Engine Failures!

Three hours before my scheduled flight my phone was flashing “CFC” and I was fairly certain this wouldn’t be a great call. I6 was on the line and was telling me that there were reports of turbulence in the circuits and the winds were steadily gusting to 22 knots, 30 degrees off the runway. He was of the opinion that I would be fighting the bumps the entire time and probably wouldn’t get much out of the flight. I did mention that I only lived 15 minutes from the field and everything could change in the next few hours. He insisted that the flight was off and if things cleared up he’d call me.

After hanging up the phone I sat there and considered the scenario. My family was out of town and this was a great opportunity for me to get some flight time in. I was headed to Houston the next day and wouldn’t have a chance to hop back in a plane for close to a week. I thought about his comments that I wouldn’t gain much valuable experience and it would probably be a waste of my money. The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that even $200 spent for an hour getting my brains beat out in the pattern where I couldn’t gain any new signoffs in my PTR (Pilot Training Record) was still money well spent and experience well gained. I remembered quickly back to a conversation I had with a friend about why my “hours” were logged as engine time running rather than air time. His response was that every minute you are sitting in the aircraft with that engine running – you were gaining some sort of experience.

I picked up the phone and called the club to ask for I6 but he was “unavailable”. I left my name and number with a request for him to call me. Over the next hour I watched the live winds out at the airport and they had died back to about 6-10 knots, 10 degrees on either side of the runway. As we neared 45 minutes from the scheduled time I once again said “sometimes you just have to say what the heck”, stuffed my kneeboard and headset into a flight bag, and headed for the airport.

I6 was a bit shocked to see me. After a 5 minute discussion and a trip outside to look at the windsock he relented and said, “OK, one of the seniors will be down in a few moments and we will ask her how the circuit it”. She said it was a bit bumpy but would be worth taking a flight to see how things were. I6 asked me to do the inspection while he changed back into his fancy flight gear (he was about to leave for the day).

The plan for today was to review engine failures in the circuit. We did a quick review regarding the procedures for both a failure before takeoff, after takeoff, and while in the circuit. I’ll admit that I’ve spent the past 4-5 days reviewing these out of the POH and even made myself a private checklist – but none of it seemed to stick. No matter how many times I wrote it out, read it, or even recited it aloud (my wife loved that) I couldn’t commit it to memory. For some reason – just sitting there and talking to him about it – a little light bulb went on inside my head.

Checklists went great, engine started nicely, my headset transmit cord is still SNAFU (need to fix that), and we had an opportunity for a good chat during the long taxi out to runway 25. I asked I6 if I could do a mock takeoff briefing to see if things actually made sense to me. I started by talking about what we would actually be doing “down the centerline, rotate at 55, climb at 68, flaps up at 400 and speed 75, crosswind at 500agl unless otherwise told by tower, and then downwind on the 45”. Then I followed it up with other important information: “If we have engine trouble before takeoff I’ll cut the throttle, apply the brakes, bring up the flaps, pull the mixture, turn off the ignition (magnetos), and then finally shut off the master”. I’m not really sure how I remembered that – perhaps all of the reviewing actually paid off.

We took off and flew a normal circuit. It was pretty bumpy on the cross and down winds but not enough to make things impossible. Approach was stable and landing fairly good. This time I remembered to bring the flaps back to takeoff before advancing the power for the go. I6 asked the tower if they would approve simulated engine loss on departure, which was approved. At about 400 AGL he cut the power and said “ok power loss – now what?” Again the briefing kicked in – my first goal was to pitch for 58 knots with the flaps at takeoff. Following that I said aloud (but didn’t actually do any of it) “Mixture idle, fuel shutoff closed, ignition off, flaps as required, master off when landing assured”. I must admit that I was shocked at how much forward pressure was required at takeoff attitude to get the aircraft back to 58 knots. I had been holding it pretty well while I read out my procedures when I6 said “that’s great, but where are you planning to land?” While concentrating on the airspeed and procedure I had obviously missed... well I missed the obvious – where in the world was I going to land. Suddenly the training from my forced approach started to come back to me. I gave a quick glance ahead of us and declared “this isn’t so good”. We had tree lines, power lines, and some nasty terrain. Judging the way things were moving on my windscreen, there weren’t any good options. I told I6 I would try to put her down in the field at our 10 O’clock and turned for it. Somewhat satisfied he called for the overshoot which for the first time felt somewhat natural.

On the downwind we were approved for another engine out procedure. Abeam the numbers he pulled the numbers and asked what I planned to do. I went right back into procedure mode again “pitch for best clean glide of 73, throttle idle, mixture idle, fuel cut-off closed, ignition off, and I’ll keep the master on to operate flaps and radios, until landing is assured”. Again I missed some obvious steps. First of all, I was still on a downwind. I6 told me that while I’m doing this I should be turning back for the field to make sure we can safely glide to a landing. As I turned for the field he asked me if I thought we would make it. It looked like it wouldn’t be a problem based on our distance and altitude, not to mention the fact that the diamond has a glide ratio of 11:1. “Yes, we should be just fine, this thing glides well and we have lots of time” This is when I6 informed me that if I had some time, I might want to try and determine what the problem is and correct it before shutting everything down. I remembered now from the POH we were supposed to go “throttle full, mixture rich, alternate air on, fuel cut-off open, ignition both, fuel pump on”. Even with the “late” turn back to the field and flaps full we were too high. When asked what my options were I said “slip would be best”.

We had to hold the slip all the way down to the runway and this is when another interesting thing happened. Now first let’s consider the slip. You are banked one way, yawing the other resulting in a straight track over the ground while practically moving “sideways” (well maybe 45 degrees). The aircraft is making a freaky noise and you feel like you are literally dropping to the ground. Even after doing this multiple times it still feels and looks quite weird (and super cool at the same time). When I came out of the slip I suppose that the sensation of dropping so quickly while getting closer to the runway made me fall back to my old habit of gently pulling back on the stick to slow the descent. Moving into this flare too early caused us to float much higher than I would have liked and in the end we had a nice hard landing. We were so far down the runway that I was a bit hesitant once we were stable to raise the flaps and apply full power. I6 stepped in and said “I’ll help you out a bit here” as he raised the flaps. I jumped back into action and advanced the throttle and we took off.

This cycle repeated 4-5 times. We’d takeoff and I6 would cut the power. I’d pitch for 58, look for someone to land and start going through the emergency procedures. Each time we did it my performance was calmer, quicker, and execution improved. Once we got down closer to the earth he would call for the overshoot and we would rejoin the circuit. Next he would pull the power on downwind and I’d pitch for 78, turn for the field, run through procedures for restarting, and then finally go through the shutdown phase of the procedures.

Each time we were SUPER high and I had to slip to get down to the runway. This again resulted in my freakish early flare and a horrible landing. On one of them I simply said to I6 “I’m going around” and advanced the throttles. I6 seemed pleased that I was making a decision that I didn’t like the way things looked and would try again.

The lesson ended after we asked tower for a runway change. CYBW is not your standard traffic pattern as they operate to the west of the north/south runway (16/34) and north of the east/west runway (07/25). This ends up causing a nice “mish mash” of left and/or right traffic patterns depending on winds. We had been operating right traffic for runway 25 and were just in the overshoot/right crosswind after a simulated engine failure on takeoff when tower gave us “left turn approved to join downwind for runway 34”. This required me to make a climbing 180+ degree turn to the left to join the downwind. We barely had reached the circuit altitude of 5000 MSL when we were already abeam the numbers. Naturally, I6 pulled the power again. I am starting to get the feeling I should be prepared for this at any moment from here on. I thought about how high I had been and the fact that we had a 10 knot wind that would be acting as a tailwind on base and told I6 “We’re high, close to the runway, and I’ll have a nice tailwind on base so I’m not going to turn back for the runway just yet”. My plan was to get the approach slightly higher than normal so that I could come in without a forced slip. While I’d like to tell you that my plan worked out perfectly – it simply didn’t. My judgement of distance on the downwind wasn’t great and the wind affected my ground track which I had not corrected. The base turn with the tail wind was extremely short and before I knew it - I had turned final and was way too high. We slipped all the way down to the runway (after I miraculously remembered to dip my wing into the crosswind for the slip) and I constantly told myself “nose down, nose down, nose down”. This improved the flare but not by the delta I was hoping for. I held it off the runway, applied some extra rudder away, aileron towards, and landed. My rollout probably had the people in the tower in tears as I was all over the place. On the way in I remembered to say thanks to the controllers again and they appeared to appreciate it. One of these days I need to go upstairs and pay them a visit.

On the way home I had many thoughts to ponder. I was pleased that I had checkmarks next to “Engine Failure in Circuit” and “Runway Change” but was a bit concerned about a few things. First of all the landings were god awful. I need to focus on transitioning from the approach to landing phase and this must include being able to transition from a forward slip to landing. I think that this is going to take experience and not much else.

Second of all, I need to do a better job of judging from any point in the circuit where I will touch down if I turned back for the runway. The instructors are telling me often about this or that landmark but I’m really trying to judge it with my eyes so that when I’m landing somewhere else (when the landmarks aren’t available) I can still figure things out.

Last but not least I need to correct my horrible track on the ground. My taxiing has improved immensely (and I pay a lot of attention to the taxi phases) but on the runway during my takeoff, touch and go, and landing rolls – I am not what I would call “in complete control of the aircraft”. Any CFI’s out there who have some advice for me – I’m all ears!

There is one last thing to think about with respect to losing power after takeoff. Each time I take a lesson, the briefing for that scenario is to “fly straight ahead and look for somewhere to land”. Yet during my recent flights out in New Jersey I noted that in three takeoff briefings (two different pilots) the scenario was similar except it continued with something along the lines of “if we reach 800 feet (AGL) we will attempt to turn back for the runway to land”. One of the pilots went so far as to mention that based on the winds he would make a right turn to minimize the drift from the winds (which actually was what geared me up to think about that and mention it during the last engine failure mentioned above). So my question is “Is it actually safe to turn back for the runway and under what conditions should you do so?” I don’t know if this is a Canadian vs. American flight training thing or just a consideration that there is a difference between losing an engine on takeoff vs. losing one at 800 AGL where you would certainly be in the crosswind if not already turning on the downwind.

I have no idea who reads this blog – but if we have any opinions out there I’d be happy to hear them. Hopefully we can get both the Canadian and American perspectives.

I’ve got back to back flights coming up in a few days after a short business trip to Houston. Between now and then I need to memorize the emergency procedures for just about everything that could go wrong in an aircraft. Hopefully I can pick it up quickly.

17.3 Hours and counting…