What not to do...

Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe

Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe

Touchdown! Greaser!
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Jun 7, 2008
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DXO124009
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Light and Sporty Guy
Skip to 7:30 (nothing to see before that) - then watch the stick when the engine goes quiet.


Not much reason to watch beyond 8:30 either.
 
Wow. Painful to watch. Glad they are ok. With that kind of response to an engine out, in a way they were lucky to engine out so early. Imagine the vid if it was at 3000-agl!!!
 
If the pilot had pushed a bit or even just let it nose over rather than pull on the stick, he'd have had the energy to flare and the landing could have been much smoother.
 
Looks like he had plenty of runway, and panicked. Easy to do in that situation I'm guessing.
 
I did some simulated engine outs on takeoff during my PP training - it was a great exercise - you really gotta get the nose down and keep it down, it's kind of scary thing if you've never seen it.
 
Yep, stick full aft with rapidly decreasing energy aren’t good combinations.
 
I’ve always believed that extensive experience with stalling and crashing RC aircraft has ingrained the push reflex into my body’s physiology. It took a lot of power failures, stalls and crashes...

Practice really can pay off; 1) to avoid pulling and surprisingly 2) not overdoing it as it is easy to do on some aircraft.

Remember that on MOST AIRPLANES when the power shuts down, the nose will start coming down on its own, just go with the flow and help it a bit. (This particular aircraft may require a definitive push, I don’t know)


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you can see as he taxis out there is a moderate amount of maneuverability but once he stalls it there is absolutely no controllability. DO U SEE WHAT I DID THERE???? :)
 
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Damn, move the stick forward and this is a non event.
 
Oh, and 3 minutes from engine start to take off roll??! No good.
 
Taken bymaybe the pilot should have done a run up.
 
I once read an article by a CFI who had a close friend killed when he spun in after an engine failure at 400ft. The friend was report-ably a very good pilot with over 500 hrs experience if he wasn't a CFI he was close to getting his CFI.

As a result of this accident the CFI did some non-standard testing. Because he could not understand how a well trained, proficient pilot could make such a basic mistake as stall the plane after a power failure. I don't remember how exactly he did it but he was able to create a real power failures without the pilot flying realizing it was a simulation. He found that if you could actually make a pilot think they had just had a real power failure at 400 feet that something like 8 out of 10 pilots would instinctively pull on the stick during the "this can't be happening stage" and many would get dangerously slow which of course the CFI was prepared to deal with.

Something to think about when you Brief you emergency procedures before take off.

Brian
CFIIG/AWL
 
CC268 said:
I did some simulated engine outs on takeoff during my PP training - it was a great exercise - you really gotta get the nose down and keep it down, it's kind of scary thing if you've never seen it.
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Yes it can be scary, especially if climbing out at Vx in a lot of airplanes from 50 feet it may not be possible to push the nose down enough to have enough energy to flare without damaging the airplane.
 
brcase said:
Yes it can be scary, especially if climbing out at Vx in a lot of airplanes from 50 feet it may not be possible to push the nose down enough to have enough energy to flare without damaging the airplane.
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The stick needs to go forward, not backward, this guy is lucky he was low, another 25 feet and his reaction would have killed him. Screw the plane, keep it flying to just above the ground, then land. I think if he had reacted correctly, he would have settled to the runway and landed without incident.

Edit, you're a Cfi so you know how unnatural it can feel to push the stick forward when the plane is low and too slow, but it has to be done.
 
benyflyguy said:
Wow. Painful to watch. Glad they are ok. With that kind of response to an engine out, in a way they were lucky to engine out so early. Imagine the vid if it was at 3000-agl!!!
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If they were at 3000 feet it would have been better. He would have pushed the nose down and kept the airspeed up and had lots of time to find a place to land.
 
pigpenracing said:
If they were at 3000 feet it would have been better. He would have pushed the nose down and kept the airspeed up and had lots of time to find a place to land.
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More time to recognize the problem and work things out vs. more altitude to fall from. Depends on the pilot how it works out.
 
Wow - tough to watch, but an important lesson to be reminded of. Practice those slow flight stalls!
 
The engine didn’t stop without warning, you could hear it having problems about 3 seconds before it stopped.
 
Coolant leak due to a crappy casting. Coolant overflow container attached improperly preventing seriousness of leak from being discovered. This was just a series of relatively little things that snowballed into a crash. Kudos to the pilot for sharing his video of the crash, he must have thick skin, hopefully learns from this and flies again. We can all learn from this, the main lesson IMHO is complacency can kill you. We should tolerate no imperfections in these machines. We need to be relentless and tireless in our search for imperfections and make it our business to see they are resolved quickly.

Part 2 and 3 of these videos.



 
teejayevans said:
The engine didn’t stop without warning, you could hear it having problems about 3 seconds before it stopped.
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It shouldn't have taken a warning. As soon as it stopped producing power he should have pitched down (or at least stopped hauling back). It would have been an easy glide to the runway rather than demonstrating a departure stall on departure.
 
He also tried to lift the wing with the stick. Looked like it made the left wing stall harder as it started to rotate.
 
A light near-ultralight plane like that has little energy so it slows down FAST. Also the high thrust line means there's a significant nose up tendency when power is reduced suddenly. Much more so than a heavier plane, you have to aggressively push the stick forward RIGHT NOW and the glide angle will be steep nose down.
 
Two things to remember about this aircraft: it's a pusher with a high thrust line, and it is light an draggy. With takeoff power, the pilot has to counteract the big thrust line with some back pressure on the stick, and once you lose power, you need to get the stick forward not only to reverse the back pressure you had because of the high power setting, but also to overcome the dragginess of the airframe.

If you're flying a hang glider that's being aerotowed and the line breaks, it's the same, you've got to get the nose down immediately.
 
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