First real emergency

I go to sleep and look at what all I missed. What a nightmare, glad you worked through it and got down safely. You did all the right things.

I've had a couple mishaps with the hydraulic system on the old Arrow, one resulting in a partial gear up position from a busted hydraulic line, and another time when the electric gear pump started wigging out. Fortunately the Piper system is stupid simple so they were relatively non events for me.
 
Now that we've all had a chance to pat David on the back...

Listen to the recording again. His voice gets higher. ;) ;) ;)

Not a lot, but since I had to listen multiple times last night to edit it, it subtly became noticeable after I listened a number of times.

Heh heh. I only noticed because I've done a lot of listening to dispatch tapes during "exciting" moments analyzing them, transcribing them, etc.

The key lesson is that your adrenaline WILL go up. It's natural.

Knowing that yelling into microphones and/or talking-really-fast-and-breathy-when-scared will absolutely kill the ability to communicate on two-way radios.

David is obviously controlling his voice to speak clearly and succinctly, which is exactly what you must do.

Whether his voice control is conscious or not is a very individual thing, but I've coached Communicators who had to do it consciously. Some don't.

The absolute worst is fire scene recordings of firefighters yelling through headgear. Add in the distortions created by digital radios (thank goodness we'll be analog AM on the Aviation band virtually forever due to the massive install base!) and there have been firefighters killed by it.

Radio recordings after the fact are fun. Especially when they're a good example. :) :) :)
 
At first I was talking really fast. Once I got the gear down I breathed a cautious sigh of relief and slowed down a little bit. You can't hear the call where I told them the gear wasnt coming down and he rolled trucks.
 
Didn't hear the declaration of the emergency either. Or did I just miss it?
 
The KAUS feed (like many LiveATC feeds) is a radio scanner on multiple frequencies.

If one channel is quiet for a while, the scanner pops on over to the next busy channel in the list.

The switching seemed to prefer all the ground traffic at KAUS during David's adventure unfortunately.

That's why there are two KAPA feeds. I liked (and appreciated) the feed that one guy here in town is doing that has TWR/GND/APP all programmed in, but DEN APP would get busy and you'd never hear any KAPA traffic on it.

So I grabbed an old scanner, a Pentium III beater machine, and loaded a copy of Ubuntu Linux for free, since I live close to the airport, and asked "Uncle" Dave (Pascoe) if little ol' KAPA could have a second "Tower only" feed.

He said "sure", so I sent him login info for the box, and a couple days later, KAPA TWR was born. It's programmed with all three Tower frequencies and nothing else.

About the only annoyance is the fan in that old machine is a bit noisy. I keep meaning to buy a 12VDC powered motherboard to rebuild it in a tiny "car computer" case so it can live in the guest bedroom closet.

Before that though, it's getting an antenna upgrade this summer. Need a bit more antenna gain to hear the aircraft with weak radios over on the East ramp. That scanner also has some odd-sounding audio. Would like to find one that's a little better.

But free is free... It was all built with free components I already had on hand. I hope folks enjoy it. I regularly have it on my iPhone while out driving around town wishing I were at the airport instead. ;)

There's been a number of us scratching our heads over DIA for years. No one lives close enough to clearly hear ground traffic since its out there in the boonies.

There's a commercial tower nearby but it doesn't have even low-speed Internet access.

Airinc's ground facilities are nearby but no one in our little gang of hunters has found someone with the authority and silliness to say "install those receivers in our cabinet here, that's a great project!"

I have access to tower sites well West of town that have "look down, shoot down" (ha!) capability for DIA but they also have high power transmitters at nearby VHF frequencies and can be hard to access for maintenance in winter. The former can be fixed with filter cavities, but cans for Aviation VHF are relatively hard to come by that don't have lots of insertion loss, and they take up a lot of space. The latter means an outage might mean we need a snowmobile to go fix it mid-winter.

Another brainstorming session led to the realization that an antenna on top of the KFTG control tower would probably work, if there's a way to get a small amount of non-firewalled Internet bandwidth up there. No contacts there either.

So far, no great ideas on how to get DIA covered on LiveATC yet.

By the way, you Nebraska-heads...

KLNK would be easy if someone could beg Silverhawk to use their building to stick up an antenna and a tiny part of their Internet connection.

Heck, upstairs somewhere would probably work without putting an antenna on the roof.

We could all listen to you yahoos running laps out there. ;)
 
Nice job. I am sure that was absolutely NO FUN.
 
SCCutler said:
My only emergency was smoke in the cockpit of a Cessna retract as well, so is the takeaway message, "avoid Cessna retracts?"
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I'd just say avoid Cessna singles. Although the twins aren't known for having the best landing gear systems, but that's typically manageable provided you don't smash the nosewheel down on the ground.

So why was Jesse with Ted, or are we talking about a different Ted or Jesse?
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Jesse accompanied me on a dog flight from Houston to Massachusetts yesterday. We got down to Houston Monday evening, and David was going to join us for dinner. Flew 18 puppies!

Well done, David! Sorry you weren't able to join us, but very glad that you were able to handle the situation well.

For what it's worth, about 80% of my hours these days are in aircraft with hydraulic systems for the gear and/or flaps. Aztec, Navajo, Cheyenne, and Commander all have hydraulic systems. The only problem I've had was a leaky hydraulic pump on the Aztec, which we replaced. I've found them to be reliable. However, it also depends on the design and maintenance. The design of the Piper systems is quite good.
 
Here is the cause of the problem

394046_2732404309792_1247804014_32086320_566602791_n.jpg


A broken O-ring on the entry port hydraulic screen. The hydraulic power pack kept trying to pump to bring the hydraulic system back up to acceptable levels, and got really hot. Therefore the cause of the heat, we still arent sure how the smoke got into the cockpit. There was hydraulic fluid all over the windshield and sides of the plane, it was worse than I thought it was Monday.

I'm now a minor celebrity at redbird skyport, though.
 
Is redbirdmskyport in Dallas? I thought you live in new braunfels.... Confused
 
A broken O-Ring is what caused the crash of the Challenger space shuttle, in 1986. It was a much bigger one than yours, and with a much more critical role as well (it was supposed to seal the joint between two segments of a solid fuel booster) but it was a broken O-ring nonetheless.

I'm glad you had a much better outcome.
 
Yes, I was just thinking of Redbird airport in Dallas... Apparently Redbird skyport I'd an FBO at San Marcos
 
DavidWhite said:
Here is the cause of the problem

394046_2732404309792_1247804014_32086320_566602791_n.jpg


A broken O-ring on the entry port hydraulic screen. The hydraulic power pack kept trying to pump to bring the hydraulic system back up to acceptable levels, and got really hot. Therefore the cause of the heat, we still arent sure how the smoke got into the cockpit. There was hydraulic fluid all over the windshield and sides of the plane, it was worse than I thought it was Monday.

I'm now a minor celebrity at redbird skyport, though.
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I see your life line is a bit shorter than normal. But that is to be expected when 1 of 9 lives are used.

Would smoke have entered the cockpit through the firewall? My big question is how the gear extension handle became so hot. To what temp is metal required to cause 2nd degree burns to flesh? By what mechanism would a significant rise in temp be transmitted to the manual gear extension handle?
 
I have with held my comments. David, you kept your head. That's great. As someone pointed out, with smoke in the cockpit (and teary eyes and maybe thoughts of fire, you had the composure to lower the gear). You did good.

But I have been wondering what would you have done if there were fire in the cockpit? I am fairly confident you have played the scenario in your mind a hundred times. And now that you have had time to calm down what have you concluded? And please tell me you wouldn't have been wearing Birkenstocks if this ocurred during the summer.
 
If there was a fire I would have landed as fast as I could. The plane would belong to the insurance company, but I would have hopefully walked away.
 
OMG David I was so nervous to listen but in the tapes you sounded like a champ. Absolutely thrilled you came out OK.

And this was at NIGHT.... so even worse.

I've already flown with you in your plane so I know you're a great pilot.

Hopefully this will be your first - and LAST - true emergency. I'm guessing you were alone with no passengers? I wonder what a non pilot or even a pilot passenger would have done in this situation.
 
Damn fine job, David. I hope I'm as cool as you were if I ever face a similar situation.
 
kimberlyanne546 said:
OMG David I was so nervous to listen but in the tapes you sounded like a champ. Absolutely thrilled you came out OK.

And this was at NIGHT.... so even worse.

I've already flown with you in your plane so I know you're a great pilot.

Hopefully this will be your first - and LAST - true emergency. I'm guessing you were alone with no passengers? I wonder what a non pilot or even a pilot passenger would have done in this situation.
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Was this at night? If so, I missed that part.

With pax, you give them something to do. Attach value to it so they feel they are doing something vital. Even if it is committing to heart the evac procedure. Or, monitoring comm 2.
 
FWIW Hyd fluid sprayed onto the overheated motor or a Cessna Hyd powerpack will generate smoke...


BTDT glad I only had to replace the stuck solenoid and not be the guy to land it!
 
Richard said:
Was this at night? If so, I missed that part.

With pax, you give them something to do. Attach value to it so they feel they are doing something vital. Even if it is committing to heart the evac procedure. Or, monitoring comm 2.
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See the photo on the first page (dark / at night) and also he stated what time he was flying to help us find the ATC feed (7:30pm or so). Sunset in that area for that day was around 6:20pm.
 
My first e was a total electrical failure, solo, at night. It was nothing and everything like David's.

Everything went blank and how was I to know if it was only a sign of something worse to come. My sniffer was going full speed to detect any smoke or burning wire. It was less eventful than David's but the thing is you don't know at the time. I remained surprisingly calm.

David did the right thing. Not only the right thing but the right thing in every step to meet the emergency.
 
Mtns2Skies said:
+1, I truly hope I can perform as well as you did if I'm ever faced with a situation like that.
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This is where training kicks in. Time slows down. Hopefully you have recieved adequate training and you listened.

You WILL do the right thing if the above is true. This is the true nature of Law of Primacy.
 
You aint lying about time slowing down. The time between when I declared and when I landed was less than 10 minutes, but it felt like an hour.
 
DavidWhite said:
You aint lying about time slowing down. The time between when I declared and when I landed was less than 10 minutes, but it felt like an hour.
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Hiyup,

Mine was probably about 5 min or less and it still feels like an hour+ even a few years later.
 
DavidWhite said:
You aint lying about time slowing down. The time between when I declared and when I landed was less than 10 minutes, but it felt like an hour.
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David, you must understand, you have become a lesson by which we learn. Nothing personal, mind you.
 
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