5/13/2024 Tri-Pacer down near Enderlin, ND - non-fatal

iamtheari

iamtheari

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Accident Piper PA-22 Tri-Pacer N669A,

The aircraft sustained substantial damage subsequent to an impact with open field terrain near Enderlin, North Dakota. The pilot sustained minor injuries, and two passengers were not inju...
aviation-safety.net

It sounds like the engine failed, the pilot landed in a field, and the plane attempted a somersault. Pilot plus two children on board. The pilot had minor injuries and the children were uninjured.

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If they walked away that is fantastic news.
 
2-Bit Speed said:
Glad it's non-fatal!
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Me to. Ya can jump in with punchlines right away without having to be nice. I’ll give the pilot a good job on this one. Please tell me he didn’t just run outta gas because he didn’t have enough in the plane.
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Are milk stools more likely to tumble in off-airport landings with the gear all inside a 30" circle?

Are they hard to hold tail-low with the engine out?
 
FancyG said:
Are milk stools more likely to tumble in off-airport landings with the gear all inside a 30" circle?

Are they hard to hold tail-low with the engine out?
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I don’t think so. I’ve got a student that has a Tri-Pacer and they are great little aircraft with pretty rugged gear. That said, they come down fairly steeply and if a person panicked a bit and didn’t keep enough speed margin, they might run out of margin to get the nose up. That nose gear is seriously beefier than it’s Cessna counterparts, so seeing it broken off and the plane upside down tells me they either hit a ditch or something or the ground was really soft and the nosewheel just dug in, or something. Kind of surprised to see this outcome, honestly.

It also doesn’t look like the flaps were fully deployed. Considering that the aircraft probably flipped over 180° from its approach, we don’t know what’s behind the camera angle, so really hard to tell if there were good reasons for no flaps, but even if you keep the flaps up most of the approach to make sure you can glide in, they are manual and it would be fairly easy to “pop” them on short final and they really do help.
 
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Jim K can add to this, the dark area in the background appears to be wet muddy, so the landing was on soft ground. The state of corn stalks resembles disked, which loosens the soil.

As weight settled on the nose wheel, it plowed in and flipped at a relatively low speed.

Properly tightened seat belts prevented spinal damage to the necks. Good preflight action can be the deciding factor in survival in any crash.

The pilot deserves a lot of credit for selecting the dryer part of the field, which supported the wheels to a lower speed than that muck in the background.

What do you say, Jim K?
 
Jim K, I was hoping for an opinion of the farm field conditions, from an expert on their softness and current state of agricultural preparation for this years crops.
 
geezer said:
Jim K, I was hoping for an opinion of the farm field conditions, from an expert on their softness and current state of agricultural preparation for this years crops.
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Hard to tell from that picture. It's definitely been worked, so we'll be somewhat soft. Hard to tell if that pond is wet or just the lack of plant residue making it look darker. In general everywhere has been at wet this year, and yes dark soils like that can be a bottomless pit when wet. If you're going to land in a field, just like in a forest, pick the light spots.
 
In the photo, I don't believe I see a nose wheel. Could it have dug in and been torn off, flipping the plane?
 
geezer said:
As weight settled on the nose wheel, it plowed in and flipped at a relatively low speed.
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Which is why taildraggers rule with many bush operators. A taildragger is much safer on a soft surface than a trike. Its CG is very close to the footprint of the main wheels, so the drag of soft soil doesn't tend to drive the wheels in further. And the high AoA of the wing in a three-point attitude maintains lift well into the rollout, reducing the load on the wheels. A nosewheel has a pole-vaulting effect: as the nose touches down, the drag on it slows the airplane rapidly, and the CG, being well aft of it, drives that wheel in further, increasing drag, which drives it in further yet. It all happens in a second. The same effect that a pole-vaulter gets when he stabs the pole into the ground ahead of him; his momentum drives it in harder and up and over he goes.
 
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