Bonanza belly landing

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hyphen81

Pre-takeoff checklist
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hyphen81
Searched for a post on this but didn't find any. I figured someone had surely posted this video already.

Awesome job by the pilot..

http://youtu.be/jJxvMA9njx8




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hyphen81 said:
Searched for a post on this but didn't find any. I figured someone had surely posted this video already.

Awesome job by the pilot..

http://youtu.be/jJxvMA9njx8




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

There's a post about the incident somewhere already; don't know about this specific video.

That's my office building in the background at about :26, but I wasn't at work that day. Co-workers watched from the boss's 3rd floor corner office.
 
You missed out on all the fun! There is another video of this I saw on Facebook that was better than this one.


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It could have been awesome but he forgot to kill the engine before setting it down. If he had, the damage would have been negligible, as it is, the engine has to come down.
 
Jimmy cooper said:
It could have been awesome but he forgot to kill the engine before setting it down. If he had, the damage would have been negligible, as it is, the engine has to come down.
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Eh, that's why we have insurance. Would pulling the mixture be enough to do any good or would you need to make sure the prop stopped completely? If it's the latter no way am I going to focus on that in an emergency.
 
Jimmy cooper said:
It could have been awesome but he forgot to kill the engine before setting it down. If he had, the damage would have been negligible, as it is, the engine has to come down.
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Killing the engine, pull the mixture, kill the mags, the prop still windmills. Sudden engine stoppage by prop strike regardless if the engine was under power or not. It's still an engine tear down.

You need to practically stall the aircraft to get the prop rotation to stop. Not a good thing to be trying on final approach.
 
dukeblue219 said:
Eh, that's why we have insurance. Would pulling the mixture be enough to do any good or would you need to make sure the prop stopped completely? If it's the latter no way am I going to focus on that in an emergency.
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But....if you knew the airplane well, had flown it a lot, and had a lot of hours you could gave easily done it and you could have saved the engine.
 
Jimmy cooper said:
But....if you knew the airplane well, had flown it a lot, and had a lot of hours you could gave easily done it and you could have saved the engine.
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It takes a lot of altitude and holding the plane at near stall speed for an extended period of time to stop most non-feathering constant speed propellers.
I haven't tried it in a Bonanza but it would not surprise me if it is nearly impossible to stop the prop.

Brian
 
I'm going to ask a really dumb one because I've never tried it.

If you pull the prop control to full pitch (with approach power) then pull throttle to idle and kill the mixture quickly, the prop still would not stop? The blades are ALMOST feathered....right?

Take it easy on me...
 
On a single, even at min RPM setting, the blades are far from "feathered" like they would be on a twin.
 
txflyer said:
I'm going to ask a really dumb one because I've never tried it.

If you pull the prop control to full pitch (with approach power) then pull throttle to idle and kill the mixture quickly, the prop still would not stop? The blades are ALMOST feathered....right?

Take it easy on me...
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Nope, not at all... High pitch is on a CS is pretty close to a cruise-pitch fixed. For an example with the 172RG, high pitch is 26.5 degrees (low is 12 degrees, for an entire range of 14.5 degrees), where as the analagous feathered pitch would need to be around 85 degrees or more, or almost another 60 degrees. Quite a big difference there...

Edit: Looking at the BE-76 with the same O-360 and similar 2-bladed props, it has a feathered pitch of 81 degrees, with the same operating pitch range.
 
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Well, your odds of getting the prop stopped and level are poor.
I could not get a green light on the nose gear and even though the guys on the ground said the wheel was down I knew it would go over on it's chin. Both mains were showing green. So I briefed the wife, landed about 5-6 knots faster than normal and holding the nose clear of the ground reached to cut the mixture. Just then the left main gear folded up. From that point I was too busy keeping the plane from cart wheeling to be bothered with the idling engine.
After the dust cleared she said the only thing she heard from me was 'that's not fair' as the gear collapsed. Apparently I was too busy to even cuss.

Interesting part of this story is after we got the plane picked up and towed off the runway, she insisted that I get another plane and we finish the trip.
 
I filmed one of these a few weeks ago, Cessna 172rg at Scottsdale . No USA today filming that one.
 
dans2992 said:
On a single, even at min RPM setting, the blades are far from "feathered" like they would be on a twin.
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In fact, they're almost certainly to be at the fine pitch setting which is sort of the complete opposite of feathered.
 
I am thinking the insurance company owns the plane at the point the gear would not come down. I'm hanging onto that engine just in case I botch the approach at the end and need to go around for another try. It would make for a worse day if I killed the engine and needed to try again to line up better or catch a wacky crosswind, etc, etc....
 
tngarner said:
I am thinking the insurance company owns the plane at the point the gear would not come down. I'm hanging onto that engine just in case I botch the approach at the end and need to go around for another try. It would make for a worse day if I killed the engine and needed to try again to line up better or catch a wacky crosswind, etc, etc....
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+1. And guess how much walking away from an emergency landing will make you care about the internet chest beater heroes (who have never actually done it) who say you are an inferior unskilled pilot for doing what you did. ;)
 
flyingron said:
In fact, they're almost certainly to be at the fine pitch setting which is sort of the complete opposite of feathered.
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Why does decreasing RPM help extend the glide ratio then? I always thought it brought the prop (on a single) back towards courser pitch?
 
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Jimmy cooper said:
It could have been awesome but he forgot to kill the engine before setting it down. If he had, the damage would have been negligible, as it is, the engine has to come down.
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Killing the engine deliberately creates two emergencies rather than just the one. Plus you have to get below windmilling speed then sit there and bump the starter which distracts from flying the airplane and dealing with the emergency you didn't choose to create. Besides, trying this with a 3-blade prop is nearly pointless.

Unless you have two pilots on board, my vote is just fly the airplane. No one dies in gear-up landings *on pavement* unless the pilot tries to get fancy. On that note, kudos to the pilot and passengers - they got out it a bloody HURRY! They were prepared (and motivated!) :thumbsup:

There was an incident here in Denver recently that happened on a (IIRC) MEI check ride. I believe the DPE was Andy Munnis. They were able to kill both engines and one pilot bumped the starters while the other landed the airplane. The result was that neither engine suffered a prop strike (2-bladers IIRC). Another local DPE, Craig Thighe, showed me the pics that Andy took. If you had to have a gear-up, having it on a VFR day with two highly experienced pilots at the controls would be ideal.
 
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dans2992 said:
Why does decreasing RPM help extend the glide ratio then? I always thought it brought the prop (on a single) back towards courser pitch?
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It does help extend glide a bit as compared to fine as it is slightly closer to feathered, but again, reference my post above and you'll see that even high on a single is a loooooong way off from being feathered.

And besides, in real world scenarios in which you lost the engine and a higher pitch would help, the majority of singles will automatically move to low pitch when oil pressure is lost, so you wouldn't even be able to get to high pitch.
 
Assuming no massive leaks in the oil system, would windmilling provide enough oil pressure to move the blades into high pitch?
 
dans2992 said:
Assuming no massive leaks in the oil system, would windmilling provide enough oil pressure to move the blades into high pitch?
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If so, once they stop the oil pressure would drop to zero then they'd go back to windmilling I imagine. :dunno:
 
This is a future exercise on my list.

Get some altitude and see just what it takes to stop the prop.
 
In an emergency the insurance company owns the airplane. Pilot's job is to get down and stopped without hurting him/herself or the pax. Good on the Bo driver. Even quality machines break now and again.
 
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