Your opinions please...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... hbvZ-3TX4g#!

Dumb with a Capital D

I like that they did it with enough height to set up for best glide, run the appropriate checklist and give the kid a proper haircut before they made the forced landing. Very smart.

Dumb, end of story.

I agree with the forced approach to landing part. This is something that was conspicuously absent from my PPL training--my first simulated forced approach to landing was in a seaplane, the second in a 172 at night...

As for shutting the engine off, I don't think it is necessarily dangerous, it's just that the risks don't justify the rewards in a training environment.

And before I get flamed for saying it isn't necessarily dangerous, lets look at some other scenarios. Gliders don't have engines, and do rope breaks at about 300' to return to the airport. Is that more or less dangerous than a 150 or whatever that is right above an airport with no engine? Slide it up a bit, a self-launcher who has his engine stuck up but not running. A motor glider?

Now lets look at a 150 over Roger's Dry Lake with the engine shut down. Piece of cake, right? Now right over a large field. Now over an airport. Now a mile away from an airport. If it were me, I'd rather be in the 150 over Roger's Dry Lake than the self launcher trying to get a POS two stroke motor to start miles away from the airport at minimal altitude.

Because those are gliders means they can count a little more on lift and perform a bit better, but they also have to ensure that they have a safe place to land within gliding distance. For something like a Ventus, it will be further away than something like a 2-33. For our 150, it will have to be closer, virtually right over top of the airport.

Of course, as skill level goes up you can do even more... look at Bob Hoover for example.

But again it comes down to necessity. What is to be gained by actually shutting down the engine verses simulating it, and what is risked? The uploader of the video seems convinced that it makes the forced approach more real. But having done one in real life, I found the adrenaline improved my performance greatly all on its own with the training I had. If that is the case, then a decent simulated forced approach should form a good basis for a real one.

Around 80 % of all engine failures in light aircraft are directly caused by the actions or inactions of the pilot. The best way to deal with an engine failure is to not cause the engine to fail in the first place, Yet almost no FTU has incorporated a holistic, evidence based, set of operating SOP's and best practices so that students operate the aircraft in away that will minimize the chance of them causing the engine to fail.

For every total engine failure there is at least 2 partial engine failures. Yet how many FTU's cover what to do in the event of a roll back in power, a surging engine, or sudden engine roughness ?

Instead all the emphasis on flight training is on what to do in the event of the least likely possible engine failure scenario, an otherwise normally operating engine suffers a sudden complete failure.

To make matters worse the "cause check" which is your last chance to get power back if the failure was indeed pilot induced is hardly ever emphasized during PFL's. Instead the pilot mindlessly rattles off a few things so he can get on with the "important" part of the excercise doing the PFl procedure. Yes of course being able to fly the aircraft to your chosen point on the ground is a necessary skill, but I terminate any PFL where the student doesn't start with an effective cause check including verbalizing and touching all the appropriate controls (Note this occurs after the carb heat is out, the glide attitude is established with the aircraft trimmed and it is pointed at a landable area).

The Ahh Ha moment for me was an actual accident that occurred many years ago when I was a junior instructor. Buddy (low time PPL) was flying his C 172 when the engine suddenly stopped. He was in an ugly area but managed to shoe horn the airplane into a tiny patch of open bush. The airplane was destroyed and there were some injuries but no fatalities. When the wreck was examined the left tank was empty, but the right tank had 10 gals of gas and unsurprisingly the fuel selector was selected to the left tank.

I talked to the guy later and asked why he did not check the selector. His response was a big wake up call to me. He said that his instructor never made a big deal about the cause check and instead emphasized the importance of flying the PFL. With the shock of the sudden failure he reverted to what he had been trained, an engine failure was all about flying the procedure, yet in this case full engine power could have been restored with the first action of the cause check "fuel selector to both".

To make matters worse his instructor always told him that the fuel gauges where "useless" and to never believe anything they said. So he first had a chance to not have the engine fail if he as part of a regular scan noticed that one tank was showing near empty which would have cued him to check the fuel selector and then had a second chance to fix the problem with cause check, instead he got to fly a beautifully executed, but totally unnecessary forced approach.

Pop quiz: assuming a total engine failure from cruise, after you do your cause check with no luck restoring power, what is it vital you do next with respect to in cockpit actions ?

Good points. I dont see any reason to stop the prop either. Just make sure students understand that glide preformance improves when it does. A better excercise would be quietly turning the fuel selector off in cruise to see how long the cause check actualy takes.

Fuel guages....they are never useless. Even if they only ever wave happily from one side to the other, at least they serve as a reminder, waving "hey, over here! Its gonna get quiet unless you pay attention to us too!"

I don't think it's much worse than tossing a fuel sample on the seat and lighting it up to train students how to work the fire extinguisher.

willow burner wrote:A better excercise would be quietly turning the fuel selector off in cruise to see how long the cause check actualy takes.

Well, that came up recently in the forums, and apparently it's a seriously dangerous exercise and my former instructor should have been dragged out, drawn, and quartered for it. (I still think it's a reasonable and helpful exercise.)

At least more useful than the 6-month rental checkout I just had: a simulated engine failure with enough residual power I could have probably flown it all the way back to the airport (because the book said xxxx RPM, and so that's what he gave me), a second failure on the climb out where I was criticized for an extreme maneuver (nose down, 45 degree bank to turn away from houses, towards a perfect grass field. Apparently we could have easily spiralled out of control.) This was followed by a third failure in the circuit where he chanted the whole time I was too high and too fast. (40 degree flap in the 172, didn't even need a full-slip to get it down and rolled onto the taxiway opposite the hanger, more than 1000 feet of the runway left.)

When I can afford to stop renting, I'm going to get my fiance to get her license. The problem is that most instructors seem so inexperienced, incompetent, or are just hour-counting passengers. (I am a low time PPL weekend-warrior. I sound arrogant but I'll stop when the instructors stop sucking.)

Big Pistons Forever wrote:Yet how many FTU's cover what to do in the event of a roll back in power, a surging engine, or sudden engine roughness ?

The one I trained at recently does.

To make matters worse the "cause check" which is your last chance to get power back if the failure was indeed pilot induced is hardly ever emphasized during PFL's.

Again, it is, in my experience.

I think you're being a bit hard on FTUs.

photofly wrote:
I think you're being a bit hard on FTUs.

I sure hope so, but I am just going by what I have seen lately in CPL's I have been training for the Instructor rating.

slam525i wrote:This was followed by a third failure in the circuit where he chanted the whole time I was too high and too fast. (40 degree flap in the 172, didn't even need a full-slip to get it down and rolled onto the taxiway opposite the hanger, more than 1000 feet of the runway left.)

With flaps 40 a Cessna comes down pretty fast so if you had to slip it as well and were still well down the runway then your instructor was absolutely right, you were too high and too fast.

Seems to me you could now do 2 things.

1) Practice some power off approaches out of the circuit so you touch down right on the 500 ft or 1000 ft markers ( depending on runway lenght) without having to slip, an excellent general handling exercise, or

2) Decide that you are better than all those instructors "who suck" and don't need to work on your already superior flying skills.

BPF wrote:I talked to the guy later and asked why he did not check the selector. His response was a big wake up call to me. He said that his instructor never made a big deal about the cause check and instead emphasized the importance of flying the PFL. With the shock of the sudden failure he reverted to what he had been trained, an engine failure was all about flying the procedure, yet in this case full engine power could have been restored with the first action of the cause check "fuel selector to both".

Of interest to you then is how training has changed somewhat with regards to teh excersise. Given when you were a junior instructor, the PPL flight test graded ex.22 based primarily on the student's ability to glide the airplane to a chosen spot, so instructors concentrated upon this aspect of the excersise. If your lowest level student could pull a simple glide off the excersise would be probably graded a "1" and would result in a passed flight test (assuming they scored a few "5"s to compensate). Since we've had such a low bar for people to have a license, its hard to blame instructors for making sure people meet a standard that most of us here feel is too low.

Now TC has changed its view on the excersise - perhaps due to incidents like you describe - where now the procedural portion of ex.22 is graded separately and the student can possibly fail the test on that alone. This means that the excersise is given the heaviest weight of any item the student is taught of all the excersise that appear on the flight test. Consequently, many instructors (and flight schools) have went overboard in the other direction. Many students are being taught these obscene checklists to go through in the event of a prop stoppage. One can immediately tell anymore how long someone has had a license by how they perform said excersise.

Here's things I've learned about this process.

1) Many pilots have exceedingly poor systems knowledge and resist all attempts at gaining it. Consequently only cause checks of the most basic kind they are going to be able to deal with when faced with the emergency. People don't problem solve in real time very well as evidenced by the accident rate out there. I think in a recent article Mike Busch remarked upon how pilot of all experience levels treated the power loss scenario - they're not mechanics after all.

2) Given that problem, often we have to train people at their basest level. Thus if the engine stops, or loses power we must still hammer home the importance of the glide and making the field. Its my opinion that it still takes precendence. No one knows how people are going to perform in a real emergency. In most cases (in my experience) its going to be somewhat less than heroic.

3) Until we up the standard we expect out of pilots, we're always going to have this issue. That's all there is to it. We will continually have pilots where there best job will simply result in hopefully them surviving some bent metal.

Big Pistons Forever wrote:With flaps 40 a Cessna comes down pretty fast so if you had to slip it as well and were still well down the runway then your instructor was absolutely right, you were too high and too fast.

BPF, you're entirely right of course. The reason I turned in that early was the tower wanted us to keep it tight for traffic. I was trying to be helpful by doing something I knew was well within both the airplane's capabilities and my own rusty abilities. (It's a fricking 4000 foot runway!) I was really just annoyed at the instructor at his inability to estimate a glide and his general disinterest. (The guy didn't even stick around for a debrief. Just asked if I had any questions and said he'd meet me inside. By the time I had tied up the plane, he had gone off to lunch and left the paperwork with dispatch.)

Am I a shit-hot ace? No. I'm a PPL weekend warrior. Do I have a valid complaint about the quality of instruction that seems to be common at FTUs? Everyone has an opinion on that.

Edited to add: Not to say that there are no good instructors at FTU. I know of several that are absolutely great and I've learned a lot from. Some of them are even young! The problem is for every great instructor, there are 2 crap ones. I suspect a big part of why so many PTRs end up abandoned is because so many students have crap instructors and don't know it.

Did you by any chance make it clear (in the air) that you thought the instructor was poor? Maybe he didn't want to stick around because you'd given him the impression that you didn't want to hear anything he had to say.

Maybe he thought that you weren't interested in actually learning anything and that you wouldn't appreciate him sticking around to debrief.

I'm not saying that's true, of course, but it's very easy to give the wrong impression.

Good god. Well, at least my mind went from "Holy crap, this is absolutely retarded" to "Almost as retarded" when what looks like a 6000 ft runway finally popped into view.

So even with a very minimal risk of actually making that long runway, it's just a matter of time before they need an overshoot and are going to splooge right down onto a plane/coyote/ufo.... In the last year I've had to overshoot twice in about 100 approaches due to airplanes/vehicles taxiing onto the runway.
All you could do is hope that you could get it cranked and coughing out full power in time. Really dumb, and what happens if the landing gets away from them? Bad bounce in the runway? Or worse yet, Porpoising??


As far as the fuel selector goes. I was shown a great technique that I like to use. Distract the student and turn the fuel off before engine start. At least in a C172 it will die out well before taxiing. That won't be soon forgotten.

photofly wrote:Did you by any chance make it clear (in the air) that you thought the instructor was poor? Maybe he didn't want to stick around because you'd given him the impression that you didn't want to hear anything he had to say.

Maybe he thought that you weren't interested in actually learning anything and that you wouldn't appreciate him sticking around to debrief.

I was actually hoping to find a good instructor. (Again, I'm sort of non-actively looking for one for my fiance.) I was trying to be friendly and engaging, asked him to tell me a little about himself (he wouldn't tell me), so... Maybe I came off as too curious. Maybe he thought I was questioning his qualifications when I asked him to tell me a bit about himself as an open ended question. Maybe I should have treated the 6-month check as a test, and not a learning experience. *shrug*

dumb and not very useful.

But the video poster thinks it is: <<IF YOU HAVE NEVER HAD A FEW MINUTES TO FLY AROUND WITH THE DRAG OF A STOPPED PROP AND SEE HOW FAST AIRSPEED CAN GO AWAY THEN YOU ARE MISSING A VERY IMPORTANT STEP IN "BEING READY.>>

A stopped prop has a whole lot less drag than a windmilling one.

its quoted from the video description....

A stopped prop has a whole lot less drag than a windmilling one

It sure does. I doubt anyone cares, but frequently
in a twin, when the gear doesn't come down, pilots
like to feather both engines before touchdown, and
with the reduced drag, they quite frequently sail
down the runway and wreck the airplane, crashing
into whatever is off the end of the runway.

This technique is employed to save the engines.

PS It's actually not very easy to stop the (fixed
pitch) prop on a light trainer. Not sure how many
of the experts here on the subject have actually
done it, but the times I did, it wasn't easy. You
had to hang there, nose high, at a very slow speed
for what seemed to be a very long time. Personally,
that's probably the highest risk portion of the flight
for most pilots - likely they would stall/spin out of
that.

Shiny Side Up wrote:
Of interest to you then is how training has changed somewhat with regards to the exercise. Given when you were a junior instructor, the PPL flight test graded ex.22 based primarily on the student's ability to glide the airplane to a chosen spot, so instructors concentrated upon this aspect of the exercise. If your lowest level student could pull a simple glide off the exercise would be probably graded a "1" and would result in a passed flight test (assuming they scored a few "5"s to compensate). Since we've had such a low bar for people to have a license, its hard to blame instructors for making sure people meet a standard that most of us here feel is too low.

.

Well since I have done 3 Instructor Ratings, One Aerobatic Instructor rating and 2 PPL's in the last 3 years I think I am familiar with the flight test guides and what is tested.

The problem with ex 22b is that you are marked on 4 areas

a) complete the basic vital actions from memory

b) follow up with a checklist for "engine failure in flight"

c) simulate and appropriate radio call

d) perform an efficient emergency safety review.

From what I am seeing lip service at best is paid the item "a", the most important one. Students are just spouting off a series of actions, usually as one very fast continuous sentence, then the checklist gets waved at the examiner. After that a whole lot of attention and effort seems to be focused on really important stuff like saying mayday three times and your full call sign three times giving a painfully detailed description of what your problem is and where you are, along with an elaborate and lengthly passenger brief.

Human factors research clearly shows that only a few simple actions are going to get done under the pressure of a real unexpected emergency and that muscle memory is a very important factor in successfully completing checks when under pressure.

There are only a few things you can do from inside the airplane to get a failed engine going again.

- Ensure the carb heat is full on

- Verify the position of the fuel selector/shut off valve and check fuel quantity

- Verify the position of the mixture control

- Verify the position of the magneto switch and try each mag individually

What I teach is that this check is carried out in a slow and deliberate manner with each control being touched as the actions are verbalized. This builds the critical muscle memory that is going to save your ass.

As for the mayday call the shorter the better because you have better things to do than talk on the radio. So one mayday, one call sign, state the fact that your engine has failed and give an approximate position relative to something conspicuous. There is no need to say you are doing a forced approach as saying that your engine has failed should make it obvious that you are going down. Then do something that actually is going to help, turn your radio off and your ELT on.

Same with the passenger brief the shorter the better. If your passenger has his/her seat belts really tight and knows how to open the door then they have the essentials.

There have been, as near as I can recollect, 10 airplanes based at my home airport that have made forced approaches after an engine failure

2 = mismanagement of the fuel selector

2= carb ice

4 = fuel exhaustion

1 = EFATO because of water in the fuel

1 = catastrophic failure of a connecting rod.

The first 2 would not have happened if an effective cause check had been carried out

The 4 ran out of gas failures would not have happened if proper flight planning had been carried out and the fuel gauges had been monitored in flight

The EFATO occurred after the pilot jumped into and fired up with no walk around inspection at all, an airplane that had been sitting outside in the rain for over a month.

Don't be that guy ! Plan your flight, pay attention to what the gauges are saying in flight and practice your cause check.

The bottom line is simple. If you are standing next to your wrecked airplane in some field, there was an 80 % chance you where stupid.

DanWEC wrote:As far as the fuel selector goes. I was shown a great technique that I like to use. Distract the student and turn the fuel off before engine start. At least in a C172 it will die out well before taxiing. That won't be soon forgotten.

Be careful with that one.

You or somebody who was taught it might forget to turn in back on. In a 172, no biggie. In a 185 or Cherokee Six, you'll have enough fuel to get airborne, and that is all. BPF makes a good point about most engine failures being pilot-induced.

Colonel Sanders wrote: PS It's actually not very easy to stop the (fixed
pitch) prop on a light trainer. Not sure how many
of the experts here on the subject have actually
done it, but the times I did, it wasn't easy. You
had to hang there, nose high, at a very slow speed
for what seemed to be a very long time. Personally,
that's probably the highest risk portion of the flight
for most pilots - likely they would stall/spin out of
that.

ROTAX FTW! I love how those engines sound like somebody has thrown a wrench into them when they stop.

http://youtu.be/E3MlRRM9tpA

Big Pistons Forever wrote:
b) follow up with a checklist for "engine failure in flight"

Is it a good idea to be digging out your checklist rather than looking for a place to put the plane down? I can't imagine the checklist is going to be much help (assuming you can actually remember to check the throttle, mags, fuel, magnetos, carb heat and mixture from memory).