But he’s not continuing a roll, he’s starting a roll from an established overbank. The rolling moment had stopped, so no inertia.
Perhaps it was easier/more instinctive to push the stick left rather than pull it right? When I think of “wings on horizon, pull” for recovering from unusual attitudes while not still rolling, I think shortest angle off from wings to horizon.
His roll Inertia never stopped, the camera angle makes it look that way. but he was still rolling left during the overbank, he simply initiated full deflection to bring the wings around quicker once his soiled himself.
On looking at the second video again I agree, it looks like he was right-stick arresting the roll then decided to go through.
I still think it’s a close call, I would have said it was more like 150-160 degrees than 135…
In the end it worked out for him…
Camera angles can stop movement? That is news to me. I’ll have to download the vid and count frames.
It just isn’t adding up with the arrested bank, and rolls increasing descent rate during the inverted portion.
Well we’re also looking at a phone video which might be 15 or 24 fps depending on the phone.
Everyone is very lucky this wasn’t worse, whatever the cause was!
perspective and clarity of the video, the opposing front angle shows his roll inertia was never zero’d therefore if he wanted to roll right. he’d have to overcome left roll inertia first at low speed before the wings would begin to roll right. that few hundred milliseconds are vital in that position.
Here’s how I see it. If he is a professional demonstrator then that means he came to the show with a detailed plan. You’ll be forgiven for wanting to laugh me out of the room for I will say next but I’ve been there. I’ve had in front of me a sequence that I’ve practiced day in and day out. But something screwed with my plan. Either I skipped a figure or exited it in the wrong direction. When that happens it ungimbals your brain a bit. The next part of the sequence begs to be done and the brain complies but the world isn’t where it’s supposed to be. The wing rocks did not indicate a difficulty to control. They were not at max rate. He wasn’t slamming side to side. He was making controlled but, I submit, confused inputs while he caught up to where he was supposed to be in his program.
Here’s one of thousands of possibilities just to show what I mean. His intent on the pass was to be aligned with the runway and execute a 4-point roll centered abeam airshow center. His previous pass had him poorly positioned for this one. His initial rolls could have either been his thought process on correcting position or his beginning and bailing on the figure. Because he is too far down the show line he opts for a two-point roll. But the previous maneuvering gave him a substantial sink rate which he took into the roll. Seeing mother earth fill his canopy with no forward stick to make the people smaller, he continues the roll and pulls full aft and goes to burner. Again, that’s just me imagining one of many possibilities.
Minus the burner and low altitude I’ve done, and seen done, similar errors. You can clearly see the confusion but you can also clearly see that the airplane was always in control. His recovery was beautiful and necessarily quick. He had just a quarter second to make the right decision and he did.
I guess to put this simply, it looked like a plane that was flying well but wasn’t being well-flown. The human in the loop was momentarily confused and the plane reflected the confusion. The human realized that the next step in his poorly executed plan was impossible and all of his skill regathered for the bail.
My FO on my flight a few days ago was lucky enough to have flown the Viper his entire career, all the way to full colonel. He avoided the Pentagon and staff jobs and instead just ran squadrons and groups and started (then ran) an airbase in the desert somewhere. We were talking about times we had screwed up. His biggest was in Japan. It was a 2-ship night training sortie. His wingman was having technical issues so Shaun had him RTB. Instead of calling it a night, he opted to go solo to the range and practice setting up a particular bombing pattern. He did seven and was having fun. For the eighth he rolled in just as he had the previous seven. But for reasons he can’t explain he rolled opposite on his pullup which put him inverted. He had always told himself that if he ever got confused with NVGs his first step would be to slap them off. That’s what he did here. He slapped off the goggles, got regimbled, rolled and pulled at max g and max speed. The pullup was supposed to be at 8k. He was diving through 2k when he recovered. He had probably 2-3 more seconds. He shared that story with everyone he knew.
Both videos show overbank is clearly arrested for a full “one potato” count. His roll inertia is 100% zeroed for that duration.
Reference in first video is 0:01. Reference in second video is 0:05. There is no perspective issue here.
Rolling right wouldn’t have needed to overcome nonexistent inertia, wouldn’t have dipped the nose more from going inverted in the roll, and would have rolled away from the crowd, which is also an important factor, I would think.
I would probably do the same maneuver out of reflex in that position, but I’d still pick it apart the same way too.
Im waiting for someone to pop up with a 4K HVEC Iphone video…
Thanks for sharing. I used to read a column called “What I Learned From That” or something similar (It’s been a while). It was available in Pilot magazine or something similar (I can’t quite remember). Anyway, pilots of varying experience levels analyzed and shared cockpit adventures or mishaps that they experienced and offered lessons learned. What I learned from that column is that aviation is fun but sh-- happens (be it human or mechanical). Both of my brothers had their own experiences, which they shared with me.
I’m glad the demo pilot was able to recover.
Tim Davies here put together a video with a couple of things I didn’t know about: the fitment of cockpit cameras to the jet and the reason why he might have continued the left roll - based on films of previous shows the pilot did a wing rock followed by a derry roll to reposition.
Tim doesn’t say it out loud (for probably obvious legal reasons I’d guess?), but perhaps an explanation is a camera came loose during the wing rock, which distracted the pilot who then didn’t pull up enough to complete the derry roll safely?
What in the world is a “derry roll”?
Just looked it up. I had no idea that rolling at low altitude had a name.
I always thought a Derry Roll was rolling 270° and pulling in the opposite direction, i.e. rolling left and then turning right.
Sorry, might formally be a “Canadian roll”… yes, a Derry roll (to me) is rolling right to turn left, like Troll says 
And I just learned it was named for John Derry, an accomplished fighter pilot who is thought to be the first British pilot to exceed the speed of sound, and died demonstrating the DH.110 at Farnborough 