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There I was on an instrument flight plan in our Mooney at 14,000 ft on a relatively clear afternoon in May. I was on my way up to northern Wisconsin when I penetrated a medium-sized cumulus cloud. Picked up a little ice but it was no big deal. In a couple minutes I was in clear air and it burned right off.
Thirty miles down the road another cloud appeared on the path. This one looked larger and meaner but I remember thinking; it can’t be that bad because there were hardly any clouds in the sky, the last one was a piece of cake and ATC didn’t mention anything bad along the route. Besides, I’d have to request a course correction and maybe add three or four minutes to the rest of the flight. How inconvenient…. But just to be on the safe side, I flipped on the prop and pitot tube heat.
Then it started to get a little exciting. Embedded in this deceiving mass of moisture was a nasty mix of freezing rain and snow. The words severe and convection also came to mind. Within a couple minutes I was covered with every type of ice known and it was accumulating QUICKLY! I had about an inch of ice building and it seemed everywhere, including the windshield. Holy Schnikees! (that’s a Wisconsin phrase) how did I get into this mess? I immediately called Center and announced my situation and requested a lower altitude and course deviation. I knew there was warmer air down below and the cloud didn’t look THAT big. He approved the course change and cleared me to 8,000 ft. That’s when the real fun started. The engine died!
You gotta be kidding me. Now I had no power, I was covered in ice and couldn’t see forward while gliding toward hard things on the ground! So in a feeble voice I called back the controller and casually mentioned that I had an engine problem and seemed to have lost power. Immediately he came back in that official FAA tone; “Mooney XXX what are your intentions”? I always hated that question. I was almost hoping he would tell me what to do! Now the FAA and every airplane in the sector was listening for my well thought-out plan of action. Without declaring the dreaded Mayday, the best I could come up with was: “I’m trying to get the engine started and I’ve started my descent” - Duh.
Moments later the word “aviate” came to mind. Ground school instructors were always talking about “aviate, navigate & communicate”. - in other words, when you get in a tight situation up there, your first priority should be to - fly the plane.
OK, I got the plane under control but I was still going down and frontal visibility was zero cause the entire airframe was encased in hard water. A “controlled crash” came to mind.
In couple minutes, which seemed like an hour, I finally broke out of the Cb cloud from hell and was back in VMC. Then I quickly went through the emergency checklist: Switch fuel tanks from right to left - check. Mixture full rich – check. Emergency booster pump on – check. Feather the prop (you can do that with a Rocket conversion), set up the appropriate descent airspeed allowing for the ice and don’t forget the defroster - done. Then I pressed the special button on the GPS to locate the nearest airport. Three hundred and twenty degrees and seven miles over there - OK, that’s doable. A slow descending turn to the left, say a Hail Mary and start looking for some clues as to why a relatively new engine was not running.
Lets see…the left fuel gauge on the instrument panel indicated 27 gallons. The one on the right read 22. The outside fuel gauge on the left wing read 27 gallons and the right one read zero. Wait a minute… zero on the right! That doesn’t look … By the time my panic-stricken brain started to process this minor bit of information, the engine coughed & sputtered and miraculously fired back to life! Oh thank you Mother Mary, I promise to be a better person.
So what happened here? Well the rest of this story is kind of academic and maybe even a little boring. Eventually the ice burned off and I continued to Antigo (AIG) where I topped-off the tanks and took a hard look at the right fuel gauge on the instrument panel. The arrow was still in the same position fixed on 22 gallons. Like a big dummy, I trusted the gauge on the panel and ran the tank dry just when things looked their bleakest.
Yeah I know that when you seasoned wingmasters read this you’ll probably point out that I should have done this or I should have double-checked that. And how “one” should never trust fuel gauges and “one” should always avoid those icy springtime clouds. OK my friends, you’re right. I should have done all those things and a maybe a few more. But like all of us who happen to be human, I too am prone to stupid mistakes and can only view this experience as another valuable flight lesson learned the hard way. Hopefully by this short story I’ve illustrated an example of how a series of small errors can lead to one giant screw-up…
Thirty miles down the road another cloud appeared on the path. This one looked larger and meaner but I remember thinking; it can’t be that bad because there were hardly any clouds in the sky, the last one was a piece of cake and ATC didn’t mention anything bad along the route. Besides, I’d have to request a course correction and maybe add three or four minutes to the rest of the flight. How inconvenient…. But just to be on the safe side, I flipped on the prop and pitot tube heat.
Then it started to get a little exciting. Embedded in this deceiving mass of moisture was a nasty mix of freezing rain and snow. The words severe and convection also came to mind. Within a couple minutes I was covered with every type of ice known and it was accumulating QUICKLY! I had about an inch of ice building and it seemed everywhere, including the windshield. Holy Schnikees! (that’s a Wisconsin phrase) how did I get into this mess? I immediately called Center and announced my situation and requested a lower altitude and course deviation. I knew there was warmer air down below and the cloud didn’t look THAT big. He approved the course change and cleared me to 8,000 ft. That’s when the real fun started. The engine died!
You gotta be kidding me. Now I had no power, I was covered in ice and couldn’t see forward while gliding toward hard things on the ground! So in a feeble voice I called back the controller and casually mentioned that I had an engine problem and seemed to have lost power. Immediately he came back in that official FAA tone; “Mooney XXX what are your intentions”? I always hated that question. I was almost hoping he would tell me what to do! Now the FAA and every airplane in the sector was listening for my well thought-out plan of action. Without declaring the dreaded Mayday, the best I could come up with was: “I’m trying to get the engine started and I’ve started my descent” - Duh.
Moments later the word “aviate” came to mind. Ground school instructors were always talking about “aviate, navigate & communicate”. - in other words, when you get in a tight situation up there, your first priority should be to - fly the plane.
OK, I got the plane under control but I was still going down and frontal visibility was zero cause the entire airframe was encased in hard water. A “controlled crash” came to mind.
In couple minutes, which seemed like an hour, I finally broke out of the Cb cloud from hell and was back in VMC. Then I quickly went through the emergency checklist: Switch fuel tanks from right to left - check. Mixture full rich – check. Emergency booster pump on – check. Feather the prop (you can do that with a Rocket conversion), set up the appropriate descent airspeed allowing for the ice and don’t forget the defroster - done. Then I pressed the special button on the GPS to locate the nearest airport. Three hundred and twenty degrees and seven miles over there - OK, that’s doable. A slow descending turn to the left, say a Hail Mary and start looking for some clues as to why a relatively new engine was not running.
Lets see…the left fuel gauge on the instrument panel indicated 27 gallons. The one on the right read 22. The outside fuel gauge on the left wing read 27 gallons and the right one read zero. Wait a minute… zero on the right! That doesn’t look … By the time my panic-stricken brain started to process this minor bit of information, the engine coughed & sputtered and miraculously fired back to life! Oh thank you Mother Mary, I promise to be a better person.
So what happened here? Well the rest of this story is kind of academic and maybe even a little boring. Eventually the ice burned off and I continued to Antigo (AIG) where I topped-off the tanks and took a hard look at the right fuel gauge on the instrument panel. The arrow was still in the same position fixed on 22 gallons. Like a big dummy, I trusted the gauge on the panel and ran the tank dry just when things looked their bleakest.
Yeah I know that when you seasoned wingmasters read this you’ll probably point out that I should have done this or I should have double-checked that. And how “one” should never trust fuel gauges and “one” should always avoid those icy springtime clouds. OK my friends, you’re right. I should have done all those things and a maybe a few more. But like all of us who happen to be human, I too am prone to stupid mistakes and can only view this experience as another valuable flight lesson learned the hard way. Hopefully by this short story I’ve illustrated an example of how a series of small errors can lead to one giant screw-up…