoreboard, roll mode shows RO for roll.

And when I was in training, I remember

that I was never even told or taught

what a scoreboard was until my

instrument check ride. Now, you you

might think that's pretty sad and a

failure, and I agree. I actually think

there's a massive lack of training, and

this is why I like making these videos

to point out where I think there are

failures. I think people don't get

taught about the scoreboard nearly as

much as we should, especially with, you

know, autonomous systems, assuming this

person was using a

G1000. Maybe they weren't even using a

G1000. Maybe they were using something

even older than this. The problem with

roll mode, though, is if you turn it on

while you're in a bank, it's going to

keep that bank. I believe it's designed

so that if you're in a hold, let's say

you're told from ATC, hey, hold at

present position. I believe it's

designed so that you could align

yourself with the hold at present

position. Set your bank the way it's

comfortable

15 somewhere in that range there. Set

autopilot on roll mode and you just sit

there and you wait in your hold until

you've got your further clearance.

But most of the time, I don't actually

see a practical purpose for roll mode

because most people who want to program

a hold just use like the Garmin 3000 to

program in a hold and then you let the

auto pilot just fly it. So, generally,

you're either going to be on uh some

form of program path or you're going to

be on a heading mode. And it's going to

be pretty rare that you're actually on

roll mode for most people. But if the

plane is fighting you on roll mode,

there's something to know, and pilots

know this, but people who drive Teslas

don't.

If the plane is flying and you're on

roll mode, uh, as you activated it in a

turn, it's going to keep that bank and

you're fighting that yoke or the stick,

whatever your plane is using, you're

fighting it trying to get back. In a

Tesla, when you fight the autopilot, it

just boom, boom, disconnects. In a

plane, it doesn't. You fight. And it's

harder the bigger the plane is obviously

to actually manually try to fight the

autopilot servos because they're so much

stronger on a larger aircraft. Uh I

found in a Cirrus I could overwhelm the

autopilot relatively easily with my

wrist on the stick. Uh in the Phenom,

which is, you know, the largest single

pilot jet, but it's still a small jet.

It's pretty hard. You're fighting with

both hands if you want to fight that

autopilot on the yoke. Anyway, you're in

roll mode because you activated it

unintentionally in roll mode on top of

trying to communicate with ATC. Maintain

your altitude and you've got an overcast

layer at 1,800 ft. So, you're in between

the mountains. Mountain obscuration is

exactly what you've got here. You're

going to see uh some mountains that go

as high as 2400 ft. you're going to see

uh nothing when you're in the clouds uh

at that, you know, in the marine layer

around 17-,900 feet was approximately

where that marine layer was. And when

you get below it, you see, oh my gosh,

I've got nothing but mountains around me

trying to get back up. It's pretty

confusing. And I think Proio did did a

great explanation of everything that

happened in the accident. And I really

I'm I'm cutting around here just to

append my opinion that I think there's a

potential what happened in this accident

was truly an autopilot usage failure

because I believe that the pilot was

likely capable of flying the plane

themselves. But that moment where they

say I don't know what's going on. the

plane keeps trying to turn to me is a

sign that they're potentially activating

autopilot, deactivating autopilot at the

same time as pulling up to get their

altitude at the same time as a losing

visual reference to what's going on uh

because they're in IMC and I think that

could have been a contributor to this

crash. Now, let's be clear, we won't

know this until the NTSB does their

investigation, releases at least their

preliminary findings, maybe latter

findings. But the reason I want to

speculate about this is not because I

think speculation is healthy in the

sense of uh you know declaring what

happened to this individual. Instead I

think it's actually really important to

use it as a basis for conversation

around hey you got to know the

scoreboard. So are we on autopilot? Are

we on the GL glide slope? Are we on our

heading mode? Are we on roll mode? roll

mode, in my opinion, I I think first of

all, it's the stupidest mode ever, but

it's oftent times the default mode when

you first enable autopilot. Every

plane's going to be different, but my

take is that if the default mode is roll

mode and your task saturated and

overwhelmed and you enable that

autopilot, but you hadn't previously

programmed it into heading or an AP or

whatever, you're going to have a hard

time realizing, oh crap, I'm in roll

mode. And this has personally happened

to me in training. So, here we go. So,

Carl'sbad airport, uh, we depart runway

24. Uh, and as we're coming out of here,

uh, I activate, uh, the autopilot,

thinking, "Okay, we're going to be on

heading mode." But I was still in my

turn when I activated it and we start

sneaking over closer to the airport. And

at that moment, I'm like, "Okay, I'm

just going to disconnect autopilot and

get back onto the heading because I just

wanted to fly uh essentially the

downwind out of there, a downwind

departure." Uh, this is all VFR. But

that roll mode when it first started

turning and rolling to that side, I

remember my reaction as as a newer pilot

was, "Oh my gosh, what's happening? This

is weird. Autopilot set. I I'm supposed

to be going straight on a downwind.

What's going on?" So, of course, after

disconnecting and then looking at my

scoreboard, I realized, didn't know it

was called a scoreboard back then when I

was still in training, but I realized,

oh, we're not in heading mode. Simple

mistake. But nothing else was really

happening then other than departing. We

weren't in IMC. We weren't uh uh, you

know, we were caught up on our ATC

communications. We were ahead of the

plane. I think if you get behind and all

of a sudden that plane is turning on you

and you're banking around mountainous

terrain is very easy to lose that

situational awareness and that

scoreboard. This saying role I think

could have been a massive contributor to

what happened here. Again, no guarantees

and I want to be really clear that's

just speculation. So, it's just my take,

but I wanted to append that to uh the

video Bronco made because I think he did

he had a great video, but I think we

could have gone a little bit deeper onto

autopilot because that could have been a

lifesaver here if that's what happened.

Anyway, thanks so much for watching.

I'll keep adding my perspective. If you

like it, subscribe. If you don't like

it, let me know. You know, you could

leave me a comment like, "Don't

speculate. Stop it. Go away." Uh, but

love the aviation community. love uh I

love everything about flying and uh hope

I could share more insights with

everyone when I have an opinion to share

it and I'll always make it clear when

something's my opinion. Thanks so much

for watching and we'll see you in the

next one. Remind your