Best place to deadstick land?

A problem with losing an engine in the pattern is being too slow, i.e. below best glide speed, so your only option is right below you. Another issue is flying big patterns. Too many people these days fly long/wide and slow patterns. Flying a military recovery (?) is one way to ensure you have the altitude and speed to make the runway.

 

What is best glide speed in a T-28?

 

That is the way I was taught . Keep the downwind close to the runway case you have an engine failure. Like I said before, in those days there were more engine failures. We flew out of an airport near Seattle that was populated by many Spam Can drivers , some with big Spam Cans. They ignored the posted pattern layout and practiced the 707 style landing patterns with wide downwind and LOOONG approaches. We were in constant fights with them to obey the rules of the road. One incident had me almost have a head-on with a guy on HIS downwind 3/4 mile out from the runway. I was setting up to turn to make a 45 Deg entry to the downwind and he was coming right at me. I dove out of his way , made my entry and turned on final to see him way out on "his final". He had the gall to chew me out for cutting him off when he was on final. And so it went.

 

I failed to mention that the airport with the Spam Cans was located east of Seattle when we were flying out of it in the 60's and 70's. We were, "Those guys with the cloth covered wooden stuff " and we were barely tolerated by the "real pilots". They formed a club and purchased a T-Craft to build time. It was a taildragger put in with a bunch of nosedraggers. It lasted about two weeks before it was ground looped.

 

Engine failure on takeoff might be the scenario that sucks most as you typically don't have any altitude or airspeed to work with.

I lost my engine on takeoff from CNO at night and I don't think I got over 500' altitude. CNO happens to have fields east and west of the airport, so if I had been alone, I would have just gone for a deadstick landing straight ahead as the best I knew how to do given that altitude. But I was doing my instrument training at the time and had my CFII aboard and he took over, checked that the engine was still producing some power (I lost 1 cylinder, a cracked cylinder head) and was able to see that he could turn without losing much altitude, so he nursed the plane around to intercept a crossing runway. This made the turn about 210 degrees rather than 270 degrees (the 180 return to airport isn't really 180, it's usually at least 270 because you have to S-hook the end of your turn to get back in line with the runway), which was more doable and he completed the turn with 100-200' of altitude and touched down mid runway.

I trained at EMT which is surrounded by suburban neighborhoods. During that time another pilot took off, and lost their engine almost right away. Interstate 10 happens to be just off the departure end of EMT and their best option was to make a right turn and they landed on the freeway in the middle of traffic. Fortunately, the sight of an airplane trying to land created a break in the traffic.

 

I was based at EMT many, many years ago. It is really just a piece of concrete in the middle of the city... one of the hardest airports to find visually, in my opinion. I was always happy to be flying a twin there.

 

In my Citabria, I always strive to make a power-off approach. Due to traffic, and sometimes lack of skill, I can't always make it, but that's my goal.

 

130 Knots is best glide and will yield 9NM for every 5000Ft (calculates to ~ 10.9 : 1) altitude in 4 minutes. With full flaps best glide changes to 100-110 knots, but I'm not sure what happens to the ratio other than it gets worse...

Nice thing about a T-28 is the motor is huge and will not slow down quickly in fly-in crash landing so landing gear up (if off field) remains our go-to plan and statistically is very survivable.