wanttaja@ssc-vax.UUCP (Ronald J Wanttaja) (09/22/84)
A few weeks ago, I was a witness to an "Engine failure on Takeoff" incident. Unfortunately, I only had a brief chance to talk to the pilot, directly after the incident, so I don't have a full first person, rational description. The pilot was rather "elevated" after the incident (not paniced, not hysteric) and was not quite able to speak in a calm, smooth flow. Not that I blame her- if it had been me, I would have been far worse. I taking my BFR from an instructor at Crest Airpark in Kent, Washington, about 25 miles southeast of Seattle. Having learned to fly in the wide open spaces of North Dakota, and not having flown for eight years, flying out of Crest is slightly nerve-wracking. The runway is 50 feet wide, 3000 feet long, elevation about 550 ft MSL. The sides of the runway are clear for about 150 feet, then there are either Mil-spec 50 foot trees, airplanes, or $200,000 houses. Runway 33, the active that day, ends with about 400 feet of unlevel terrain, then the trees begin. A half mile from the end of the runway are high tension lines. Directly to the left of the runway center line at that point is a power substation, from which about five sets of high-tension lines radiate. The surrounding terrain is a mixture of urban sprawl and forest. From above, Crest Airpark is a narrow slash of a runway in the trees- at pattern altitude, you can't see the runway itself until you are about 1/2 mile out, when approaching from the sides. Of course, the runway is far less visible from low altitude. We had just landed and were taxiing back to take off again. As we were heading back to the end, a 152 took off. "One of my Commercial students," my instructor said. He turned his head and watched it take off, staring out the rear window of my 150. Later he said that he thought the engine sounded funny, but he couldn't tell for sure over the sound of our own. As we got near the take-off end, we heard her voice over the unicom: "Clear the runway, I got engine problems, going to land the wrong way!" "Stop this thing!" yelled my instructor as he popped his door, grabbing the mike. I pulled the mixture, and used our taxi momentum to get as far from the runway as possible. My instructor was on the radio, apparently telling her the runway was clear. I bailed out, watching down the length of the runway. She appeared LOW over the trees to the right, banking somewhat steeply to allign with the runway, the prop still turning. She made the runway OK, but still had scads of airspeed left. She was already halfway down the runway when she pushed the nose down slightly from about five feet. The 152 bounced and skittered slightly, but stayed straight and and on the runway, the prop still ticking over. It curved off the runway and turned behind up to stop, facing down the taxiway pointing towards the main apron. My instructor ran over and congratulated her. She hadn't noticed anything wrong on the takeoff run, and had just passed the end of the runway at about 150 feet when the engine began running rough and dropped to about 1800 RPM. She had lowered the nose and circled to the right (away from the power substation) very low, maintaining full throttle, maintaining altitude. The ground does drop away a bit in that direction, allowing a little higher safety margin. The airport A&P came up to take a look at things, and suggested she taxi the plane back to his hangar. The starter wouldn't work. It started on the first flip, hand propping. She taxied it back, and my instructor and I climbed back into the 150 to continue my BFR. I didn't do to well with the rest of my landings. I never have received the full, offical story of the incident. The alternator had frozen, which may have been part or most of the cause of the power loss. The general consensus was water in the fuel or carborator ice- the A&P flew the plane later that day with no problem. But herein lies an interesting point- I've heard the mortality rate after engine failure in a single engine A/C is lower than the mortality rate after engine failure in a twin- probably because of the lower pilot workload (The single engine pilot has a limited number of options) and less pilot skill required. I've had engines pulled on me in every mode of flight, but I've never had an instructor say "That's it- you've just had a partial power failure. This is all the throttle you get." Comments? Ron Wanttaja (ssc-vax!wanttaja)
wanttaja@ssc-vax.UUCP (Ronald J Wanttaja) (09/30/84)
One interesting point I didn't mention in my earlier posting about the 152's turning around and landing after the partial power failure: The mechanic had just given the airplane back to the pilot after performing some service on it. Who knows??? Ron Wanttaja (ssc-vax!wanttaja)