Engine Failure at Night
- Thread starter ajstoner21
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PilotAlan
Pattern Altitude
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PilotAlan
You have to know the terrain you're over.
If you take off from Denver going east, 99.9% of the ground is flat enough to make a survivable landing on. You could land in a dark area, and have a very good survival percentage.
Go west, however, and the dark areas are places they can't build anything, meaning mountains.
In Florida, the dark areas are trees or water. Aim for the light, even if that means you have to clip a light pole.
Know your terrain.
elmetal
Pre-takeoff checklist
This man knows what he's talking about. Dark is the last thing I'd aim for here in Florida
spiderweb
Final Approach
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Ben
I had a stuck valve in a 172 at night and for a few minutes, felt like it was all over til I figured out what was wrong.
We lost a local MD when his 172 ran out of gas at night. Hit the only tree for hundreds of feet in a field near Baytown.
How did you remedy a stuck valve, in flight???
infotango
Line Up and Wait
Didn't something like this happen to CowboyPilot?
flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
Full throttle & rpm and lean lean lean. Hopefully you'll get an "unstick" as it cools and then burn the crap off of your valve stem or valve seat. That's about all you can do.
spiderweb
Final Approach
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Ben
Thanks! And how can you identify a stuck valve, in flight?
bbchien
Touchdown! Greaser!
How? Much less power, everything shakes like heck, if you even read the engine monitor, the EGT will go up and the CHT will go down.
PilotAlan
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That's gators for everyone not familiar with swamps.
Well, you can't definitively. You will know you have a dead cylinder by the way the engine is running, you can confirm which cylinder is dead if you have an engine analyzer by the temp, but you can't with any certainty say why the cylinder is dead. You may be able to tell if it is electric, fuel, air or compression related, but that's about as far as it goes and that requires special knowledge and circumstances.
That depends... If there is only a slight leak, then maybe EGT will go up, but EGT will go down eventually as you can't produce enough compression for combustion. Small leaks are typically caused by carbon deposits on the seat which is bad as well. Usually when you hang a valve it creates a failure of combustion. One of the ways to determine hanging valve(s) is having sporadic EGT readings as the valve works and quits (sticking-unsticking-sticking... is not untypical) sometimes happening on different cylinders.