Emergency Dead stick landing

[David-aviator]

Great report on your experience Ryan.

I do not have anything to suggest on dealing with what happened, you handled it well and some very knowledgable people are involved.

Thanks for taking the time write on this forum.

[APACHE 56]

has important implications well beyond the specific mechanical issue you faced.

You seem defensive but my friend you?re the one who jumped up on the stage and opened your kimono and that was the right thing to do. In my opinion you were lucky (and that?s a random event) and that hopefully will impress all of us to question, really question, what we?d do if/when we are faced with a similar situation. To many of us would have done what you did me included. You may ultimately save one of our lives which I am confident is your intention sans medical degree.

Being ?judgmental and critical and harda__d? may very well save lives. Put the ?hail fellow well met? stuff in some other warm-fuzzy section because safety is too often a binary situation; live or die.

This is about safety and part of safety is maintaining an ever present, prominent safety consciousness. No one likes getting a #10 boot in their #5 rear-end but that?s exactly what I?d have done were you in my outfit. I would have done that for two primary reasons. First, to dramatically and thus permanently impress upon you to reassess/recalibrate your internal decision making algorithm. The second is to make an example of you to the rest of the aviators; make them think twice as it were. Here?s how I think that works.

Let me use cigarette smoking as an example. Everybody knew smoking was killing people but it wasn?t until our peers ? the public ? made smoking intolerant that we saw a decrease in the smoking population. Peer pressure is an incredible force and it takes an incredible force to override our tendency to make mistakes: to override get-home-itis; to eliminate run it around the pattern and see what happens; to prevent ?hey watch me do this slow roll on takeoff.? On these very pages there has been much written about EAB aircraft accident rates and wrong judgment represents a significant portion of those stats. If we can instill a sense of ?my VAF buddies are looking over my shoulder and what would they say? I sincerely believe we will begin to erode those accident stats.

We have to shout loud, shout long and shout collectively.

[Walt]

Originally Posted by RickWoodall

In Canada as part of our sign off inspection we must disconnect the fuel line from the engine, and test the flow per minute when boost pump is on. I have heard of many doing this during the annual too.
Why, if you know your boost pump puts out 17gph as an example, this will ensure a year or two later, you are still getting lots of flow, that there are no blockages in fuel lines, filters, etc. A bit of a flush out so to speak. Strain the fuel and return to the tanks. Seems like a good idea as I have heard of slosh and also people who had some proseal or even teflon tape (used in error) get into fuel system. A good system flush out, and of course checking gascolator and fuel strainer in FI systems is wise too. I have and will continue to do this annually. It does not test engine driven pump, but does ensure #2 is good to go. On another note, when I painted my plane, I drained tanks and will likely remove sump drains every year or two and again FLUSH out the tanks. Surprising what can end up in the bottom of the tank over time.

I think this is a great idea and I just added it to my annual condition inspection check list. I would normally only perform fuel flow tests if there are reports of low fuel pressure or other indications of inadequite fuel flow (stumbling, engine quitting momentarily etc). I think performing this test as SOP during annual is good stuff and easily done after filter cleaning.

Is your aircraft talking to you?

http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/safetyalerts/SA_021.pdf

[Captain Avgas]

Ryan, I have highlighted a few questions in red relating to this incident that I would like to ask you. See your quote.

Originally Posted by MedFlightDoc

Flight #1: Nighttime cruise home after picking up my daughter from the grandparents house. Easy flight from Milwaukee Timmerman to Middleton Morey (KMWC to C29). Heading west at 2500', checked in with Madison approach, talking to my daughter when the engine suddenly stumbles and starts to lose significant RPM. I immediately knee jerk thought I had run a tank dry and reach down to switch tanks. As I'm doing so, the engine picks back up and acts as if nothing had happened. So quickly in fact, that I didn't think that the switching of tanks had even kicked in yet. I had almost full tanks, so a dry tank was of course not the culprit. Rest of flight proceeds uneventfully with no issues. Leaving me perplexed. CHT, EGT, mags, RPM's, volts, amps are all normal when I get home and do an extensive check and run up.

Question 1: Do you think it was wise to take to the air again at this point without positive identification of the problem? A decisive and pronounced loss of engine power is an obvious indication that there is something seriously amiss.

Flight #2: The next day, go out to airport in afternoon to check things out again. All is normal. No issues with temps, pressures, run up or static RPM. Ambient temps were in mid 80's (about 83-85 or so). Take off seemed normal until about 250-400' or so when engine stumbles badly, lose significant RPM. I do something I probably should not have (no need to chastise me, I've done enough of it already in the last month) and make the impossible turn and get it back on the runway. I chose this option mainly because I was taking off on 09 at Morey-Middleton (C29) and the city of Middleton and Madison is to the east. I didn't want to go down in the city. At this point however, the engine is still turning over as I sit on the runway and taxi off. The FBO mechanics heard the engine cut, piled into a pick up truck and came racing down the taxiway expecting to find me off the end of the runway in the field to the west.

Question 2: See question 1

I do a runup, and all seems normal now. CHT, EGT, amps, volts, run up and even full static run up are all NORMAL. Taxi to the FBO. We pull the cowl and nothing seems amiss. Sump the gas, no debris or water. Start to think if vapor lock might be the culprit? This aircraft does not have baffling to the gascolator, but does have sleeved fuel lines from the gascolator to engine driven fuel pump to carb.

The mechanics look thru as much as they can over the next day and a half. The fuel vents are clear, gas is not an issue. Everything seems normal. Start it up again and on the ground all the temps and pressures are normal, normal run up, full static run RPM check on both tanks (per the mechanic) were all normal with one exception: there seemed to be low fuel pressure gauge readings of barely 1 psi with the engine driven fuel pump, but would increase to about 4 psi (normal) with the electric boost pump on. Running it up to full power with the electric boost pump on would also then see the fuel pressure gauge drop some but the engine was running normally the entire time with no stumble or dropped rpm. We were starting to think the engine driven fuel pump might be failing, but this scenario seemed unusual (their experience had been that they usually just fail, not a "soft" failure with things still running normally).

This then led to the question of what exactly was going on. We also only had one more day to fly, as the annual was set to expire. The mechanics didn't have it pinned down and it couldn't be reproduced on the ground as everything appeared to be working normally...

I make the decision to make one more test flight to see if we can narrow it down more and get more information as we don't really have enough go on.

Question 3: See question 1.

[DanH]

Originally Posted by MedFlightDoc

...for future reference for others I'd be curious to know what others may have done differently to troubleshoot...as we all want to learn from others experiences and maybe help someone out in the future who reads this thread.

Let's start by recognizing a cold hard fact: everyone who works on airplanes, cars, motorcycles and boats regularly gets a new lesson...usually something not previously seen or considered in their personal experience.

I've seen this one (intermittent, momentary power loss which could not be duplicated on the ground) twice. The first time was a friend's Kitfox. The 582 Rotax had sagged a few times. Much looking did not find a specific cause, and then the problem seemed to disappear. When it came back it was at exactly the wrong place, on takeoff from a short strip. The result was a controlled sink at minimum speed into a forest. My friend did it right, using the 32 knot stall to maximum advantage, and he walked away unharmed.

Postmortem, engine on a bench: it was a tiny piece of plastic flake, perhaps 1/8" diameter and 0.010" thick, which had made it to the fuel entry of one carb. It was apparently swirling around in the bore above the float bowl needle valve, and when the planets aligned just right it could settle on the needle valve passage and block fuel flow. A 582 running on one cylinder will not keep a Kitfox aloft.

I was one of the airport guys who helped look for that sag, and supposedly the most experienced. I felt responsible. That was my lesson.

Fast forward more than a few years...the RV-1 (rightfully) scares **** out of CB with a momentary power sag on departure, 300 feet up and heading out over the trees. You've read the rest of the account. I did all the usual things, including a visual tank inspection, fuel flow measurements, line kink checks, inlet screen, gascolator, uphill ground runups, ad nauseum. Didn't find a single smoking gun, and I was uncomfortable. My learned response was to talk it over with somebody, and in this case the best bet (for a bunch of reasons) was Walt. The process of describing a problem and what you've done, the back and forth of fault proposal and logic review, and the simple act of comparing experiences may be the best way of ferreting out a solution. In this case, almost as an afterthought, Walt said "Hey, it's a long shot, but maybe you should check...", and that was it.

So, in answer to your question, I'd say talk it over with somebody. Somebody as experienced as Walt is a great choice, because he has been around long enough to have gotten more lessons. However, I don't think it has to be someone with more experience. It just needs to be somebody with a set of lessons different from yours.

BTW, right now both you and your mechanics are kicking yourselves about slosh in tanks. It will never happen to any of you again. You've all got the slosh lesson in the bank.

[MedFlightDoc]

As for the first two point, we couldn't reproduce the problem on the ground, and it had happened at two different phases of flight.

Initially there was serious consideration to vapor lock, to the point of looking up multiple threads on this forum and the problem appearing to be very similar. Relatively warm ambient temps, intermittent and not reproducible.

Taking off on the third flight, the thought was still possibly vapor lock vs a problem with either one of the fuel pumps.

The idea of a fuel line obstruction never occurred to anyone (and many were involved) until after the fact...

The main reason I bring this up now for others to learn.

[60av8tor]

I appreciate you sharing regardless of whether I would proceed in the same manner in a similar situation. Hind sight is 20/20 as they say and actions that seem totally reasonable, or on the otherhand, wildly irresponsible after the fact can, and often do, look different "at the time". I've done plenty of things in my life that afterwards I thought, "wow, that was stupid", but did not clearly appear so at the time.

I may have missed it, but did you post on here about your issue while trouble shooting with AOG? You must take advice given with a grain of salt at times - especially until you learn who's who if you will, but at the very least, having your issue looked at by hundreds of builders, owners, etc with such a diverse background of skill sets would have brought years of experience (I once had a similar engine issue, etc.) to the trouble-shooting game. At the very least, this may have had you looking down a path, that previously, you hadn't considered.

[RVbySDI]

Originally Posted by APACHE 56

has important implications well beyond the specific mechanical issue you faced.

You seem defensive but my friend you’re the one who jumped up on the stage and opened your kimono and that was the right thing to do. In my opinion you were lucky (and that’s a random event) and that hopefully will impress all of us to question, really question, what we’d do if/when we are faced with a similar situation. To many of us would have done what you did me included. You may ultimately save one of our lives which I am confident is your intention sans medical degree.

Being “judgmental and critical and harda__d” may very well save lives. Put the “hail fellow well met” stuff in some other warm-fuzzy section because safety is too often a binary situation; live or die.

This is about safety and part of safety is maintaining an ever present, prominent safety consciousness. No one likes getting a #10 boot in their #5 rear-end but that’s exactly what I’d have done were you in my outfit. I would have done that for two primary reasons. First, to dramatically and thus permanently impress upon you to reassess/recalibrate your internal decision making algorithm. The second is to make an example of you to the rest of the aviators; make them think twice as it were. Here’s how I think that works.

Let me use cigarette smoking as an example. Everybody knew smoking was killing people but it wasn’t until our peers – the public – made smoking intolerant that we saw a decrease in the smoking population. Peer pressure is an incredible force and it takes an incredible force to override our tendency to make mistakes: to override get-home-itis; to eliminate run it around the pattern and see what happens; to prevent “hey watch me do this slow roll on takeoff.” On these very pages there has been much written about EAB aircraft accident rates and wrong judgment represents a significant portion of those stats. If we can instill a sense of “my VAF buddies are looking over my shoulder and what would they say” I sincerely believe we will begin to erode those accident stats.

We have to shout loud, shout long and shout collectively.

Is this really necessary for this discussion? All of your comments about getting in someone's face and making them aware of their shortcomings in front of others for the purpose of

. . .to make an example of you to the rest of the aviators; . . .

would do nothing except PREVENT anyone from ever wanting to speak out and help others with their experiences. I fail to see any possible good that could come of your actions of playing boot camp drill sergeant with someone in this situation. Little, if any, positives results come from such blatant "in your face" behavior. The recipient of such behavior is much more likely to have such a negative reaction to that kind of behavior that he/she is more likely to completely reject any comments you might give them. Geezzz!!! Are you really advocating that a person opening his soul up for the betterment of his fellow aviators should have to endure public chastisement and humility as the only means by which he, or others, could learn from such an incident?

By the way, to the OP, I have had two off field landings, both with dead engines. I know the thoughts and emotions you were dealing with very intimately. Great job in dealing with the situation. Even more so, kudos to you for baring your humanity to the unwashed public and penning this incident for all to see. Don't let anyone get in your face and nit pick your actions. You sir deserve much better than that!

Live Long and Prosper!

[60av8tor]

Originally Posted by RVbySDI

Is this really necessary for this discussion? ...Little, if any, positives results come from such blatant "in your face" behavior. ...Don't let anyone get in your face and nit pick your actions. You sir deserve much better than that!

Live Long and Prosper!

We all come from different backgrounds and environments, so your opinion about "in your face behavior" is just that - your opinion; just like Apache has his. I understand what you're saying, and I agree with it to an extent - possibly even in this case - as yes, we do not want to stifle open discussion. But there is certainly a time and a place for leaving PC talk and beating around the bush behind. Reminds me of the state we're in now, where every child is great and gets a trophy for just showing up. Some of my best learned lessons were from being called a dumb a$$ in front of mixed company.

[Mike S]

Originally Posted by MedFlightDoc

no need to be judgmental, I've already done that to myself more than you could.

Originally Posted by MedFlightDoc

The main reason I bring this up now for others to learn.

Guys and Gals, Ryan has been good enough to share this with us to help prevent any future events of the same nature--------please dont beat him up for it.

Ryan, thanks for sharing this, I know it can be hard to tell about such events where you "learn the hard way". Your concern for others is appreciated.