gahorn wrote:I thought we were already flying the airplane! (or it wouldn't be a problem.)
Yep, that's correct. Don't get so distracted to forget basic airmanship. Another good reason to train on the ground for the emergency.
My point being - start slowing the airplane to best glide and start a turn for a possible landing site before going heads down and reaching for switches, valves etc.
I agree with you Karl. I believe most of us can breathe and fly simultaneously, and I would like to emphasize that a delay of only a few seconds will drop available carb heat dramatically. Training (while stationary in advance in the hangar) will teach ourselves how to look outside for a landing site while reaching for carb heat, fuel valve, etc.
I certainly do not mean to nit-pick the semantics of this discussion, but it's important to recognize that when the engine quits ...the available carb heat disappears in only a few seconds.
'53 B-model N146YS SN:25713
50th Anniversary of Flight Model. Winner-Best Original 170B, 100th Anniversary of Flight Convention. An originality nut (mostly) for the right reasons.
m Then again, pulling important knobs with your eyes outside & a big slug of adrenalin coursing thru your veins might not be the best thing to do either. Awful easy to screw up & pull the wrong thing-- like mixture instead of carb heat. Best to fly the airplane first, THEN start pulling knobs,etc. You have to think everything over very carefully, but very rapidly also!
Not easy to do!
Hey this is a great discussion We can all pick the order of the list from the choices and reasoning above.
Eric it was at Cawleys. It was Earl Root who bought our old cabin there just across the runway from the community building (hangar). Earl has a lot of experience building and flying and besides the RV owns a show quality Stinson SM8, L5, and a J5 and perhaps some others. I'm sure he suffered from not practicing the above (like most of us). BTW I witnessed from about 200 feet away a C210 hit the tops of the trees that were at the South end about 20 years ago on a very late aborted landing. The wingtip snagged the tree and before you knew it it twisted down the tree at full power for the 100+ feet before it hit the ground killing two people and injuring another two or three. The sound was really incredible, like 1,000 pop cans being torn apart. It was when Glen C. was holding a semi-private pancake breakfast with some 30 or 40 planes and lots of people. Never want to see anything like that again.
Very good discussion. I just wanted to drop a note saying that the engine is back on the airplane (3 months later, and also some money later) and did a test flight on it on Saturday.
Regarding the checklist for ‘engine out’, I would like to give my humble opinion since I have never had a real engine out like some of you here. Funny I was giving this subject a though before the first flight of the airplane after engine change.
When I was learning how to fly, the engine out drill to be memorized always started with:
-Attitude
-Velocity
-Direction
Meaning: lower the nose, go to best glide speed, find where you want to go. THEN start with mixture, mags, fuel, and so forth which have been discussed here. I think this drill is especially important if you are close to the ground, then your first concern should be fly the airplane and if there is time try to re-start the engine.
One the other hand at one time I was riding in a T-6 and the engine quit, the pilot immediately changed tanks and everything was ok, and we lost only a few feet. Have been me, I would have then gone first to the drill of attitude-velocity-direction. Later I would have changed tanks, but then the scare would have been much greater.
Today I think I would do the following:
-Change tanks (immediately, few seconds)
-Attitude
-Velocity
-Direction
Then once the landing spot has been chosen, mixture, mags, etc…
I've had three engines quit- in a Stinson V-77, a Helio Courier and a nearly new factory engine in a 182. Luckily, each time I was able to get to a runway. The Helio was a clogged fuel line- the airplane had recently been repaired after an accident and grass got into a wing tank during the recovery.
The V-77 was the hairiest. My wife Jane was in the right seat. We departed on a fairly short grass runway into a strong wind. At about 400 ft. the engine let out a series of loud backfires and lost all power. Against all conventional wisdom I dropped the nose, made a quick 180 and made it back to the runway. A rocker arm retainer on an exhaust valve broke, keeping the valve closed and that cylinder was fighting the other 8. The strong wind gave us a good climb gradient and also helped us return to the runway.
The Skylane swallowed a valve which broke a piston. The nose seal blew out, oil covered the windshield and they told me I was trailing white smoke like a skywriter. The engine still developed a bit of power and I made it into a crop duster strip. This was in Jamaica. I had sold the owner this airplane and installed the engine for him. He was planning to fly to Miami with his family that day and had a last minute change of plans. I borrowed the airlpane for personal use- he was very lucky !
From playing with '93D years ago, havine one engine fail on take-off (dark night) and in 30+ years of riding shotgun ( the plane is the boss) in her, I am going to add some of my experiences.
The first thing to do in any "in-flight" emergency, is loosen the "pucker string"! Seriously, make yourself calm! Panic is a killer!
The second is "continue" to fly the bird.
If you have to check your fuel selector during some sort of power loss on takeoff then you missed one of your main points on the pre-takeoff checklist! (been there done that!) Calmly but quickly run through the check list, as Geo Horn described. A very important thing here: Don't get tunnel vision, make sure while trying to decide "why you are going down" to also decide "where" you are going to hit the ground! Very important! Look for a place to land!
If you have just become airborne, NEVER! again I say NEVER try to turn back to the runway! If you do not have enough altitude to manuver - go straight ahead and encounter the softest, safest, least expensive material possible, in an open area! This is much more appetizing than a stall/spin from 300' into the ground!
In cruise, where the possibility of fuel mis-management or fuel exhaustion exists, then switching tanks may do something good. If smoke or oil is coming from the engine area and there is severe shaking then plan for your encounter with terra firma if possible. Water, as a landing choice, has little forgivness and the added stress of getting out of the plane before you drown is considerable.
Spinning prop or altitude loss? 13 feet forward to 1 food altitude loss at best glide! If you can make a landing site of your choice with some certainty then concentrate on that. I have intentionally stopped my prop in flight and believe me the altitude you will lose to do this would be better spent in gliding on to the spot you have picked out to land. You will almost have to fully stall the thing to stop the prop. If the engine is trashed anyway it may well stop on its own and save you that concern. If the vibration is other than a bad plug or bad mag there is a toss up. Will the engine stay on the airframe or should I try to stop the rotation? It is not a one choice deal in that instance.
My engine failure was at night on takeoff! The exhaust valve head that separated from it's stem in the #2 cylinder, after battering a couple of holes, buried itself in the top of that piston! (It now sits on my desk to remind me of Mr. Murphy's law! Never fully trust anything mechanical!) The intense shaking made me believe that I had either lost a part of the prop blade or a cylinder had blown off. I had no "good" landing area straight ahead. Would the engine last to make a circuit of tha airport? Not much time to decide! My choice was to pull power, grab all flaps and stall/ slip back onto the last 1/4 of the runway under me.
Here is where familiarity with my plane may have saved my bacon. I felt I knew just how far I could put it into a slip with the full flaps before she bucked. I touched down on the pavement 300' from the end and stood on the brakes. I ran off the hard surface and did a "baby" ground loop on the grass over-run. The mill was still turning over but back-firing and shaking like Eric's pup with the peach seeds! (I actually taxiied back to the ramp!) This incident had taken all of 45 seconds: from engine failure to sitting there on the grass trying to figure out just what had happened!
I guess my "moral" of this story is "Don't panic!" Several things could have happend to change the outcome. My personal credo is "I would rather be lucky than good" fits most in-flight emergencies. Be prepared to the highest standard posible, use that training to fullest extent, but hope for some LUCK!
OLE GAR SEZ - 4 Boats, 4 Planes, 4 houses. I've got to quit collecting!
Good on you, Gary, familiarity with your airplane (as wellas quick thinking & prompt action) indeed saved your bacon, and your airplane. But I have to question your comment "13 feet forward to 1 foot altitude loss at best glide" is 13:1 glide ratio. I've never done any extensive testing of glide ratio's but I just can't believe that for a Cessna. Unless maybe if the prop was stopped, & probably not even then. The POH for my old 1969 150 claimed 8:1 (with the prop windmilling), and I think maybe even that was a bit optimistic.
flyguy wrote:Water, as a landing choice, has little forgivness and the added stress of getting out of the plane before you drown is considerable.
Not to mention the difficulty of EMS getting to you even should you be able to keep your head above water.
'53 B-model N146YS SN:25713
50th Anniversary of Flight Model. Winner-Best Original 170B, 100th Anniversary of Flight Convention. An originality nut (mostly) for the right reasons.
[quote The POH for my old 1969 150 claimed 8:1 (with the prop windmilling), and I think maybe even that was a bit optimistic. quote]
Well I probably got that some where in the deep dark past of messing with 170s. If the glide ratio of our 170s' is better than your old 150 that is good. If it is not, then a I would want to save every foot of altitude to add to my glide and make it to the selected landing site. My point was, do not to fritter away 300 or 400 feet trying to stop the prop wind milling. At 8-1 that wouild extrapolate into almost a half mile distance. Of course if you are in Kansas when it goes "BANG" and have bunches of flat smooth wheat fields and 6000' agl then it is a different ball game.
On the side - just last week my neighbor flew his RV6 over to Center TX. He spoke to some folks that flew in in a really nice A-36. The next day we heard that the souped up engine (IO-550T) failed somewhere over western Louisiana. He was cruising at 12000' and couldn't make it back to Natchitoches(KEIR). A safe landing was made with minimal damage to the plane and minor injuries to the pax. The Cane river bottom where he landed, has lots of nice flat places without the normal "piney woods" that covers most of this part of the state. In my estimation he was very "LUCKY". The NTSB preliminary report is a little foggy because he claimed "some" loss of power but the exammination of the engine showed holes in the case where a rod or rods had punched through!
OLE GAR SEZ - 4 Boats, 4 Planes, 4 houses. I've got to quit collecting!
flyguy wrote:Water, as a landing choice, has little forgivness and the added stress of getting out of the plane before you drown is considerable.
Aviation Safety did a study a few years ago and found the survivability rate pretty good in near shore controlled ditching. You are probably not going to hit anything head on (unless you are really unlucky), and the energy is absorbed/dissipated fairly well. Airplanes are filled with air and can float for a long time in good conditions. The chance of fire is reduced. Ditching might not be my first choice, but it might be my second.
jc
Last edited by N2865C on Fri Jan 14, 2005 7:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.
John
N2865C
"The only stupid question is one that wasn't asked"
All great stories & advice. On my only engine-out experience many things went through my mind. The VW engine on my experimental aircraft (no more experimental engines for me) decided to lose a rocker arm shortly after takeoff. I had maybe 20% power half a mile past the runway at 200ft altitude. The first "rule" you think of is land straight ahead. But the corn was 6' tall and the airplane wasn't. So my first thought was that if I needed help nobody saw me depart and nobody would find me. So I made a gradual 180 and tried to get back to the runway. I think a stall/spin accident is the result of insufficient training. I had a really old-fashioned instructor (probably like George) who used to cover the entire panel with a chart while we practised slow flight and stalls. That probably saved my bacon. Keeping the plane flying was my first instinct without thinking about it. If I had another 100' of altitude before the engine failure I would have made it back to the strip (no wind- just before dark). But I didn't. The plane touched down in a wet soy-bean field with a healthy crop of beans that were higher than the low-wing plane's leading edge. I only plowed up about 50' of soy beans before slowing to 10kts and doing a slow-motion (or so it seemed) front cartwheel to an inverted position. After everything came to a stop, I was inverted with a broken canopy, my head in the mud, and quite a few cuts in my noggen from broken plexiglass. There was no way to exit the aircraft the normal way (canopy) so I used a piece of broken plexiglass to cut an opening in the (fortunately) fabric side of the fuselage and depart, very concerned at the time about a fuel leak and possible fire. After my wife learned about the incident and that I survived she nearly killed me- she never liked that plane. Now, whenever I see a plane with a canopy, I wonder how you could get out if it was upside down. Maybe carry a can opener?
Moral: High wings are easier to depart after a tipover, and make sure your training prepares you to instinctively fly the plane at minimum speeds without ever looking at instruments- in a low altitude emergency you probably won't have time.
We had a Seabee crash near here a few years back. It lit in the shallow water at the head of Discovery Bay. Not too sure what caused the crash-- they were enroute from Port Angeles (where they'd just bought the airplane) to Oregon, but by eyewitness accounts were shooting a water landing about 35 miles into their trip home. There is a powerline across the head of the bay that they might not have seen until the last minute. Anyway, both pilots on board died. The general opinion around here was that the impact didn't kill them, but it immobilized &/or stunned them enough to where they drowned when they couldn't get out of the airplane.
Tough way to go.
Back last century....(1973) my ATP flight instructor, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Cliff Garrett was giving instruction/checkout in a Lake Bucaneer up on Lake Worth. (FTW area) At about 10' AGL the prop went flat pitch and the airplane plopped into the water. Even tho' a seaplane, even tho' two qualified pilots, even tho' life-preserver equipped, even tho' it should have been a non-event...it injured Cliff's back and he was unable to exit the aircraft. The applicant magaged to get him out before the airplane sank (even tho' it was designed to float.) He would have drowned had the other pilot not been able to extricate himself and Cliff, and had a nearby boater seen them and motor over to assist. It was still a job to get him into the boat.
Ditching is not a simple matter.
Lot's of planes have killed their occupants when they flip. Trapped inside alone can do it if injured, a subsequent fire complicates matters, and broken necks are common. (Remember the Hawker that flipped on landing at the airshow? Looked very simple. Killed the pilot by crushing his chin down upon his windpipe and he suffocated before anyone could get him out. Simple braking problems can flip an airplane. Disable and remove those parking brakes! and get shoulder harnesses and wear that lap-belt tight before takeoff or landing! Loosen it in flight if you wish, but tighten the thing again before landing.)
'53 B-model N146YS SN:25713
50th Anniversary of Flight Model. Winner-Best Original 170B, 100th Anniversary of Flight Convention. An originality nut (mostly) for the right reasons.
Don't know where it came from but my instructor had a interesting statment that at 50 mph, if you can spread a stop evenly over 9 feet you should survive without serious injury. Been in three incidents where the plane stopped in 40 feet and not so much as a bruise. But it sure is a lesson in a mass in motion not wanting to stop.
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We can all pick the order of the list from the choices and reasoning above.
