Warbird trainer tail chase

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That warbird tail chase video above is fun to watch, but there's onw thing that was an alarm to me. The pilot does multiple rolls and while most start with a nose high they all end way below the horizon with loss of altitude. I guess he is still pulling as he rolls inverted and so pulls the nose down. I feel like on a roll its ok for the nose to go most anywhere, except down. Its hard to tell how much altitude he is losing, but diving out like that can be dangerous if done down low., such as a roll done as part of a low pass.
 
There’s a difference between a barrel roll and an aileron roll. As near as I can tell, those were barrel rolls. I saw a loss of 300 feet on the one I could actually track. But you are correct. I would think a loss of altitude would be something to try to avoid.

What I find interesting is that the attitude indicator seems to work backward from what we are used to. Blue is down, brown is up. What’s up with that?
 
That looks like a normal aileron roll to me. An aileron roll is still a positive g maneuver, maybe touching zero g at the upside down point, so you'll start nose high and end nose down (as opposed to a slow roll where the nose stays on the horizon). A barrel roll is more like a cross between a loop and a roll with firmly positive g throughout.
 
It does not look like a barrel roll to me. A barrel roll is when the nose is displaced to the side at first, then is a circular path larger than just the nose pointing straight ahead. So the nose would start out to side,then go up in an arc and then continue on the arc to the other side and come around the bottom side. This is not that big an arc, not really a barrel.
Note what many times UK aerobatic national champion Neil Williams writes, for a simple roll, "lift the nose to about 20 degrees above the horizon, AND THEN CHECK THE PITCH before doing anything else. Many students seem to have trouble in stopping the pitch rate completely at the point. Once you arrest the pitch cleanly all we have to do is finish the roll with full aileron."
It looks like in the video that the pilot, after pitching up the nose some, probably more like 10 degrees, doesn't stop the pitch and neutralize the stick before going inverted, so that he is still pulling a little g, and when he rolls with aileron that slight pull brings the nose down and so finishes well below the horizon with quite a bit of altitude loss. He has a good bit of height in hand and so its ok, he may even prefer it, but that roll would be dangerous if done out of an airshow pass at 500 ft.
 
You can call the method I prefer to do an aileron roll or just an airshow roll. The main point is I don't want the nose down and when finishing I don't want to be diving at the ground. Its simple, and can be done by a passenger in one or two tries at altitude. Get entry speed, 210k or 120k or whatever for that type plane, then from level and trimmed flight lift the nose bout 15 to 20 degrees, The exact amount is not so critical, I estimate I don't really look at the att indicator. You want the trajectory to be climbing, then plane following the nose up. THEN STOP THE BACK PRESSURE, DONT NEED TO BE NEG G, JUST LET THE PLANE FLOAT AT ZERO G., then full aileron in the direction of roll and if you want it a little cleaner use a small amount of rudder the same way. Hold the aileron til the roll is complete, and a bit of rudder at the finsish is ok. The nose comes out at the horizon, not dropping well below it.
My waiver for low alt acro is 500 ft, low enough for me, and if I was doing a pass at say 200 feet I would not start the roll until I had raised the nose and was climbing though 500.
And acro contest roll is tighter where more control is used and nose kept on a point, more technical but don't think any safer.
 
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Greg Bockelman said:
What I find interesting is that the attitude indicator seems to work backward from what we are used to. Blue is down, brown is up. What’s up with that?
Click to expand...

There seem to be at least three AI conventions in use. Western, Russian and Chinese. I am not going to attempt to explain it:)

The AI aircraft symbol goes into the blue on pitch up.
upload_2019-12-23_0-50-29.png

http://testpilots.com/training.htm
Chinese panel

"Corpus Christi, Texas: Chinese CJ-6 military trainer (a variant of the Russian Yak-52). Flew much nicer than it looks!


cj6panel.jpg

Another bunch of peculiar instruments - Chinese labels, metric units, upside-down colours."

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/...tween-western-and-russian-attitude-indicators - This article seems to be describing a crash or incident.

"To better illustrate your question, I'm attaching this image to show 2 different ways of displaying an aircraft during banking. The upper instrument is the Western display, the bottom one is the "Russian". Both instruments are showing roughly 30 degrees banking to the left, but in two completely different ways.



"
 
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Looks to me like he was flying around western Washington. The great Pacific Northwe(s)t!
 
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