C

CarlosF@grtavionics

Active Member
A customer called GRT Avionics yesterday to share his story of an engine out experience while on-top, over mountainous terrain, climbing through Flight Level 180.

In short, he heard and felt a loud bang and the engine immediately stopped. He radioed air traffic control (ATC) and they helped as much as they could.

As he descended into the cloud covered mountains; radio and radar contact were eventually lost. The pilot used the "forward looking synthetic vision" on his Horizon HX and flew the plane. The result was a safe, uneventful landing. "It may have saved my life", he said.

Details of the event and ATC audio here.



Fly safe.

Carlos Fernandez
GRT Avionics
 
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That's a fantastic testament to the benefit of synthetic vision. I'll be looking for the details of the event in the near future!
 
What a terrible situation

I just tried to imagine being in that scenario. IFR on top, engine out, descending into clouds over mountains !!!!

I think I will go make a drink now.
 
You know, not very many years back (maybe three or four), the only choice for Synthetic Vision was in the high-end avionics suites where the "ad-on" would have been about $50K. Would I have put SV into my airplane at that price? Probably not - I just don't have that kind of money! But....with the main Experimental EFIS providers all offering it in their equipment STANDARD, how can you argue with the peace of mind you'd get in a situation like that?!

I've had SV for a couple of years now, but unfortunately live on the Gulf Coast where it is flat as a pancake. It sure is nice when we head out west though! Since we DO fly instruments, and VFR at night, I think it will be a feature of whatever we have from now on - when you consider that most of the systems come that way - why not? Would i still fly a "six pack" in the mountains? Sure I would, if that is what I had, and it was reasonable weather to do so. But if had a choice, I'd take the SV airplane any day.

Paul
 
Ironflight said:
Would i still fly a "six pack" in the mountains? Sure I would, if that is what I had, and it was reasonable weather to do so. But if had a choice, I'd take the SV airplane any day.
Click to expand...

And of course, when we add the terrain information we get from our Garmin 696's (or other) to the six pac, it's a much better situation too. I have this tendency to recreate mountain accidents (to a degree) when flying over various accident areas. There are lot's of them out here in the mountain west. My 696 gives plenty of warning, but synthetic vision adds the icing to the cake. When terrain GPS and synthetic vision becomes the norm with lower pricing..............I think it will be just great! These day's we just don't have to run into mountains anymore with the technology that's available, but some still do. But come to think of it, there seems to be less flight into terrain accidents out here this year. Maybe the day has come! :)

L.Adamson -- RV6A
 
SV very likely helped saved the life of the pilot who had the engine out. We are very fortunate to have SV technology in affordable equipment....AFS, GRT, Garmin, Dynon, and others.

SV also makes flying instrument approaches a whole lot easier. On an ILS for example, keep the velocity vector on the runway looming off in the distance and wind correction is automatically taken care of. Hand flying this or an LPV is an absolute piece of cake.

We really have come a long way from steam gauges...it was not long ago when many of us were flying approaches with with an air driven attitude indicator with questionable reliability. Perhaps there was some sort of backup in the aircraft, perhaps not. Today, with dual screens, dual error checking AHRS, backup batteries, etc., overall safety is getting better and better.
 
A couple of instrument approaches I have done lately, it has been in relatively narrow (for my comfort level) valley that you have hills on both sides and you enter the valley perpendicular to the hills.. My fear is that if I am off course by accident and being low would have consequence that I don't want to contemplate. Anyway, having the SV, just gives me that one more level of comfort and it is amazing how realistic it displays things. I LOVE the GRT EIFS.
 
Well I'm chiming in on this one as I had GRT synthetic vision on my 7 and will have it in my 10. While flying IFR, or at night, it is adds such a comfort level plus situational awareness that you just don't get without it. Keep it up you experimental EFIS guys, you are worth it to us.
 
Synthetic vision is nice, but you get virtually the same information on a Garmin hand-held with terrain - just takes a little interpretation.

Not knocking SV in any way; if it had been mature when I made my purchase decisions I would have bought it - just pointing out that the data is there for you to interpret from a 396/496 which many people already have on board.
 
breister said:
Synthetic vision is nice, but you get virtually the same information on a Garmin hand-held with terrain - just takes a little interpretation.

Not knocking SV in any way; if it had been mature when I made my purchase decisions I would have bought it - just pointing out that the data is there for you to interpret from a 396/496 which many people already have on board.
Click to expand...

I think I'd have to disagree with you on this one. Having flown both for many, many hours, I can tell you that when you are dropping out of the sky at 1,000 fpm (typical engine-out descent in an RV), any time that you have to spend interpreting is lost time. There isn't any real interpretation with SV, but with 2D representations of terrain, you have to put a lot of brain-power in to the job.

Which is not to say that everyone should run out and buy an SV display guys - just that under certain circumstances (such as the incident cited in this thread), it could very well be the difference between a successful outcome or not. How often are you going to experience an engine out under IFR in the clouds? Heck, there are other ways to mitigate that risk - don't be there, for one....

Paul
 
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Yep....just recently on this forum....

....an RV-10 had an engine failure in IMC and the gentleman had SV and found a strip that the air traffic controllers didn't know about AND landed without a scratch to him or the airplane,

Best,
 
Synthetic vision is nice, but you get virtually the same information on a Garmin hand-held with terrain - just takes a little interpretation.

Not knocking SV in any way; if it had been mature when I made my purchase decisions I would have bought it - just pointing out that the data is there for you to interpret from a 396/496 which many people already have on board.
Click to expand...

Thats kinda the way I look at SV. I have had it in my planes for a long time and never use it.

Having said that one cannot argue with it's utility in the above engine out scenario, I think in that case it was clearly a life saver and an excellent option to have available whether you like it or use it or not.

It gave a happy ending to what could otherwise been another very sad statistic.
 
Dynon released version 2.5 for their Skyview this past week which added several things including obstacle synvis and runway synvis and so far I've flown with it twice. I've got a load of hours flying 396/496 and there is no comparison in situational awareness. You look out the window with synvis and back and forth at the screen and it's just amazing how they match. In an emergency you may not have enough active brain cells left for interpolation.
 
i think it ..........

would take an exceptional pilot to pull that one off. kudos to him. i hope we all have what is needed to fly it till it stops. if you are not ifr rated your chances are very low. :eek:
 
A while back someone had posted a you tube video of a guy flying a Bonaza in IMC and had a CFIT and was able to continue flying and land. It was quite a controversial video and there was talk about SV back then. The circumstances were basically the pilot and his endangered passengers (one with a camera in hand) were scud running and hit a mountain.

If I remember correctly, the video showed a 496 but no SV. I am pretty sure SV would have helped to prevent the near disaster.

I have SkyView, and though the tallest mountain in WI is about 1500 feet or so, I really like the features. Flying today, I was checking out my CFI in my plane and he thought it was awesome. The new version 2.5 SkyView is really great. You have runways, terrain and obstacles. Also, a great feature, which I haven't used much is the pointer that is on screen that shows your actual path of travel through space. This will correct for wind drift and pitch and roll. You can put the pointer where you want it and avoid all the stuff that'll ruin your day. You can also point it toward the runway image and you don't have to worry about WCA's on an ILS.
 
Terrain resolution helps with situational awareness as well. Here's a 696 in the grand canyon and SkyView at the same place on the map page. Now imagine the 696 as a 396, which has only about 40% the screen size.

696-GC.JPG


SV-GC.jpg
 
ATC Sound bite

I spoke with pilot at Oshkosh that lost his engine on top over Oregon. He will be releasing the entire audio soon. Until then here is a sound bite.


Audio


HX%20PFD%202%20Large.JPG

File Photo


Carlos Fernandez
GRT Avionics
 
Amazing story

Last night this pilot made a presentation on his experience at our local airport safety meeting. He's based there. It was an amazing presentation. I'd met him a couple of times before. In fact, I'd met his wife and a couple of his kids before, and seen his plane. He used to fly an RV-6, but now flies a Lancair Legacy.

Regarding the synthetic vistion debate - he has a Garmin 530 in the panel. But I got the impression that he didn't feel it had the resolution he needed to avoid the mountains on either side of the narrow valley he had to follow to arrive at his destination airport. He said that the peaks on both sides were in the clounds and if he'd just followed the shortest path towards the airport, he would have hit the peaks before he descended below the clouds.

I was interested the way he used the available tools differently. The Garmin Aera he used pretty much only for weather, even though it has a terrain view with pretty good resolution. The 530 is his primary meanns of navigation, and what he used to determine the vertical speed required to reach the destination airport (and thus figure out if he'd be able to make it that far). The GRT synthetic vision is what he used to fly the plane and avoid the mountains while in the clouds.
 
I've been debating between an FD180 and a skyview and I think this has convinced me to go with the skyview.
 
CFIT Avoided?

A customer called GRT Avionics yesterday to share his story of an engine out experience while on-top, over mountainous terrain, climbing through Flight Level 180.

In short, he heard and felt a loud bang and the engine immediately stopped. He radioed air traffic control (ATC) and they helped as much as they could.

As he descended into the cloud covered mountains; radio and radar contact were eventually lost. The pilot used the "forward looking synthetic vision" on his Horizon HX and flew the plane. The result was a safe, uneventful landing. "It may have saved my life", he said.

Details of the event and ATC audio here.





Regards,

Carlos Fernandez
GRT Avionics
 
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SV

Incredible. If any two people deserve the title of professionals these are the ones. What a fine performance by everyone and all equipment save the turbo.
 
Listening to that audio made my palms sweat. Bravo to everyone who contributed to the successful outcome. Personally, having flown a lot of hours in "the system" albeit mostly VFR in controlled airspace in the West, I have found ATC personnel to be consummate professionals and worthy of the highest praise. Great to have them "with me" in the cockpit when things get tense, as I've experienced a couple of times.

Looking forward to experiencing synthetic vision myself in the next several months, though hopefully not under such arduous circumstances...
 
Awesome

aviating - this pilot had 'advanced' equipment and knew how to use it = he made it. He also knew the critical air speeds of his aircraft = he made it. Not much margin for error but he flew the aircraft to a successful outcome at an airport. That is awesome. Great advances over the traditional 'six pack'.

Hope that Van's will eventually incorporate (not sure that that is the correct term) the Sky View and the 696 for the RV-12.
 
WELL DONE!!

The two professionals here, the pilot and the controller, made this outcome a good one.
Very well done and alot to learn!

Thanks for sharing!
 
The best of times....

...is what times like this are...and synthetic vision....even the controller had to ask him to repeat!

Best,
 
Don't forget Mountainscope as a cheap option for synthetic vision; they were one of the first companies to offer terrain info on a moving map, and the program includes a synthetic "windshield view" of that terrain. I run it on a 7" UMPC (same device that Flight Cheetah uses) and the program and computer cost a total of under $1000. It'll do in an emergency for now!
 
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