that like to go flying with an Encyclopedia on their
lap, and their hands a blur in the cockpit
I call this "The Story Of Two Comanches". Not
a twin comanche, two comanches. And it's even
true.
At Carp, Ontario (weird name, eh) Wayne Rostad's old
single-engine Comanche was available for rent. A neighbour
of a friend of mine, a nice old guy, took his grandson for a
flight one day, and ran it out of fuel. During the ensuing forced
approach, I am told he stalled it in. He and his grandson died.
Now let's talk about another engine failure in another
single-engine comanche. This one was caused by an
exhaust leak, which put the pilot to sleep with Carbon
Monoxide. He had an autopilot which kept the wings
level, and when it eventually ran out of gas, hours later,
the autopilot ran the elevator trim all the way up, trying
to maintain altitude. Of course it couldn't, but it slowed
down nicely, and the autopilot held the wings level as
it entered ground effect and landed. The pilot woke up
in a corn field, and his only injury was a broken wrist.
Compare the results of the unconscious pilot, and
the pilot in the first accident who was very much
awake and I am sure trying everything he knew, his
hands all a blur in the cockpit.
All the junior instructors like to throw enormous piles
of crud at their students, so that when something
happens, they are guaranteed to be overloaded
When one of my students has an engine failure after
takeoff, all I want him to do is to LOWER THE NOSE
and KEEP THE WINGS LEVEL. This will avoid a stall
or spin, which determines whether you live or die.
For a single-engine aircraft to be certified, it must
have a stall speed of less than 61 knots or 70 mph.
So, if you bother doing the math - which no one
ever does - all you need is 25 feet to have survivable
levels of de-celeration. I might recommend buckling
up your shoulder harness first, though.
With a certified single engine aircraft, if you encounter
an engine failure after takeoff, the most important
thing you need to do is LOWER THE NOSE and KEEP THE
WINGS LEVEL. The rest is fluff.
If you are at altitude over flat country, you can actually
do pretty well by simply slowly dialling in all the nose-up
trim that there is, which will give you a nice, safe, slow
speed to minimize your kinetic energy at impact, which
is a function of velocity SQUARED. Keep the wings level.
For an engine failure at night, the above is actually a
very safe procedure.
Oh well. Back to your regularly-scheduled inch-thick
FTU checklists for a 150, and the hour-long
death-by-briefing preflights. Maybe some day,
you'll learn to prioritize what is important, and
what isn't. As you get older - if you get older -
and gain more perspective, you will be amazed
to learn what isn't really important at all.
