Wasn’t that an especially “likely” accident to happen, if you weren’t carefully warned, in the days when someone hand-cranked the prop to start the engine, then had to step forward (hopefully, stepping around the prop) to remove the chocks from the wheels? I think I’ve heard of brains getting shredded that way.
The '50s-style cartoon on the poster gave no context. Just a shocked-looking guy being dismembered by the prop on a scowling airplane. As a kid, I assumed he was hand-propping the plane (though this was a far from common practice by that time). Later it occurred to me that he may have simply walked into a spinning propeller, or the pilot started the engine when the guy was within the prop’s arc.
Sad news up here. I heard on the radio as I drove home yesterday, that there was a plane crash in Pierce County. Northwest Cable News reports this morning that the airplane was a 1946 T-6. FAA records show it as a 1956 AT-6C. I’m a little confused, as the AT-6C/SNJ-4 went into production in 1943 (I think), and it was the -G that was built in the '50s. (I don’t have access to my T-6 book at the moment.) Witnesses report that the engine was ‘sputtering’ or ‘cutting out’, and that the pilot tried to turn back to the runway. The aircraft crashed in the woods, resulting in fatal injuries to both occupants.
Completely unrelated: As you know, I like to window-shop for airplanes. I thought I’d see how much Aeronca Champs were going for nowadays… :eek: Wow. First, there are very few available for sale. Second, they’re going for about $27,000! Incredible. If you learned to fly just after WWII, you probably learned in a Piper Cub or an Aeronca Champion. They built thousands of them. I remember a time (1970s) when they were downright cheap. I wonder if they’ve all been snapped up by LSA pilots, as they do qualify for that category. American Champion Aircraft Company is building new ones based on the Bellanca Citabria, which was an updated version of the Champ. I see a 2005 model 7ECA with 430 hours on it for 95 kilobucks. I think if I wanted a Citabria, I’d want a 150 hp one though. For a Champ, I like the round tail of the Aeronca era. (Though I do like the idea of having an electric starter.) In any case, I’m holding out for a Skyhawk. Champs and Citabrias are fun-looking airplanes though.
Still GA: The G-IV that went off the end of the runway at KBED a few days ago had “controllability issues”. The NTSB spokesman pointedly declined to reveal exactly what the pilot said, he just summarized it that way, probably to prevent anyone from jumping to conclusions. The plane was up to 165 knots and the copilot had called “Rotate”, then the pilot decided to abort instead of trying to fly a possibly-unflyable airplane. Hitting the brakes and popping the reversers was probably his better choice, but the crash and fire were unsurvivable anyway. Sometimes there’s no right decision available.
Interesting. I don’t know anything about Gulfstreams. Wouldn’t own one, even if I could afford one. (Nothing against the plane. If I needed one, I’d just charter it. There are other planes I’d like to own.) Any idea what kind of ‘controllability issues’ they might suffer? Hydraulics? Someone left the gust lock in?
Thought so - it sounded a lot to me like an attempted abort after V1. That was also the cause of a Lear 60 crash some years ago.
When I flew the Lear I was trained to take my hand off the thrust levers at the V1 call to prevent reflexively trying to stop if an engine failed at that point. Same with the turboprop I now fly. Despite some extensive sim training and a lot of “V1 cuts”, I think it must be pretty tempting to reject a takeoff when things go bad.
Speaking of Lears, why do they need two pilots? (At least the older ones from the '60s and '70s did.) If a Cessna Citation can be flown solo, why wasn’t the Lear certified so?
The lead investigator pointedly did *not *say what the pilot’s “comments about controllability” were, even though he reported verbatim everything else on the CVR. Guess away as to what it was, or why the NTSB guy wouldn’t report it.
There wasn’t a lot left of the plane after the fire was finally put out (full fuel, remember), so it’s going to be damn difficult to find out.
I’m not trying to guess. Just wondering what sort of things can cause controllability issues on a G-IV.
You forget to take the gust locks off the ailerons or the elevator.
Whatever it was, it apparently wasn’t something directional - the plane went so completely straight ahead off the runway end that it wiped out the localizer and the centerline approach lights. So, elevator or trim stuck? Flaps/ailerons mispositioned (both sides)? Something that wasn’t caught in the pre-flight, or didn’t exist yet then.
No crash is good, but they’re usually the culmination of several things gone wrong or overlooked.
Still, it would sooo suck to run a G-IV off the runway because someone failed to pull the locks.:smack:
It’s like the guys at Jiffy Lube forgetting to put your drain plug back in. Dude - you had one job…
Not sure, but I don’t think all models of Citation are certified for single pilot. In the case of the Lear 60 there are some controls and circuit breakers on the right-hand side of the cockpit that a solo pilot could not reach.
I happen to like crew flying, so I’m not in any hurry to find myself solo in a large aircraft.
The videoof the sunbathing tourist getting his back scratched by a Cherokee 140 landing on a runway just beyond him.
Not the best landing the pilot ever made but there’s a good deal of Darwin award material with the sunbather.
With impulse coupling magnetos an engine can fire even being slowly pulled through. Which is why we shut them down by fuel starvation via idle-cutoff mixture vs. the car technique of just killing the spark source. All the spark in the world can’t fire a cylinder if there’s zero fuel available.
So the classic mishap was somebody didn’t shut down properly last time, leaving a smidgen of fuel in the carb. Then the mag grounding isn’t perfect. So unbeknownst to the next pilot, even though he prechecked the mags off & mixture control in ICO, he’s actually got a mostly-hot mag & some fuel vapor in the carb & cylinders.
So he (back then it was 99.9% always he) then pulls the prop through a turn or two to ensure free movement & no hydraulic lock. Naturally he expects no reaction from the engine. It burps once and fatally beans him with the next blade, farts & spits for 2 more revs then quits.
Hence the procedure to pull props through backwards. The mag couplings don’t work that way, providing a mechanical failsafe against inadvertent ignition. And hence the other procedure to treat all props always as if they are spinning now or are about to be.
As to the G-IV accident … Here’s some pure speculation on potential causes that might not be apparent earlier in the takeoff but would manifest around VR.
You could have a pitch control jam. You could discover the pitch trim setting is all wrong for the actual W&B. You could have a reverser or spoiler deploy. You could discover a lot of rudder or aileron trim (or both) was set, or is now running away. You could discover your W&B is way out of limits. You could have hit a deer or big bird and have crap all over the windshield destroying your outside visibility. You could have a botched change of aircraft control. A tire could come apart, creating massive brain-shaking vibration and perhaps also shredding its mate. An engine could catastrophically come unglued, tearing up your tail or flight controls.
None of these are at all likely in an absolute sense. But over enough takeoffs, each becomes a statistical certainty somewhere in the fleet eventually.
It’s gonna be a long time before we find out what (probably) happened.
Thanks, LSLGuy. Those are the sort of things I was wondering about. I agree that it’s too early to make any guesses. The only ‘evidence’ we have of a malfunction is the pilot reporting an issue with controllability. Could have been pilot error (missed something during the preflight, trim incorrectly set), or it could have been a mechanical problem, or it could have been something else. I was just curious about the things that can go wrong.
I’m quite familiar with idle-cutoff. 
Another thing that came to my mind re: ‘props on the loose’ is hand-propping. ‘Switch off!’ (confirmed by pilot). Prop-swinger would rotate the prop a couple of times (or the whole engine, in the case of a rotary). ‘Switch on!’ (The pilot turns the switch on.) ‘Contact!’ (Lets the pilot know he has his hands on the prop and is swinging to start.) I don’t know of any written procedures, so I could be mistaken about ‘Contact!’ That could be the guy telling the pilot to turn the switch on. Of course if there was residual fuel and a faulty ground, you might get a kick. I just think of hand-propping whenever I think of a person intentionally being in proximity to a propeller.
We just had a young women walk into a spinning prop a couple of days ago at a local airport and she worked there for a number of years. It makes me paranoid to have anyone near my plane when the prop is spinning regardless of their experience.
Hell, I’m a rated pilot and I’m wary around props and rotors even if they’re not spinning! I never approach an airplane from the front within the arc of the prop, and never approach a helicopter from the rear. Preflighting an airplane, I approach the cowl from behind the propeller arc, and walk outside the arc to go to the front to inspect the prop, inlets, alternator belts, etc. Upon landing a helicopter, my passenger stays inside until it’s shut down. (It takes about five minutes to shut down a piston heli.) Or if the engine is still running, they are instructed to walk straight away from the helicopter and do not go toward the back or front – just walk straight away. Starting up, the strobes and nav lights come on before ignition.
I’m sure other pilots will say I’m over-cautious when walking on a ramp. But it’s better to stay outside of the propeller or rotor arc just in case a machine is occupied.
Hehe, I read this as “C-130” and my jaw hit the floor, that’s pretty ballsy!
Anyhow, my CFI did many similar things with my in C150 and C152 that we used. He was a big fan of the “uh-oh, engine’s out” or “uh-oh, no visibility, put the hood on” scenarios. He also combined them with spin and unusual attitude recovery, post-it notes over certain gauges at random times. It was very stressful the first few times, but soon turned into fun interesting puzzles to solve every time he did them.
It really gave me confidence about not trying to be a slave to the manual or the instrument. You won’t automatically die if you drop below Vmin, but you should definitely know what your airplane does when it happens so that you are never surprised. E.g. What wingtip likes to stall first? How fast am I dropping when “prop-hanging”? What does aggressive throttling do in a steep bank? Where’s that barf bag?