Originally Posted by
Ewfflyer
I still have yet to figure out what purpose this manuever really has, I see purpose
It was an old maneuver flown by pilots so the gunners could have a steady visual target to shoot at. It is a great maneuver to teach the student to stay ahead of the aircraft.
Enter the maneuver on the down wind side, at the highest altitude because you are at the fastest ground speed. Math is unimportant here, you can see it in the other thread for proof, higher ground speed means a higher pivotal altitude and conversely for a lower ground speed.
The entire first 180 should be a slight descending turn, ignore the wing tip, look in front of you with periodic (10-15 seconds or more between) scans of the wing tip. Fly ahead of, not with the aircraft. The entire second 180 will be a slight climbing turn back to pivotal altitude, try it once and never look at the point and see how it goes. The climb and descent is roughly 100 feet for each 10 knots. Oh and for christ sakes enjoy the scenery and stop staring at your wing the point won't run away, you have my word.
Edit: For CFI's: I caution explaining this as pitching down to "increase" speed with rate/radius. If you have ever flown with a GPS and taken a look at an equal power setting descent, meaning just pitch the nose down, the airspeed may increase but the ground speed shows little change. In our Seminoles 145 pitched for 165, a 500 fpm descent with 146 GS. The pitching up and down without a change in power setting does very little to the ground speed.
In this maneuver you get blown further and closer to the point, if you hold constant bank +/-5 as you should, this requires a change in altitude to change the visual view of the point. Increasing speed to increase radius wouldn't work because aren't we diving when our ground speed is the fastest? This diving would increase our radius but we should have to be slowing down to decrease it since the wind is increasing right? Confused yet? Exactly. The maneuver is based on visual view point and has nothing to do with rate and radius.
PS: On an interesting note, I wonder how the bomber pilots did this since they didn't have a wing tip to stare at.