Fixed Wing Engine Out

[gyroman]

Just watched this video on the web. The guy was really lucky considering the terrain he was flying over. Not to mention keeping his head in a tough situation...

Engine Out Video

[iconnary]

Great video. It's interesting to hear the pilot's narration of events.

He was flying extremely low over unforgiving terrain, at least in my opinion. My comfort level keeps me at 1500 AGL minimum, and probably higher when flying over the nasty stuff.

This is also a good reminder of why I'd rather be in a gyro in an engine-out scenario.

[gyro]

Well done whoever it was...those power wires are going to start the nightmares all over again

[Timchick]

At least if he trashed the plane completely he could've just walked away since it was already at the dump.

[Gyrobound]

Right near where I use to live. I've had my Jet Ski in that lake many times. Didn't see this video before or hear anything about the accident until I saw it on this thread. Man he was lucky but as you all have said he kept his cool and turned a potentially bad situation into a survivable one.

Scott

[dragonflyerthom]

Yea and landed right in the dump


Imagine that. lol

Glad he is ok

Thom

[Gyrobound]

I guess the ultralight folks aren't happy with this guy because he was not following FAA rules about not flying over towns and such at a low altitude. Went on their web site and saw the thread on this engine out. They were chastizing him kind of like we do on this site. Every once in a while we hear of some bonehead doing something wrong in a gyro, against the rules, like flying without training and it tells the world we are a bunch of low lifes flying those death trap gyro things. Gives us a bad name. So I guess all web sites have their non-conformers.

Scott

[gyrofly]

He was lucky...I was nervous watching him fly over that rough terrain at such a low altitude.
Was he flying a Phantom? Is that considered one of the better makes as far as handling higher G-Loads, high glide ratios and where it is resistant to going into a stall spin?

[Gyrobound]

From the thread it was a Phantom 503. I searched the papers from that area and find no news about the crash so he must have covered it up. No reporting done that I could find.

Scott

[Hognose]

Funny, I never thought of New England as rough terrain, but yes, there are few places for an emergency landing around here. (I posted some photos shot from a fixed-wing of the area where I fly this summer).

Not much of the ground around here is level, and it's been populated by white men since 1620 and by Indians for centuries before that, so the level ground tends to have stuff built on it. If nothing is built on it, since it's too rocky around here to be good farmland, it tends to be forested.

Roads are often a bad choice for two reasons: (1) most drivers are extremely lacking in situational awareness, to the point of obliviousness, and (2) wires. Wires run along roads. Wires cut across roads. Wires will not be visible until very late. Wires will mess you up.

Soft ground is not your friend any more than forest is. A friend of mine, an extremely competent pilot, had to set a 152 down in the Ipswich salt marshes... it went over on him, even at < 30kt. He was OK but his plane was totaled. And he had no hull insurance. (Thanks to his crash, at least, a tanker load of contaminated fuel was discovered before it could take any lives).

From time to time someone loses an engine on climbing out around here, and then dies trying to turn back to the airfield. Unless you have actually tried turning 180 degrees with the prop windmilling you have no idea how much altitude this is going to cost you.

I know that I will lose about 550 feet in a Cessna 152 or 172, about 700 feet in a PA-28. So if you lose one on the upwind, departure leg, given the climb rates of those planes, you are usually best advised to pick the best of the areas ahead of you. Cessnas can usually be mushed into trees with relative impunity, as long as you DO NOT STALL and hit the trees while still under control. In Pipers, this frequently causes a fire because of the location of the fuel tanks.

If you are turning, make your turn into the wind. if you are turning back to an airport, worry about landing in the airport environment (which is largely open and clear) first and worry about landing on the axis of a runway only if you have the luxury of time.

Always remember that lakes and rivers are OK to land on if you can slow down and/or retract the gear. Don't worry about the plane. The minute the engine stops, the insurance company has bought the plane, as far as I'm concerned... I'm saving my heinie and my passengers'. They build new planes every day, and Trade-a-Plane is full of old ones seeking new owners.

One thing the guy in the mishap video didn't say, but that should be your FIRST action on engine-out in a FW, is to pitch for best glide speed. This is one V that you must memorize. In some cases, it's better to choose "min sink" airspeed. The FAA requires to answer this question with "best glide" and "min sink" is generally not published for powered aircraft, but can be determined calculation and then confirmed by testing. It is usually much closer to max alpha than best glide is; in other words, slower. The difference between these? Best glide takes you furthest, if you need to go some distance to make a safer landing. Min sink keeps you up longest, giving you time to attempt restart, make a mayday call and squawk, turn on your ELT and brief pax.

It is better to accept an imperfect landing option than to try to glide to a perfect landing point you're not certain of making (valid in any a/c).

The best combination of altitude loss and turn rate is usually a 45 degree bank, because your lift is applied half to each purpose. This is for a fixed wing! A gyro is much more capable of making a turn back to a just-departed airfield (on the other hand, a gyro has the glide ratio of a concrete block -- about 4:1, or about a third of a usual f/w).

A lower airspeed increases the rate and decreases the radius or your turn.

If you have never made a downwind approach, the groundspeed is alarming and you have to take care not to overshoot. Everything will be "wrong" compared to how you usually do it.

Airliners make downwind landings all the time, because of ATC requirements, but they usually are limited to a pretty low tailwind component, especially as a function of their approach speed. A 10kt tailwind will change things more for a gyro than a Boeing coming in at 150 kt!

Never stop looking for a place to land, never stop thinking about your options, and if you must land unfavourably, "keep flying until all the pieces are done crashing" -- Bob Hoover.

cheers

-=K=-

[gyrofly]

You know after watching it a few times it seems like he is trying to justify his landing a bit.
I think he could have landed it much better than he did. Not trying to be an a-hole but, notice how the video is sped up just before he hits the ground. In real time I bet he had enough time to level it out and slip in and have a better landing. I suppose any landing you walk away from and no others are injured or killed is a good one.
Just an observation, right or wrong....

[rtfm]

Hi,
As a FW pilot, I have to say I was unimpressed with this guys judgement as well as his flying skills.

First, he was flying way too low for safety, especially over the terrain beneath him.

Second, he was flying over populated areas - in New Zealand at least, this is a no-no for microlights.

Third, I thought his emergency procedures really sucked. It is possible that he went through the emergency checks, but he doesn't metion doing that. You're flying along, and the engine quits. You don't think. You don't hesitate. It is: Check forward to maintain gliding speed. Then... "Fuel-****, Carb, Pump. Mix, T's and P's, Master, Mags, Throttle". It takes about 7 seconds to complete. Chances are one of these factors is the reason the noise has stopped. You might well be able to correct the problem, and continue in controlled powered flight.

Once the checks have not identified the problem, THEN you think about landing the plane.

And when you land it, try to land it straight, not still busy turning? And what about flaring? Didn't they teach that to him during his training? He flies his plane directly into the ground while still on a left hand bank.

Sheesh.

He wouldn't get a licence where I come from, that's for sure...

Regards,
Duncan

[Timchick]

Did he say on the other site what caused his engine to quit?

[Hognose]

Tim -- he didn't say, AFAIK.

Dunc -- checks are a little simpler for a 503 Rotax. No carb heat, no dual ignition, only one fuel **** and it's either on or off, etc etc. If the engine is not electric-start then you may or may not have access to the pull starter from the cockpit.

With a Rotax 2-banger in a UL, it usually stops because (1) operator ran it out of fuel or (2) it overtemped and a piston froze in the cylinder. We can't tell from the video if he attempted restart.

US rules are a bit different... there is airspace closed to ultralights (US def is < 254 lbs, 5 gals fuel) but not because of built-up areas, because of airborne traffic congestion. Where this guy was was actually fairly rural for New England (the northeastern USA). This was all farms 150 years ago but it's not an efficient place to farm (rocky soil, hilly, short growing season) so it's reverted to deciduous forest, mostly.

I didn't think that the video was speeded up particularly. Things look faster as you get closer to the ground. (I was having parachuting flashbacks). As far as the bank was concerned, I think he was trying to avoid the big pile of dirt and stay in the flat area.

I think he had a better landing area below him when the engine failed. Still he "passed," in that he survived; he did this by maintaining control of his aircraft. The worst thing is to lose control trying to stretch a glide to a "perfect" landing spot. Better to take your chances in the trees... if you can get slow enough, it's usually survivable. Too little speed kills you, too much speed busts you up. Precise flying is what is called for.

He didn't have an opportunity to turn into the wind (he didn't even seem to consider the wind). Better to pick the semi-OK landing zone directly beneath you, and land into the wind; when you have to "land out" as the glider boys say, anything that reduces your groundspeed is good.

Note how relatively short his time aloft and distance covered were, from the moment the engine rolled off on him. There was another video a while back of an UL losing its power on a turn crosswind-downwind at very low altitude; his emergency was over in seconds with a crash into trees. You need to be prepared when it hits you. PITCH for best glide (unless you are right over a landing zone, then pitch for min sink), SPOT your landing zone, JUDGE the wind, TRY to restart, YELL for help --attention, really, nobody can get in the pit and help you -- if you have a radio. PREPARE to land (pax briefed, doors [if any] jammed open, belts and helmet strap tightened, fuel and electrical off, etc. -- you should have a checklist, and this is one to memorize). If you have an ELT, turn it on; if you have a transponder, squawk emergency (7700).

This is a point of technique, not a rule: If you are monitoring control or approach already, make your mayday call on that frequency, don't waste time changing to 121.5. Time is definitely your critical resource in this situation and you need your head up off the panel. Make the call early as you lose transmission distance with every metre you descend. (A good corollary of this is that it pays to keep an appropriate station tuned in).

Do NOT fly your aircraft into a flight regime where you're inexperienced. Be aware of load factors and what they do to you (in a FW you can bank into an accelerated stall; in a gyro you'll pick up RRPM but it will cost you altitude). Once the engine stops you are not adding any energy to the system. The energy you have is fungible, convertible between speed, altitude, RRPM, but you can't gain any more energy and what you have must last you until you are on the ground at zero potential and kinetic energy. Your mission is to make sure that that energy does not get transferred into yours and your passengers' bodies. There's a lot to do and only seconds to do it in -- you have to be ruthless about your priorities. If you can save the aircraft, that's a bonus.

Most FW pilots have little real experience with accelerated stalls and spins. These are unsurvivable in ground proximity and you need to know enough to see them coming and back off. Many experimentals and ultralights/microlights have little or no stall warning and may have other grotty stall characteristics. If you don't know what to expect DON'T GO THERE. The time to be a test pilot is when the motor is humming along nicely, not after it packs it in.

Many pilots fly for thousands of hours and never have an engine lock up. Many pilots have it happen, and no bad consequences ensue... they might get on the news for parking the plane on a highway median (like a guy in Michigan last week) or golf course. If you do it right, the worst thing you get is attitude from the groundskeeper ("I'm sorry sir, this club is members only.") If you prepare for it diligently, and it never happens, you're still ahead, because it will make your flying more alert and professional.

I bet the guy in the video flies differently now. I'd rather learn from his experience than have to have my own.

cheers

-=K=-