VMC roll on video

[Cat Driver]

At our FTU the Seneca is most often kept full. Dipping tanks is useless once it drops below the level of the outboard tanks

How much fuel is there if you can see fuel on the dipstick?

[shitdisturber]

I'd love to know what the hell the instructor was thinking by climbing into cloud with an engine problem! I'm completely with Doc and Cat on this one; if you can stay VFR then do it, why add to the situation by needlessly introducing clouds into the equation? As for being over the landing weight because of an immediate RTB, who cares? Been there, done that; most importantly, because I wasn't concerned about the landing weight, we got to use the airplane and the engine again.

[shitdisturber]

At our FTU the Seneca is most often kept full. Dipping tanks is useless once it drops below the level of the outboard tanks

How much fuel is there if you can see fuel on the dipstick?

From what I remember; I haven't flown a Seneca in years, there's no way to accurately assess your fuel level using a dipstick. Unless the tank is full; which you can see, or empty where you'll hear the stick banging around on the bottom of the tank.

[Cat Driver]

If any airplane has such inexact fuel quantity information then would it not stand to reason that the fueling data records and flight time be used as another situational awareness method to back up the fuel quantity gauges?

Also considering the cost factor why not put a fuel totalizer in the thing?

Even more simple for short flights why not just add the fuel to be burnt rather than fill the thing up every time it is fueled?

If flight schools can not teach common sense what kind of end product are they turning out pilot wise?

[CFR]

At our FTU the Seneca is most often kept full. Dipping tanks is useless once it drops below the level of the outboard tanks

How much fuel is there if you can see fuel on the dipstick?

I'm told >50% but I can not find anything written that says that. The POH is silent beyond the pre-flight which says "Fuel Cap - Open to check quantity and colour" dipping is not indicated. Each wing has 2 x 24.5 gallon tanks with a single filler at the outboard tank. When we took out 35 total (~18 each side) there was still fuel visible in the outboard tank. One day when its warm and I have nothing better to do, I may try and figure out volumes for just visible, fuel at the outer drain, no fuel at the outer drain but fuel at the inner drain, and and no fuel at the inner drain (joking on the last one!). Having said that I don't mind filling and then off loading to get the load to be what I want it to be. The flights I plan on doing do not require full fuel.

[Cat Driver]

CFR please humor an old man who gets confused reading this stuff.

To put it more clearly I can not comprehend a training unit nor the training pilots that would be that far out of the loop with their equipment that they do not know the answers to these questions.

Accurately knowing the fuel quantity is about a basic as it gets.

[CFR]

If any airplane has such inexact fuel quantity information then would it not stand to reason that the fueling data records and flight time be used as another situational awareness method to back up the fuel quantity gauges?

Also considering the cost factor why not put a fuel totalizer in the thing?

Even more simple for short flights why not just add the fuel to be burnt rather than fill the thing up every time it is fueled?

If flight schools can not teach common sense what kind of end product are they turning out pilot wise?

Unfortunately common sense cannot be taught! Good procedures and tips are taught where I train, what sticks and is used is a different story.

Does not a totalizer have to be programed with a start amount?

Here is a link to an accident report on a Seneca III that used some of the things you suggest.

http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cf ... 502314.pdf

[Colonel Sanders]

Does not a totalizer have to be programed with a start amount?

You could, but it's not necessary. The factory totalizers in our Pitts are simply
zeroed and only display "fuel used" and "fuel flow". You reset it when you fill
the tanks. Ta-da.

[CFR]

CFR please humor an old man who gets confused reading this stuff.

To put it more clearly I can not comprehend a training unit nor the training pilots that would be that far out of the loop with their equipment that they do not know the answers to these questions.

Accurately knowing the fuel quantity is about a basic as it gets.

Agreed, and as I mentioned if you can see fuel you should have more than 1/2 however I do not rely on "I was told by someone who thinks he was told by someone who thought he knew for sure ... maybe ..." I will verify at some point. In the interim I am happy to take fuel off of full tanks to ensure I am where I want to be.

[CFR]

Does not a totalizer have to be programed with a start amount?

You could, but it's not necessary. The factory totalizers in our Pitts are simply
zeroed and only display "fuel used" and "fuel flow". You reset it when you fill
the tanks. Ta-da.

Humour me ... So in a multi pilot organization with varying degrees of attention to detail, if I show up to rent the plane and it shows 1/2 full and I can't visually verify the content, am I relying on the fact that the last time it was filled someone properly reset it?

[Cat Driver]

Unfortunately common sense cannot be taught!

No if a given person is unable to use common sense it would be difficult to retrain their thought process to use common sense.

However it is fairly easy to cull those who are not able to use common sense.

In my personal opinion any pilot unable use the common sense process should never be teaching flying.

With aircraft automation over the past few decades it looks like the automated thought process has evolved.

[Colonel Sanders]

I can't visually verify the content

Are calibrated dipsticks out of the question? I use inexpensive wooden dowlings, which I put marks on.

Regardless of what model of totalizer you have, you are still relying on the previous pilot setting the totalizer correctly, and refuelling it to the brim, both of which seem unlikely in the extreme.

IIRC Cessna has a SB out on it's various models, describing how difficult it is to actually fill the tanks, and how easy it is to underfuel, esp given any crown on the ramp.

[Doc]

Cat, I'm still wrestling with the instructor who took 'causethecaravancan into IMC with a known engine problem! And you actually expect these instructors to know how much fuel is on board? Pretty frightening stuff.

[High Flyin]

You may want to warn folks in the title that they are about to watch some people die...just sayin'.

+1. It's pretty disturbing.




ROFL, oh what the media has wrapped the general public into believing

[CFR]

I can't visually verify the content

Are calibrated dipsticks out of the question? I use inexpensive wooden dowlings, which I put marks on.
quote]

In many aricraft it works as you suggest and I use them (glass or acrylic clear tubes with markings are nice as well). In the Seneca once the outboard tank is below a certain level (which as noted seems to be ~1/2 fuel load) no fuel is present at the filler cap, so a dip stick is of no use, except to confirm you are at or below 1/2. You must either rely on the gauges or fill it up. As noted in my post above there is a link to a similar situation that ended in fuel starvation.

[Cat Driver]

Cat, I'm still wrestling with the instructor who took 'causethecaravancan into IMC with a known engine problem! And you actually expect these instructors to know how much fuel is on board? Pretty frightening stuff.

Can you think of any other occupation where the teachers are that poor?

Teachers should come from the top of the industry......not the bottom.

[Cat Driver]

In the Seneca once the outboard tank is below a certain level (which as noted seems to be ~1/2 fuel load) no fuel is present at the filler cap, so a dip stick is of no use, except to confirm you are at or below 1/2. You must either rely on the gauges or fill it up. As noted in my post above there is a link to a similar situation that ended in fuel starvation.

If there is not enough fuel in it to register on a dip stick then just add enough to be able to measure it.......then you know it is half full.

Once you confirm it is at least half full why would you fill it up if you don't need full tanks?

But then again I am using common sense which seems to be a detriment in this discussion.

[Big Pistons Forever]

I have a few hours on the Seneca 1. If you can see any fuel when looking in the cap you have about half tanks. I say about half because it depends on whether the aircraft is on a level surface and whether the oleos are equal. I never took off without being able to see fuel in the tanks unless I had flown the aircraft myself from the full fuel state. However it does have fuel gauges and the usual FTU "oh just ignore the fuel gauges" is IMO teaching poor airmanship. I always kept track of what the gauges said and what quantity was added at every fill up and got my students to estimate the fuel required to fill up as a way to truth their flight planning. The bottom line was the fuel gauges were reasonably accurate and I monitored what they said throughout the flight. If you think when you get that first job on the Mighty Navajo you are just going to fill the airplane up before every flight you are going to be in for a rude surprise.......

[Big Pistons Forever]

How do you know whether or not you've pulled the correct prop control? Change in yaw? Listen carefully for a change in engine/propeller noise?

LnS.

**Edited to add: I'm not trying to be a smartass here, I'm legitimately curious.**

Both. If you don't believe me try it in flight. Set zero thrust with the throttle on one engine and cruise power on the other engine, then quickly but smoothly pull the working engine prop back to the minimum RPM allowed for the MP set. You will see that it would be quite obvious if you were trying to feather the wrong engine.

This has caused pilots to shut down the wrong engine, when the problem is a runaway governor, and not an engine failure.
.

Fortunately a runaway prop is a very rare event, a sudden yaw is much more likely to result from an engine failure than a runaway prop.

But in any case if the prop runs away the aircraft will yaw into the side the runaway prop is on. If you pull back the prop on that side two things could happen

1) The prop is brought under control in which case both the yaw and out of sync noise will drop as well as the aircraft will be exhibiting near normal 2 engine climb performance so you can continue to climb away while deciding what to do next, or

2) The more likely scenario which is pulling the prop lever back will have no effect , thus confirming you have identified the engine with the problem and can go ahead and feather it.

In addition I know a pilot who had this happen. He said that the noise of the prop winding up was unmistakable and the fact that the aircraft was yawing but still climbing strongly gave him the time to figure out what was wrong. I guess this goes to the heart of airmanship. If you are still climbing well and are not positive what is wrong better to sit on your hands untill you have the problem identified. If you are close to the ground and the aircraft is not going anywhere you need to get the prop feathered ASAP. But the bottom line for your typical piston twin if the airspeed is decaying and the aircraft isn't climbing you need to close both throttles and take your lumps straight ahead.

[cncpc]

iflyforpie, you've never actually had an engine go south on you, have you?
Your comment about "TC's approved way of doing things...." sort of gave you away.
You have a failure shortly after rotation on a light twin, you shouldn't be really concerned about TC's feelings. Very few of them have had a low altitude failure either.
Now, before you jump all over me for being an uncaring rogue, I've had several engines go south. I couldn't give a rat's ass about TC's "approved way of doing things...."
TC's safety record is something to be anything but proud of, BTW.
The fact that you "don't have any problem leaving the gear down...." scares the crap out of me. On one hand, you care about TC's "approved method of doing things..." and in the next breath you advocate leaving the gear down? News flash for ya. Leave the gear down, and you WILL be using it.
CONTROL does NOT mean "lowering the nose to prevent stalling..." it means do whatever is necessary to fly the airplane successfully. BTW, if you're anywhere near stall speed, you're already on your back, Stall speed is well below VMC. We are talking losing an engine pretty much on rotation? Why would you necessarily "lower the nose..."?
Your comment "I fly in ground affect with the wheels down till blue line......" Try that on a "black hole" departure and you'll be pulling pine trees out of your ass!
Lets keep in mind this guy has 15 hours in twins. Therefore....KISS!

If I have this situation figured correctly, Iflyforpie flies a Bugsmasher. There is no VMC on one of those, but there is a blueline speed. If I can remember more than the two years ago that I flew one, you shouldn't raise the gear until you have 100 mph if you have an engine failure. Apparently there is a considerable amount of drag in the gear retraction sequence. I also seem to remember staying close to the ground until blueline. I'm not sure I remember it correctly, but I remember discussing it with THE Skymaster expert at Revelstoke and there was a second or two in every takeoff when things could go badly in a 337. I remember operating out of Nelson on the lake there and it was always lift off, level for a couple of seconds then turn for the lake because that was the better choice than the parking lot of the Prestige if one quit. At least on easterly takeoffs, which most were. It's a Skymaster thing that may not translate well to side by sides.

Anyways, back to the Queen Air. I haven't really seen anywhere authoritative where it says that plane did have an engine failure. Not saying it didn't, but it all looks odd to me. I guess slow, slow, slower, and then failure to throttle back the right does explain it, but... Many years ago, I went up with Neil, RIP, at Prince George to test his Queen Air which was having a problem with the right engine going into feather. He thought he had it fixed and he asked me if I wanted to go along for the test flight. I did, and it wasn't fixed. It started feathering at about 50 feet AGL and eventually fully feathered. He just flew it up to circuit height and landed. Not a problem. Mind you, it was feathered. But a lot of stuff was going on at low speed and low altitude.

When it appears stage left, this airplane has been flying for a while. The gear is up, flaps are up, although they wouldn't have been down on takeoff. I don't see a feathered prop. Other than a clear bit of up aileron on the right wing when the roll starts, as you'd expect, it doesn't seem like much happens at all right thru to impact.

It will be interesting to hear what the investigators find.

[CFR]

In the Seneca once the outboard tank is below a certain level (which as noted seems to be ~1/2 fuel load) no fuel is present at the filler cap, so a dip stick is of no use, except to confirm you are at or below 1/2. You must either rely on the gauges or fill it up. As noted in my post above there is a link to a similar situation that ended in fuel starvation.

If there is not enough fuel in it to register on a dip stick then just add enough to be able to measure it.......then you know it is half full.

Once you confirm it is at least half full why would you fill it up if you don't need full tanks?

But then again I am using common sense which seems to be a detriment in this discussion.

Didn't fill it up, took fuel out because I "didn't need full tanks" and "common sense" told me to not carry what I don't need. Plus removing fuel would bring me below maximum landing weight if I needed to cancel and return earlier than planned. As Big Piston's Forever seems to confirm (although "common sense" tells me to verify with our airplane) fuel in the outboard tank is at least 1/2 full, however if I want to go a long way and need a very accurate amount of fuel my "common sense" approach is to fill it and take off what I don't want. Again as per Big Piston's Forevers observation, once I get more familiar with the plane particularly if I do some legs that require refueling, I will compare the gauges to the actual load to give me a secondary confirmation. My opinion WRT gauges is that the "common sense" advice that you should verify what the gauges are telling you has become the wide spread myth that "gauges always lie".

[Colonel Sanders]

But the bottom line for your typical piston twin if the airspeed is decaying and the aircraft isn't climbing you need to close both throttles and take your lumps straight ahead.

That's technically completely correct, but I guarantee you that in the heat of the moment, very very few pilots would make that correct decision. 99.9% of them will instinctively pull back, because they want the nose of the aircraft to go up very much so. Just ask the kid flying the iced-up Colgan Air dash-8 into Buffalo about that, after he let the speed bleed off.

There was an airshow accident this year, and I think enough time has passed that I can mention it now without people sending me hate mail. I saw the video, and cringed even before it went bad, because I know exactly what happened.

A new airshow pilot tumbled his airplane at low altitude, and ended up in a vertical downline at an even lower altitude. Frankly, it doesn't get any better than that. What you do is apply full power, wait a second for the airspeed to build, then put all the G on.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Well, this new airshow pilot simply hadn't earned the right to perform out-of-control aerobatics at low altitude. When he exited the tumble and was pointing straight down, with a whole windsheild full of grass, he panicked and pulled back on the stick before the airspeed had a chance to build. He snap-rolled it into the ground.

We can all talk here about what cool pilots we are, and what we're going to do under pressure, and I'm afraid it's 99.9% pure male bovine excrement. You threaten someone with imminent death, and 99.9% of the time they're going to panic and do the wrong thing.

Very, very few pilots are able to very quickly make the correct, hard choice.

I do spin training. Often when pilots are confronted with their first interesting spin,
they really don't perform very well. They freeze, panic, don't correctly observe
what's going on, and don't apply the right inputs.

Talking about making the hard choices is easy on the ground.

[Big Pistons Forever]

But the bottom line for your typical piston twin if the airspeed is decaying and the aircraft isn't climbing you need to close both throttles and take your lumps straight ahead.

That's technically completely correct, but I guarantee you that in the heat of the moment, very very few pilots would make that correct decision. 99.9% of them will instinctively pull back, because they want the nose of the aircraft to go up very much so. Just ask the kid flying the iced-up Colgan Air dash-8 into Buffalo about that, after he let the speed bleed off.

There was an airshow accident this year, and I think enough time has passed that I can mention it now without people sending me hate mail. I saw the video, and cringed even before it went bad, because I know exactly what happened.

A new airshow pilot tumbled his airplane at low altitude, and ended up in a vertical downline at an even lower altitude. Frankly, it doesn't get any better than that. What you do is apply full power, wait a second for the airspeed to build, then put all the G on.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Well, this new airshow pilot simply hadn't earned the right to perform out-of-control aerobatics at low altitude. When he exited the tumble and was pointing straight down, with a whole windsheild full of grass, he panicked and pulled back on the stick before the airspeed had a chance to build. He snap-rolled it into the ground.

We can all talk here about what cool pilots we are, and what we're going to do under pressure, and I'm afraid it's 99.9% pure male bovine excrement. You threaten someone with imminent death, and 99.9% of the time they're going to panic and do the wrong thing.

Very, very few pilots are able to very quickly make the correct, hard choice.

I do spin training. Often when pilots are confronted with their first interesting spin,
they really don't perform very well. They freeze, panic, don't correctly observe
what's going on, and don't apply the right inputs.

Talking about making the hard choices is easy on the ground.

So you are basically saying that 99.9% of thew pilots are going to ride the aircraft to their death after a low altitude EFATO. Put that way why bother doing any training at all ?

I don't buy the premise as I think you can train pilots so that they are likely to do the right thing. The new RedBird sim is IMO a great training tool for this exact issue. It has good enough visuals that you can fly it by visuals alone and the flight model is quite good. Hold blueline and get the aircraft cleaned up and it will climb away. Let the airspeed decay and it will go nowhere, forcing the "pull back both throttles and land straight ahead" solution.

[Colonel Sanders]

99.9% of pilots are going to ride the aircraft to their death after a low altitude EFATO

Well, yes, the way they are trained now (see meatball multi-engine takeoff article).

Some pilots can be trained to do the right thing, with enough initial and recurrent training. Others, no.

I am sure the kid at the controls of the iced-up Colgan dash-8 that crashed at Buffalo had plenty of sim training, and he still pulled back hard when he stalled. I won't mention Air France because it makes airline pilots hissy.

[cncpc]

But the bottom line for your typical piston twin if the airspeed is decaying and the aircraft isn't climbing you need to close both throttles and take your lumps straight ahead.

That's technically completely correct, but I guarantee you that in the heat of the moment, very very few pilots would make that correct decision. 99.9% of them will instinctively pull back, because they want the nose of the aircraft to go up very much so. Just ask the kid flying the iced-up Colgan Air dash-8 into Buffalo about that, after he let the speed bleed off.

There was an airshow accident this year, and I think enough time has passed that I can mention it now without people sending me hate mail. I saw the video, and cringed even before it went bad, because I know exactly what happened.

A new airshow pilot tumbled his airplane at low altitude, and ended up in a vertical downline at an even lower altitude. Frankly, it doesn't get any better than that. What you do is apply full power, wait a second for the airspeed to build, then put all the G on.

Sounds simple, doesn't it? Well, this new airshow pilot simply hadn't earned the right to perform out-of-control aerobatics at low altitude. When he exited the tumble and was pointing straight down, with a whole windsheild full of grass, he panicked and pulled back on the stick before the airspeed had a chance to build. He snap-rolled it into the ground.

We can all talk here about what cool pilots we are, and what we're going to do under pressure, and I'm afraid it's 99.9% pure male bovine excrement. You threaten someone with imminent death, and 99.9% of the time they're going to panic and do the wrong thing.

Very, very few pilots are able to very quickly make the correct, hard choice.

I do spin training. Often when pilots are confronted with their first interesting spin,
they really don't perform very well. They freeze, panic, don't correctly observe
what's going on, and don't apply the right inputs.

Talking about making the hard choices is easy on the ground.

So you are basically saying that 99.9% of thew pilots are going to ride the aircraft to their death after a low altitude EFATO. Put that way why bother doing any training at all ?

I don't buy the premise as I think you can train pilots so that they are likely to do the right thing. The new RedBird sim is IMO a great training tool for this exact issue. It has good enough visuals that you can fly it by visuals alone and the flight model is quite good. Hold blueline and get the aircraft cleaned up and it will climb away. Let the airspeed decay and it will go nowhere, forcing the "pull back both throttles and land straight ahead" solution.

I guess I'm in the .1% because I've had two engine failures immediately after takeoff and bent nothing. You are right about the Redbird. It is quite good at duplicating low level engine failure.