Richard
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Ack...city life
Disregard. Whenever Kimmy and the lovelorn Tim get involved the thread goes to ****.
Failed engine on a night flight...
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Richard
Final Approach
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Ack...city life
Did you mention your braking? How was that?
Smoke in the cockpit, declare the E, manual pump down the gear, land, roll out and taxi without brakes????
No, he did not use the word 'hosed'-- that's basically what I thought of, however, when he was explaining to me what might happen with a failed engine (or needing to put the plane down for any reason) at night. The scenario that he was explaining to me seemed to be one of dire circumstances (in my mind 'hosed') and I wanted to find other ways to consider the situation, hence, my post.
Maybe I should have said that I was paraphrasing (from my perspective, obviously) and not directly quoting him.
In any event, I did get a lot of wonderful advice from everyone here, and I'm most appreciative of that.
DavidWhite
Final Approach
No, I had brakes.
MBDiagMan
Final Approach
I will take my chances with stuffing the plane in a nook, cranny, open bowl or many other places that are around before I bail out only to parachute down onto a rock face.... I can control my plane better then gravity and the wind steers the chute... IMHO.
Next time you fly over any hostile terrain look REAL close and I bet you can pick out numerous spots to have a controlled, survivable crash.
Ben.
metalman
Pre-Flight
seems to be pretty standard advice and pretty good at that,,,,unless your in Australia,,airports are connected by vast empty spaces ,a night rating here is an add on to a PPL (or higher) and although I would love the view the risk is pretty high for single engine ops, most guys/gals go for a full IFR rating
cheers Mat
jesse
Touchdown! Greaser!
Well depending on the circumstances you very well may be hosed. Not sure why you should fire a CFI for teaching you to accept the reality of the risks you're taking.
MBDiagMan
Final Approach
I will take my chances with stuffing the plane in a nook, cranny, open bowl or many other places that are around before I bail out only to parachute down onto a rock face.... I can control my plane better then gravity and the wind steers the chute... IMHO.
Next time you fly over any hostile terrain look REAL close and I bet you can pick out numerous spots to have a controlled, survivable crash.
Ben.
At night?
I'm going on my first night flight tonight and my instructor said that the thing about night flights is that if you have an engine failure and need to do an emergency landing, you can't really see any fields, so you're kind of hosed, but do your best. This wasn't a very comforting thought.
I thought I'd ask all of you pros here if you had any other ways to look at engine failure at night (without the benefit of the light from a full moon)... as far as landing ideas. (Although I realize there's always a lit up freeway, right? We can land WITH traffic...).
Any other ideas? Suggestings? Different perspectives?
Directly after I received my PP with 41.5 hrs I took off on a solo cross continent trip in an Arrow from Long Beach to visit family and friends around the country. On the way out as I was crossing the Desert towards Vegas in the morning I was looking down spotting places to stick it should I lose an engine. There were tight spots in the midst's of buttes and large boulders, but they were doable. A couple weeks later I came across the same track line in the wee hours of the morning coming home on a New Moon night and realized that a failure of the engine at that time would leave me pretty much looking at luck to choose a correct spot.
What I decided to do about it was buy a twin, I'm on my second now. In the intervening 20+ years about 1/3rd of my personal flying time is night and I have made 2 night OEI (one engine inoperative) landings safely on a runway.
Night or low IMC in a single engine plane has 2 links of a 6 link accident chain forged when you take off, so it requires extra vigilance against and instant remediation of (which may mean landing on the closest runway you can get to) the formation of any other links. The problem with this is that night brings with it a natural fatigue factor so it's more difficult to do along with making some links difficult to recognize.
Now, a clear full moon nocturnal flight I have no issues with single engine, typically I can easily see what I need to be able to see to make a 'go' call. Don't get me wrong, it's not like I won't go SE on a dark night, the risk/benefit equation just needs to have a good enough benefit, typically something like a pay check, but most of those guys have twins as well. There is a reason that PT 135 SE recip flights are Day VFR.
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That is the beauty of SVT....
In the Rocky Mountains it is usually snow covered 10 months out of the year and even on a relatively dark night you can read the terrain... On full moon nights you almost have to wear sunglasses.. Also, as slow as my Zenith 801 flies I can crash land at 40 MPH or less.... I will take my chances with the plane instead of a chute.....
Ben.
gprellwitz
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Grant Prellwitz
But a better argument for infrared, which is realtime and accounts for shifting terrain and vegetation such as you might find in you desert example a couple of posts up. SVT is using modeled data, so cannot account for these.
MBDiagMan
Final Approach
Thanks for this write up Henning. I have thought about night flying alot. If I had the means to buy and feed a twin (Hmm... I'm married to one and I've managed it for 37 years
) that would MOST DEFINITELY be my solution. Since Miss Piggy is about all my budget will stand, probably for the rest of my life, my night flying will be minimal.
TMetzinger
Final Approach
Off-airport landings have higher risks that can be reduced, but not eliminated, by things like SVT, or Infrared, or having a flare launcher on your aircraft.
The pilot technique is still the same - maintain control of the aircraft at the lowest possible energy state, and try not to hit anything head-on.
The pilot technique is still the same - maintain control of the aircraft at the lowest possible energy state, and try not to hit anything head-on.
FLIR most definitely has it's uses, but it is not 100% either. I've used FLIR a good bit over in Indonesia running at night. The problem with it is that when everything in the vicinity is near the same temp, you get a rather monochrome display mostly just showing waves because the change in the surface angle. For example in Indo the water is very close to body temp and an Indo wood canoe is the same temp again; because the air and water temp are similar as well you don't really see them unlit paddling along with their sandals... except for the bright cherry on the end of their cigarette... and you only get that about 1/4 mile away, once inside 1/8th mile you start getting detail. In urban settings with many sharp thermal contrasts they work much better, but the system does have it's limitations. Due to the expense of FLIR (considerably higher than SVT, and to get the really good stuff you need to get permission from DOD, I had to go through a bit to get a good one shipped to Aus, the normal low cost $6000 units are not quite as good on imaging, but what the difference is that matters to a pilot using it for landing is the delay. The more expensive restricted units don't have the same issue (it's also why they're restricted because they are fast enough to use for targeting, or at least that was the excuse I was given). I did see a demo video of a FLIR system that displayed as the background of the PFD of a G-IV or V landing in basically O/O looking out the window at white and panel showing a perfect FLIR pic of the runway being landed on. It was pretty cool but if you think the price of a G-500 w/ SVT is high a FLIR system would be considered outrageous.
Thanks for this write up Henning. I have thought about night flying alot. If I had the means to buy and feed a twin (Hmm... I'm married to one and I've managed it for 37 years
No need to reject night flying, it's the most beautiful time to fly really, the air is smooth, the sun isn't beating on you and the lights are cool. Just make sure you don't have any other strikes against you going up and try to keep it to nice clear bright moonlit nights and keep your panel as dim as possible (I often turn all the interior lights off) and you'll be amazed at how well you see after about 15 minutes.
One of the absolutely coolest views in the United States is flying from Las Vegas to Long Beach at night @ 12'500. It's dark forever with a smattering of light here and there, just flip through the 122.x's and click the mic lighting up runways around, and then you pass over the ridge North of Big Bear (I like to fly down close to ridge line height for maximum effect) and the entire sea of lights in So Cal just open up, and when it's really totally ultra coolest, in competition for the best view in the world is when there is a thin marine layer over the entire SoCal basin and the entire basin just has an ethereal yellow glow with bright colored spots in it. On a Santana night you can click on 122.7IIRC and light up the runways at Catalina and San Clemente.
dell30rb
Final Approach
Around here if you're over 8000 feet you are almost guaranteed to be in gliding range of a lit airport.
dell30rb
Final Approach
Flare launcher is an interesting idea. I wonder how difficult it would be to get one of those bright flares that parachutes down?
Simple, you need to instal a launcher, or you could use a good SOLAS parachute flare fired back and up out the storm window. You can buy white 'practice/illumination flare' units. Best would be to launch it just as you make your downwind-base turn.
http://www.landfallnavigation.com/solaspara.html
TMetzinger
Final Approach
Just make sure you get a successful launch. You do NOT want one of those things in a confined space.
dell30rb
Final Approach
The handheld parachute flare up and out the storm window was exactly what I had in mind. How feasable is it to launch out of the window though? say you had shot one off once or twice.
It wouldn't be very is the long and short of it. If you had an A/P or second pilot it would be pretty doable, just slow it down and aim up and out on steep 60* slope. The reality is that in an emergency situation unless it is a true 2 pilot cockpit, the distraction and fumbling with the flare will be the greater risk over the dark.
gprellwitz
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True. OTOH, didn't there used to be some GA aircraft with built-in flare dispensers (not used for ordnance or countermeasures)? Don't know that any are still operational, though (or that the flares are actually available, for that matter).
Yep, I used to fly an old Bonanza that had a three tube launcher on the port side, it was rigged for use in a USCG Aux Air wing. You can still find the WWII flare rigs in salvage collections, not sure what kind of flare you'd get for them anymore nor what kind of rigamarole you'd have to go through to install it these days.
TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
For those that haven't seen these, here's what they look like... I took this picture at OSH last year:
https://picasaweb.google.com/104864247395730348780/Oshkosh2011#5636408964786709538
What model was that on? You know what years it was an option. The one I'm thinking of I believe was a K though it may have had an engine upgrade.
TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
Look at pictures 54-61 in that set... the full N number is there, if nothing else... should be able to figure it out from that. I'm not a Bonanza expert. It sure was a gorgeous restoration!! And the Pirate's Cove next door was quite the setup, too. The Pirate himself owned the Bo.
Here's a picture of the Pirate with his plane and his bride (you might have noticed the "Judge my plane" replaced with a "Judge my wife" sticker on the plane in the OSH picture set).
EDIT: Full N number isn't in any of those photos, but a little searching found it; it's N3214C, a 1954 Beech E35 out of North Carolina, a co-ownership per FAA records (owner info removed below):
N-number : N3214C
Aircraft Serial Number : D-3878
Aircraft Manufacturer : BEECH
Model : E35
Engine Manufacturer : CONT MOTOR
Model : E225 SERIES
Aircraft Year : 1954
Owner Address : MOREHEAD CITY, NC, 285573152
Type of Owner : Co-ownership
Registration Date : 04-Aug-2000
Airworthiness Certificate Type : Standard
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gismo
Touchdown! Greaser!
A three tube flare launcher was standard equipment on the early Bonanzas. The 1954 E35 I used to own still had the switches but the tubes were covered with a patch. IIRC an AD was issued that required deactivation because they were prone to getting launched in the hangar and starting some nasty fires.
Jeanie
Pattern Altitude
Thanks for this write up Henning. I have thought about night flying alot. If I had the means to buy and feed a twin (Hmm... I'm married to one and I've managed it for 37 years
Well, if you get your CFI you will find yourself flying at night more than you ever thought.... I am and I'm getting more comfortable with it, even starting to enjoy it, but out here it's risky with terrain and no airports closer than 50NM apart.