My Stearman had to be shut down as it had loud expensive noises at 1500 feet.i was very lucky . I did what I was taught , lowered the nose , kept up my speed and landed in a farmers field with no damage. It turned out to be lousy mechanic who did not set valves properly, loose nut came off rocker arm. Two flying hours prior to this I was over the chesapeake bay with passenger taking pictures of sail boat raceand regardless of my " plan" I probably would have flipped and drowned. Plans are great while home in your easy chair but in a split second of a real engine failure who knows how you'd react in spite of your " plan" reading the accident reports you find many students with CFIs attempt a 180 at low altitude. Not good. I attribute many of these failures to poor maint, lousy mechanics and or cost cutting by the owner. ( I had to stretch the glide but by this time knew the Stearman well and knew by sound how I was doing . Probably had three hundred hours in it at that time ....lucky.
You didn't have to be over the bay in a single, without a plan other than ditching, that was a personal choice and risk taken.
Ran the gauntlet and took your chances, doesn't matter if the mechanic caused it, or a hairline crack in some metal part that couldn't be seen upon inspection.
As far as "what you'll do" when it finally happens, you still have the choice to follow your plan, or not. Adrenaline and emotions are controllable things, but not all learn how to control them in controlled environments to make it easier to do in uncontrolled ones.
If you've allowed them to overtake rational thought, you'll probably do the wrong thing. Might get away with it, might not.
Helps to know how you react in similar but less deadly situations outside of a cockpit. You'll probably do the same thing in the cockpit unless you've trained it away. Folks who fly often partake in other motorsports or activities that aren't forgiving of weak skills or equipment failures. Many of those are marginally safer than aviation and a few "events" in those activities will show you all you need to know about yourself and how you'll react.
Even just losing control of a car on snow and ice and how you handle that will be an indication of how you'll handle in-flight emergencies. If you tend to freeze and watch the world go by, you'll do it in the airplane, too.
Can show you plenty of failures where no expense was spared, the mechanic was the best possible for the type, and crap still broke. Don't let the primacy of your first engine out, convince you it'll always be someone's fault. Nor that hiring the best will keep it from happening again.
It doesn't matter in the air anyway. Maybe the mechanic screwed up, maybe the casting machine making the part had a design flaw, maybe it's just not your day. Fly the plan, and you'll have already figured out your best survival option. Over the bay, you had a weak one. Over land, you picked a field and landed in it.
The thread is about a Bo on a takeoff, not a failure in cruise. In cruise, you get to choose an altitude. Not so much during a climb out. You had more options and time than a pilot has during a takeoff. Takeoffs without a plan for the mill quitting don't leave much time to make up a plan on the spot.
Over the bay, you had a very weak plan, and that's certainly not a judgement of you, you're allowed to have a weak plan, but it's just fact. Ditching a Stearman is not high on anyone's list of things they'd probably want to attempt. Perhaps the photos were worth it, perhaps not, that's your call as PIC.
Over land, where your engine quit, you either already had that field in sight and that was your plan, or you made your plan quickly at the moment it failed. Lots and lots of time compared to a low level departure failure.
Either way, pretty normal stuff for flying a single.
The suck, squeeze, bang, blow thing up front doesn't have any backup. That's just the reality of it. You make your peace with it as you push the throttle up and commit to going aloft.
Doesn't matter if you have a "lousy" mechanic or a great one, because you won't survive to fire him, if you're not mentally prepared for the thing to quit at any time.
I don't see your ability to land your Stearman in a farm field as luck. But you had time to plan it. Even if the plan was quickly done at altitude. We don't get that luxury below about 800' in most powered aircraft. Better to know what has to happen than attempt to make it up when you're that low.
Hasn't been a machine built yet that won't break. The assumption should always be that they will.
in a Christen Eagle that glides like a brick!
