It was the prop windmilling. He didn’t feather the prop which means the pitch of the blade wasn’t changed to neutral thrust. He talked about this on the AOPA site. this is a big deal on a twin engine airplane that loses one engine because it adds drag which requires more rudder to correct which means a loss of climbing thrust from the other engine.
The main wheels on tail-draggers are more forward than tricycle gear planes so the process of ground looping is different. I’ve seen a banking plane strike a wingtip so low that it successfully pancaked into the ground flat.
true, but I guarantee you that loss of the plane plays a part in the decision process of even the most experienced pilot even though it shouldn’t.
It’s obvious based on his overshoot of the runway that he had the altitude needed. He also didn’t attempt to land on the runway he took off from which was a harder maneuver to execute.
He was in a high performance plane that gave him lots of altitude in a short distance and that is what is important. 500 feet is a meaningless number if it isn’t related to distance from the airport. In this case he was still very close. He was fortunate to have departed from an airport with a cross runway to land on.
Do Mooneys even have a feathering prop? I haven’t flown any single piston engine aircraft that had a feathering prop. You could pull it into course pitch but it wouldn’t be feathered the way a twin would be.
In the AOPA link, it shows him taking off on runway 18 and returning to the same runway. Here is a quote from the AOPA presentation:
The presentation also has animation showing the ground track of the flight.
Had he made a left turn, he would not have had to turn as much, he would have had a longer runway, and there would not have been trees to clear.
It’s a constant speed prop that has a more neutral position. The pilot admits he didn’t touch the prop. He pulled the mixture off so the spinning prop was driven by the wind. When I first saw the video I thought he lost the impulse coupler and couldn’t get the RPMS out of the engine. I had that happen on run-up once and could NOT get the engine to rev up on the other mag. I must have really soaked the plugs when I did it. When it says 2 seconds to full throttle, believe it.
I stand corrected and I agree that a left turn was a much better choice all around. His biggest problem in this case was bleeding off altitude.
I guess my next question is when you say he pulled the mixture off it means that he shut off fuel to the carb/injector system right? In an case of a partial engine failure is it better to kill the engine and then pick the spot where you plan on running out of airspeed and altitude at or to try to nurse a few more minutes/seconds of power out of it to get to a better landing/crash site?
I can’t tell from the audio track on the video I saw but did he experence a total engine failure or did it just start running very roughly?
Years ago when taking two friends up for a Christmas light tour (air temp ~15F), the engine faltered just after takeoff. I considered the Impossible Turn, but instead started looking at the state highway just in from of us while coaxing what little power I could out of the engine. I was able to climb a little more, then turned back to the pattern and landed normally.
After turning off the active runway and starting the rudder pedal tap dance, it occurred to me, doh! I should have applied carb heat. My friends lost interest in the Christmas lights.
I think if you’ve got some power then you should try and use it, but you need to be wary of turning away from a good landing site that’s close in favour of one that’s further away. If the engine fails completely will you have other equally good landing sites to choose from? It might be better to use the power you have to get to the same landing site in a more controlled way.
I haven’t read his report but it’s standard procedure to secure the failed engine prior to landing so typically you’d turn the fuel off, pull the mixture to idle/cutoff, turn the ignition off, and turn the battery master off. You’d only do those things if and when you don’t need them though. It’s done mainly to reduce the fire risk.
Mixture controls the fuel/air ratio. All the way out is ‘idle cut-off’, where it leans the mixture so much that the engine won’t run. I don’t remember the mechanics of it, but the ‘cut-off’ position might reduce the fuel in the ratio to 0%. Engines are shut down by pulling the mixture, rather than turning off an ignition key. (That’s turned off after.)
He lost a jug. One of his cylinders had an undetected crack in it, and it finally failed.
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losing a cylinder in an airplane is usually a violent affair. The plane will shake badly. In this case all the balanced mass of the piston assembly remained intact so it probably was more of a rough running engine. If it was mechanically fuel injected then the injector would have poured fuel onto a hot manifold. Since he just took off it may not have reached peak temperature but a properly leaned motor can make them glow from the heat. A carbureted engine could probably have continued to run as long as the intake manifold stayed attached.
I had a mag drop out on a Shrike during the take-off roll once. Lost about 500 RPM, there may be two of the things (magnetos per engine), but not a lot happens at full power on just one.
when an impulse coupler dies the engine timing changes by something like 25 degrees. This happened right as I throttled up to full power and I ignored the 2 second requirement of the carb. Not only did the engine run rough with the badly timed mag I couldn’t get it above 1100 rpm on the other mag and no amount of leaning would change this. I limped back to the hanger. Started it up on the other mag the following day and it ran fine. I’m thinking of replacing the impulse coupler spring every 3rd annual for peace of mind.
what’s scary in the Mooney engine situation is that the cylinder didn’t show a loss of pressure during the last annual and the crack appeared to have been there for awhile.
So it wouldn’t go over 1100 on just the other mag, i.e, with the ignition selected to the good mag only? Weird. So you think that part of it was related to increasing the power too rapidly for the carby?
The Shrike doesn’t have impulse mags, it uses a shower of sparks system to get started so it was just a complete mag failure. I had expected a mag failure to only result in a drop of around 50-100 RPM but at full power the drop was significantly higher. I aborted the take off and went back and parked it.
Apparently. That and it was running badly timed before I switched over.
Nothing like an aborted takeoff to make you think about flying a kite instead.
??? Why? Part of flying. Most things are when not if.
In multi-engine aircraft I have had engine stop for several reasons, and some resulted in aborted takeoffs.
Same in single engine aircraft…
if you fly for your living, it is the exception to go for your whole career without some of those things happening.
Most of my aborted takeoffs had nothing to do with engine troubles.
Pilots doing things out of turn and without looking.
Passengers doing things all of a sudden that you don’t want to be airborne while they do it.
All kinds of things…
Bird impacts, & other wildlife appearing out of nowhere.
The list goes on.
I have seen a coyote cause an 737 to abort it’s takeoff.
YMMV
I’ve been in a twin with an engine failure 20 feet off the ground. The plane was immediately dragged off the runway path before the pilot could stabilize it and we cleared the trees with the stall horn going off intermittently. I could clearly see the prop wash on the tree tops. Fortunately it was a plane with a higher hp conversion because it would have meant putting it down into the ditch of a cross runway with the stock engines. The time it takes to go full rudder/nose down and feather a prop seems like an eternity at 20 feet.
What pilots of small planes don’t appreciate is how much drag a slowly spinning prop creates. It was all the difference between 200 ft per minute and almost no climb. My own plane is a fixed pitch prop and when I upgraded to a larger engine/prop it was amazing how much drag that prop produced at idle. It acts like a speed brake. I can nose over at idle and establish a tremendous decent rate where before the plane would quickly accelerate to VNE.
Sure sounds like bad technique and bad habits to me. Why were his hands not on the throttles? Why was he not prepared for this mentally? Why did he lift off below VMC? In a twin, unless it is an emergency, you do not lift off before you are above single engine control speed? If, with you in the plane (load) and the runway so short that he had to drag it off just above stall speed to clear trees,… Real bad decision making and you should never fly with him again. Those kinds of guys do not become old pilots very often.
If you were in a place where the runway is short or other reason for lifting off early, then you are are damn well prepared for just this scenario to happen. Actually, that is what you should be expecting at every take off. You already have your responses all lined up in your head because as you saw, there is not time to think when it goes sideways. You must be doing instantly.
If a pilot does not understand the drag of a fixed pitch propeller under various conditions of power, or the lack of and other things by the time he has his PVT license, his training was deficient. It is very easy to demonstrate even in a single engine aircraft.
Actually most multi-engine pilots do not understand or know how much better their aircraft will glide with both engines shut down and the propellers feathered.
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