Emergencies?

This is just my opinion.... gained over the last 40 years of on again /off again piloting,
from someone who never experienced an actual "in flight emergency".
........................... (Unless you look closely at some of my landings.... )

I look at it like this.
With all the talk of "the worst scenario" we don't actually train for this.

What we DO train for, is a good outcome from a bad situation.
In my opinion, we won't ever survive the "Worst Scenario". If we could, well, it wasn't the worst.

We train for stalls.... Not to learn how to do them, but to learn how to recognize them.
So that hopefully we never get into a situation where they might happen.

Same thing is true for the so called Emergency landing.
It is simply nothing more than bush pilots do every day, in the wilds of Canada, and Alaska.
They put down "off airport". No big deal to them.. To us, of course.... it's Horrendous!

Glider pilots fly for hours on end with no engine at all. Our's sputter, and stop and it's immediately, terror city...

We learn how to extinguish a cockpit fire.
Not so we can have Bar_B_Que enroute, but so that we will have
a familiar plan to execute, and not have to guess, in a time of stress.

In short, we train to avoid Emergencies.
Because, IMHO, it's only an Emergency, when you Don't Know, what to do.
You see, it's how you handle the situation..... that counts.

Now to answer part of your question, with another question.
Will you ALWAYS have complete control of the situation?
........and NEVER make a mistake? ....for as long as you fly?

If so, then it is NOT INEVETIBLE that you will experience an emerging incident.

Otherwise, you're taking your chances, right here along with the rest of us.


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I feel that I am not one to tell about things that are not related to " Big Flying". I haven't experienced half the flying experiences of those who have done the heavy horsepower stuff or the protracted bush flying although I brushed on it a bit. When I think about men like Sparky and his son flying the P-51 and many others who have done the same , I realize that I am an amature who messed around with it years ago. I DID learn from the foolhardy things that I did and got away with and the things that I sort of stuck my nose into. I did most of my early flying when things were open and free and I was able to experience the old stuff that I love. The real pilots are in a band of the spectrum that I never reached. I had a helluva lot of fun just flying and doing air shows.

 

ArmyDoc, You're welcome,
but it wasn't validation to those who feel as you, and I do.
Moreso an encouragement to those that may be reading this and
perhaps have some intrepidation about flying due to the "hype" of late
regarding safety, malfunctions, and crashes.
I know I'm probably preaching to the choir....for the most part.
But if just one mind is satiated, it's worth my effort.

Yes, the extra HP does feel good. ...........Oops!!
There 's that danged validation thing again ... Sorry!
Have flown the 172, and I like the extra weight / HP, (over a 152)
on a blustery day. Have yet to fly the constant speed prop.

Increasing my post count here....too.. is there a prize ? ?

Blue Skies to all!

 

Okay, I feel that I do have a little contribution to things relating to safety. Namely, stalls and spins. I am a firm believer in thorough training in stalls of all kinds and spins. One can lead to the other. The current syllibus in the FAA training is to avoid stalls by recognizing them and train in approach to stalls. To avoid spins by recognizing them as a result of a stall. So what do you do if you are thrown into a spin as a result of something beyond what you were trained for? This can happen and if you aren't trained in spin recovery you can be in a bit of a sticky wicket.
First, I was trained in stalls from every conceivable cause but the most important and demanding was the " rudder exercise stall" that came before spin training. The first time that I tried one with my instructor, it resulted in a spin and I had little knowledge of how to get out of it. The rudder exercise thing starts with full power, gradual stick back until it's in your gut, and then when the airplane stalls you walk it down with rudder to keep the nose falling through without falling off on a wing. If you fail, you are in an immediate spin. You have the stick full back and one or the other rudder pedals depressed and in a full stall. So after the first " eye opener" you hear the instructor say, " Okay, we will do spin training today."
I practiced spins to the left and right stopping on a point, spins out of climbing turns. spins out of crossed control approach turns, and I had to demonstrate all of them on my check ride for my private.
One day when I was flying across Tampa Bay on my way to St. Pete I stupidly crossed below and aft in the wake of a B-29 on approach to MacDill Field. The airplane entered what can be best desribed as an aerial washing machine and I ended up in a spin. I don't recall recovering from the spin but I do remember worrying about the cracking and popping of the skylite and structure above my head as the airplane was being thrashed about. There have been several other times when the stall and spin training saved my butt and I believe in it. I spun every airplane I flew if it wasn't placarded against it. The worst was the PT-19 if you let it wind up.
Switches

 

I had a situation that was not really all that bad, but it was a learning experience - it could have been much worse in a different airplane, or on a different runway... It was in a Cessna 152 on one of the commercial dual x-countries. On the way back my instructor and I were talking about the parking brakes on the 152s in the fleet and how none of them seem to work. I got curious about the plane we were in, so I pushed the brakes and pulled the parking brake plunger out. When I let go, it just popped back into the off position. "Nope, doesn't work in this one either." I said.

Fast forward...

Back at Ellington field, cleared to land on 17R (9001' x 150'... huge runway...) everything was normal until the wheels hit pavement. The airplane veered violently to the right, nearly ground-looping. I stomped on the left rudder, it was still turning right... stepped a bit on the left brake and we came to a stop about 3 feet from the edge of the 150' wide runway. Turns out the right brake had locked when I played with the parking brake. I told the tower we had an issue and would be sitting here for a minute, and we got the brake un-locked and taxied back without further incident.

That got my attention real quickly... I can't imagine if that had been in a faster airplane, or on a narrow runway, we would probably have been upside-down in the grass. I learned not to play with parking brakes unless I'm parking

 

That's what my kids used to say as the stories continued.
I was thinking about Skyraider's comment about glider pilots flying without that noise up front. There is nothing nicer than to soar in a sailplane in complete silence except for the rush of the air flowing by and to figure out how to make the air and the thermals do the work for you. I had that experience in a two seater that a friend owned. A 20 minute flight in the fall weather somehow stretched into a 2 hour flight when we discovered a thermal that wasn't supposed to be there in the valley and we went from slope soaring to thermal riding and back again, gaining altitude from both gifts of lift. To feel a sailplane accelerate from 55 to 85 in a few seconds of nose slightly down is a wonderful thing. Then when we reached the thermal , pull back a bit and soar around in the lift is like magic. Then cross-country over to the ridge and ride the lift there for a while is something that everyone should do at least once.
When we were flying to Merced in some old antiques in 1968 we misjudged our fuel consumption from climbing around over Dunsmuir for a photo shoot by the TV crew that was filming a program about our trip. Half way down the valley on the way to Redding, the fuel gage dropped to just above zero awful quick. It was 88 degrees and we had a slight tailwind . The only thing I could think of was to throttle back to almost idle and ride the lift from the weather side of the slopes, zig-zagging down the valley. When I flared to land at Enterprise, our destination, the engine quit. Gliding, sailplaning, and ridge lift to the rescue.
Switches

 

Looking back at my mental notes......and there is still some mental left......On the "glide" down to Redding I pulled back to 1100 -1250 RPM or whatever it took to keep the drag down. It was all down hill. The fuel gage hit zero while we were over Lake Shasta and it was an almost power off glide to Enterprise Airport.
The dumbest thing, and it could have been avoided if I had the sense to realize the increase in fuel consumption while steadily climbing at 5000 feet for the camera plane.
Switches

 

I resurrected this post from several years ago to another group in response to this thread.

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I got my IFR rating in March a few years ago and my Mooney 231 came out of annual a month later. So May, I took off for my first post-checkride IFR flight which was into heavy and broken from 4K to 10K over Socal. Broke out and settled at 12K on course just west of Burbank at which point there was a smell of burning insulation and the voltage alert came on. Called and got a diversion to Van Nuys. Turned off all except a Nav/Com and Transponder, tried to instruct my wife on how to find the Van Nuys plate while doing an emergency descent (12K to 5K) back through the IMC to intercept the Van Nuys VOR approach fix - I used the speed brakes I had just installed during the annual. Took the fast way down as I was afraid of electrical fire and was preparing to shut everything down if needed. Actually thought about it and deliberately kept the gear up because I remembered the Precise Flite charts showed faster descents with speed brakes out but with gear up (because of the gear speed limit).

It was a rough ride through the clouds and so of course the child in the rear seat threw up over the dog laying on the floor. This was sufficient distraction that I blew through the approach course on the first pass and ATC circled me around again for another shot. Wife also threw up from the smell in the cabin (acrid electrical smoke and back cabin puke) at this point. Bewildered dog was probably the calmest of the lot of us. Intercepted the approach course the second time around and it was fortunate that there was not a fire as the extra 5 minutes might have been critical.

On 3 mile final to VNY, tried to drop the gear and it wouldn't go down. No motor sound. No thump. No light. No indicator. By this time fear of fire had dissipated and I was faced with a possible gear up landing instead. Went through the manual gear actuation procedure from memory while circling over Cal State Northridge at 2500' - fortunately in VMC - I don't know if I would have had enough stamina left to deal with a missed and manual extension in hold and another shot at the approach if weather had been at minimums (also there would have been a good chance that I would have lost my Nav/Com somewhere in there as it turns out - and the handheld GPS was another distraction versus helpful, as it was my first flight with it and the default settings were such that airspace alerts kept hiding the map as I flew circles around the VNY class C). Did a fly-by VNY tower for a visual inspection. They said it looked OK, but they got the equipment out anyway. Circled around for the last time and made an uneventful landing.

Turned out to be a burned-out diode/shorted-coil on the alternator combined with a low charge on the battery. This was on a just overhauled alternator and 4 month old battery. Paid for new alternator, magnetos, air pump and battery, right after that. This was as much excitement as I wanted for a long time.