Emergency Landing

Lance F

Lance F

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Lance F
My friends are here, but I had a flying experience this week that I felt I should share with a larger audience. So if anyone is interested in the emergency/precautionary landing I had to make Thursday, my write-up is in the Never Again AOPA Forum titled Emergency Landing at Sedona. It's a bit long.
 
Lance F said:
My friends are here, but I had a flying experience this week that I felt I should share with a larger audience. So if anyone is interested in the emergency/precautionary landing I had to make Thursday, my write-up is in the Never Again AOPA Forum titled Emergency Landing at Sedona. It's a bit long.
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Wow - thats a crazy story man. I'm glad everything worked out OK for you and your friend. Craziness that both Mags freaked at the same time!!!
 
Lance F said:
My friends are here, but I had a flying experience this week that I felt I should share with a larger audience. So if anyone is interested in the emergency/precautionary landing I had to make Thursday, my write-up is in the Never Again AOPA Forum titled Emergency Landing at Sedona. It's a bit long.
Click to expand...
Here, I'll cross post it, from Lance's AOPA post:

I did my longest XC yet in my Mooney, and it was an experience. I had a trade show in Las Vegas, so the mission was 9A1 (Covington, GA) to KHND (Henderson Executive just south of Las Vegas). I left last Wednesday solo with the first leg to KGPM (Grand Praire, TX) where I stayed overnight with my parents. Thursday I flew the rest of the way with a stop in St. Johns, AZ for lunch and fuel. Total flight time ~11.5 hours, and I used 103 gallons of fuel. I was on an IFR flight plan the whole way but encountered very little IMC. The views out west were spectacular.

Ken, my low time pilot partner in the aircraft, flew to LV commercially this Wednesday just so he could fly back and get the XC experience. I filed IFR, but he flew left seat as VFR conditions were expected to our first planned stop. We left KHND Thursday at 8:15AM. Less than two hours out I heard a definite engine sound change and the EDM800 engine monitor right in front of me started flashing high EGT. All 4 EGTs had shot through the roof. The engine sounded normal. Ken had not noticed anything. I richened the mixture (we were flying at 13,000', 5 -10 dF LOP at 7.5 gph), and the EGTs came down a bit but definitely not normal. I tried the boost pump and that didn't change anything.

We were over absolutely inhospitable terrain, but I noticed one magenta circle on the Garmin which was probably set on a 35 or 50 nm range. I identified it with the cursor as KSEZ Sedona, AZ. At this point I was still trouble shooting, and the PF hadn't caught on to my concern. At this point I glanced at the ASI and saw we had lost about 20 kts of airspeed. That meant to me the engine was losing power. I pushed the PTT, "Albequerque Center, Mooney 57039 has an engine problem, request direct Sedona." I got the clearance, hit direct KSEZ and told Ken to turn immediately. I told him what I had been doing and that we might have to make an engine out approach. Actually about a year ago we had practiced an engine out approach with him flying from altitude.

As it turned out we had plenty of altitude to make the airport, and the engine was still making some power. I called the unicom and announced our condition. I was asked if I wanted the equipment, but after some hesitation I declined. We orbited down and got in a good position on final where we could make the field with no power if necessary. Ken did an acceptable landing considering. As he turned off the taxiway, the engine died. Meeting us was a fire truck, an EMS van, a pickup from the FBO and a police car with the blue lights flashing. Shortly thereafter a reporter from the Sedona paper showed up with camera and notepad...must have been a heck of a slow newsday.

They towed the plane up to a maintenance shop where a SUPER mechanic, Patrick, took over. After I explained all the symptoms, he had the cowling off in minutes. I'll shorten the story here to say he approached the problem very systematically eliminating one thing at a time. Eventually he got the Bendix mag cover off and found the root cause. Both sets of points were worn down to nothing. One mag was probably doing nothing, which caused the EGTs to shoot up. The other was delivering decreasing power to the plugs as the dwell was getting to be about nothing. In the end Patrick charged us 5 hours of time which was incredibly fair.

After a short test flight Ken and I decided to spend the night in Sedona and get a fresh start Friday morning, which we did. The flight Friday went fine, and we were back home that night after a stop at Stillwater, OK for fuel ($3.12 per gal !).

Total time on the plane 25 hours. Experienced gained...priceless. And BTW, Sedona is beautiful.
__________________
Lance Flynn
Mooney M20J
N57039
 
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Thanks, Bruce for cross-posting, and thanks, Lance for sharing. Always good to hear of a happy ending, and also good to hear about a good and conscientious mechanic.
 
wow that is great (the end result); good job Lance.
Hey, how many hours on those points? I may have to revise my SLL on my 'Bendices' depending on what you report.
 
Good job on the problem recognition and emergency and correction actions. Glad you are alright.
 
The mag was overhauled in August 2002 and has accumulated ~354 hours since then. Although there are comments at annuals that timing was checked, this does not appear to be the same thing as checking point gaps. My guess is that it was never done. The "conventional wisdom" appears to be that you don't have to go into these things until 500 hours. NOT!

This is my wake up to learn a lot more about the care and feeding of mags...you can't leave home without them.
 
Thanks for sharing that, Lance. I would have assumed that this would be checked in the annual, so your story is a real good lesson.
 
Lance F said:
The "conventional wisdom" appears to be that you don't have to go into these things until 500 hours. NOT!
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Yeah, my mechanic and mentor is a 'mag'alomaniac; we look at the points Q6months/every 100 hours...... the 500 hrs is for total rebuild I think.... many new parts - for those who rebuild vs exchange.

PS You can (externally) time the mags without actually exposing the points so that is what probably happened there.
 
Lance F said:
The mag was overhauled in August 2002 and has accumulated ~354 hours since then. Although there are comments at annuals that timing was checked, this does not appear to be the same thing as checking point gaps. My guess is that it was never done. The "conventional wisdom" appears to be that you don't have to go into these things until 500 hours. NOT!

This is my wake up to learn a lot more about the care and feeding of mags...you can't leave home without them.
Click to expand...

Yikes! 3 years without opening the mags.... That was always something I did in the process of annualling/100 hr inspecting planes, physically check the points, gap and condition of all lead wires in there then reset the timing. It typically only takes a few minutes. It gets all the ignition timing back up to snuff, since a change in dwell will cause a change in timing, but reseting by only rotating the case for points break will lead to a weakening spark. There is also an issue of checking for parts corrosion.
 
Lance;

Thank you for sharing your story. I am very glad that the engine monitor was "right there" for you.

Thanks again

John
 
bbchien said:
You need ten year olds' sized hands to do that job...
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Nope, go see the Snap Ontool man, he'll set you up with a big flat headed stubby screwdriver set with a little one way slip handle, you can pull the harness and covers with it, you then work in a mirror. Little more of a pain in the a$$, but it's still required regardless how much a PITA it is. Just because it's tough, doesn't mean you can skip it.
 
The other thing that can be a good idea in systems with multiple identical parts is to time their servicing and replacement so they don't occur at exactly the same time. F'rinstance, the mags - I remember being tiffed that a failure away from home of one meant that they now were 'out of sync' with each other on their inspection and rebuilt times. Til I got to thinking about how that could be a benefit.
 
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