Controls Locked?

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Tonight's notes read: Iraq votes - Riyad City Council - stuck yoke? - Max Schmeling.

I was glued to the tv set as Iraq voted this week. What a glorious story! This week might be the beginning of something to justify all the previous murder and mayhem in Iraq. We will see...

Is Democracy contagious? I think there was a piece in the evening news about Riyad (Saudi Arabia) proposing to actually 'elect' a 'city council! did I get that right?

'Stuck yoke' refers to the recent crash of a private jet, which skidded off the end of the runway, across a busy highway, and into a warehouse. Apparently, when the airplane reached rotation speed and the pilot pulled back on the yoke, it was stuck! This sort of thing usually indicates that the controls are disabled. The pilot rightly aborted takeoff thus saving many lives. The question remains of why the controls were disabled.

One of the mandatory rituals of every 'preflight' is the 'freedom of control test' where the pilot moves all the flight controls to their natural limits to test whether there is any binding or other abnormality of control movement. Sometimes this test reveals that the external 'control locks' (devices put on the ailerons and elevators and rudder to prevent 'flapping' in high winds) have not been removed. Usually, however, pilots have done a comprehensive preflight check which includes inspecting for such devices, and the 'freedom of control' check is done as a last check for structural problems. There have actually been cases where the pilot's preflight inspection was so poor that he took off with the external control locks in place!