Red Lake - Pickle Lake - into the bush all survive

[Gorgons]

So its Monday night and surprizingly nobody has mentioned a thing about an aircraft that departed YRL last Friday destined for ZKE, made a tech stop in YPL for fuel and shortly after departing YPL encountered a problem that resulted in the aircraft terminating its flight in the bushes presumably somewhere northeast of YPL.

Crew and passengers survived with only minor injuries reported to two passengers. Kudos to the crew and plus 1 for the old trees vs water thread.

No news on who the unlucky carrier was but I must say they have done well at keeping it pretty quite.

http://thegiantnews.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... crash.html

[Clodhopper]

CADORS #2010O2409

The privately-operated Northern Waterworks Sales and Consulting Incorporated Piper PA31 aircraft (C-FWQX) was on a VFR flight from [origin not reported] to [destination not reported]. At 1712Z, an aircraft inbound to Pickle Lake Airport (CYPL) reported hearing a broadcast on Pickle Lake MF 122.2 MHz from C-FWQX that the pilot “was ditching the airplane” and that its position was 38NM east of Pickle Lake Airport (CYPL). Thunder Bay F.S.S. staff contacted the aircraft owner who advised that they had been in contact with the pilot via satellite phone and that all four persons on board were uninjured. A J.R.C.C. Trenton helicopter was dispatched and arrived at Pickle Lake Airport with the four persons on board at 1852Z.

[Bushav8er]

Good job on getting all to walk away. I wonder where they set down; bush or puddle?

[frozen solid]

Distress call at 1712Z and the helicopter from Trenton drops them off at 1852Z? Now that's service!

[jpilot77]

Wouldn't have been faster to send a helicopter from Manitoba? I don't know why the CF doesn't have small bases with SR in areas where they are needed; Northwestern Ontario, Northern Quebec, Northern Prairies.

Good job by the pilot though!

[. ._]

I wonder where they set down; bush or puddle?

Yeah, me too.

Any landing you can walk (or swim) away from...

Nice job!

[Bushav8er]

I take it the Ho can't maintain altitude on one engine (or they were loaded)? 38 miles doesn't seem far to crawl back to YPL.

[ZBBYLW]

They have a straight Navajo (or had anyhow) so it would have 310HP... It's a big airplane with only 310 hp... Would be interesting to know what happened.

[Rudy]

Distress call at 1712Z and the helicopter from Trenton drops them off at 1852Z? Now that's service!

Indeed. That's over 400 kts. Even while they were picking the people up.

[pelmet]

http://tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/a ... 0c0159.asp

Findings as to Causes and Contributing Factors
1.The left magneto distributor rotor gear teeth uncoupled from the input pinion gear, placing the distributor rotor out of time with the engine. As a result, the left engine began to run rough, backfire and lose power.
2.The pilot shut down the left engine, but did not immediately adjust the power on the operating engine. Airspeed then decreased to a point where the addition of power resulted in the aircraft becoming difficult to control in the turbulent conditions.
3.The gradual loss of altitude eventually required a forced landing.

Findings as to Risk
1.If the Navajo Pilot Operating Handbook, Section 3, Engine Inoperative Procedures, Engine Securing Procedure (Feathering Procedure), is used as a stand-alone procedure, there is a risk that sufficient power may not be applied to the operative engine to maintain flight.
2.If the 500-hour magneto inspection recommendation of Service Bulletin 643B is not followed, there is a risk that the looseness of the distributor block bushing will go undetected and uncorrected.

[Redneck_pilot86]

First I saw of this thread, I was in Pickle at the time. It was a chopper from YPL that picked them up, chartered by RCC. Northstar Airs -3 found the sight, but was unable to land. The ho went down on the edge of a creek in a marshy area and skidded into small trees at the end. Was slung out to YPL and trucked south.

[trampbike]

Appendix B on the TSB report shows the engine failure checklist. The last item in the "Before securing inop. engine" section is Magneto switches -- check.
Wouldn't this involve checking on left, right and both to see is there is something that works (in this case, it might be possible that the engine would have worked properly if the magneto had been set on right only)?

Anyone has a clue as to why the TSB didn't mention this in the "Findings as to causes and contributing factors" section?

[Colonel Sanders]

Magneto switches -- check

Excellent point. Most people interpret the above - and not just
on a Navajo - as a simple check that the mags are both on.

However as you point out, when a magneto starts to fire at
the wrong time, if you just turn it off, the engine will run a
heck of a lot better on the one good magneto.

To defend the original pilot, I have been told by very experienced
AME's to NOT test the magnetos in flight (by selecting only right
or left) because if you do have a dead magneto, when you select
the good magneto off (or if you accidentally select both off) the
engine will stop entirely, and when you turn the good magneto
back on again you will get one heckuva bang as the unburned
fuel lights off, much the same as what happens on the ground
when someone accidentally selects both mags off during the
runup.

[trampbike]

To defend the original pilot, I have been told by very experienced
AME's to NOT test the magnetos in flight (by selecting only right
or left) because if you do have a dead magneto, when you select
the good magneto off (or if you accidentally select both off) the
engine will stop entirely, and when you turn the good magneto
back on again you will get one heckuva bang as the unburned
fuel lights off, much the same as what happens on the ground
when someone accidentally selects both mags off during the
runup.

I hear you about the health of the exhaust system, however, in a situation where it seems pretty obvious that the engine will fail totally (you tried everything else on the checklist), would YOU try the left and right positions on the magneto switch(es)?

I'm not blaming the pilot at all, he faced a weird failure and managed to land without killing or hurting anyone. I'm just curious as to what you and others here think they would do.

[Colonel Sanders]

would YOU try the left and right positions on the magneto switch

Sure - I check magnetos in flight all the time, but I wanted
to point out that some people don't think it's a good idea.

[rigpiggy]

remember the navajo mags come off of one pad so if the drive slips on one, it mostlikely will slip on both a'la h2ad

[Colonel Sanders]

Oh God I hate those dual magnetos. I have no idea
how they smoked that past the FAA certification.

[2.5milefinal]

Damn it ...did it again.
Read through a thread think it was 'new', when actually its a year old.
...yeah i know where to look for the date

Moderators:
Can we maybe start ADDING dates to the subject lines of these threads.

[pelmet]

[quote="trampbike"]

I'm not blaming the pilot at all, he faced a weird failure and managed to land without killing or hurting anyone. I'm just curious as to what you and others here think they would do.[/quote]

If you read the report, you will see that it should never have crashed in the first place. Try adding max power.

[trampbike]

I'm not blaming the pilot at all, he faced a weird failure and managed to land without killing or hurting anyone. I'm just curious as to what you and others here think they would do.

If you read the report, you will see that it should never have crashed in the first place. Try adding max power.

I know that.
I was reffering to the magneto check only.

[Big Pistons Forever]

remember the navajo mags come off of one pad so if the drive slips on one, it mostlikely will slip on both a'la h2ad

Only on the Chieftain with the standard TIO 540 J2BD engine. Short Body Ho's (310-325s) have the TIO 540 A2C engines which are dual mags. Also aircraft which have the full Panther mod usually have the dual mag version of the 350 hp engine.

Ironically in this case if the accident plane was a Chieftain the engine would have simply stopped as soon as the single Mag drive started slipping as there would have been no spark and the pilot probably would have had more success dealing with a "traditional" engine failure scenario

All the initial Multi training training and usually all PPC training only considers the full engine failure case. A partial engine failure or a surging engine is actually a more probable occurrence and successfully dealing with the problem requires good systems knowledge and knowing when to keep a sick engine running or shut it down is a big part of real world emergency PDM and also usually never addressed in training.

How many Ho drivers knows that in the case of a surging engine the first thing you want to do is reduce power ?