turboplanner

We are talking about pilots with no XC endo. It is always under the control of the CFI. If the person has all the bits in a row then it shouldn't be a problem. As an aid to that spending a lot of time with the books and passing the theory would make a positive impression with the CFI.

A wink and a nod just undermines all that the good instructors do to produce safe pilots.

I'd have to say that's not confined to RA, what was the general area?

Now I am going to look at it from another angle. Let's take a figure - say 800 ft. You know from experience that you can just make it back on to the runway from 800 ft over the upwind threshold. So if you are at 750 ft you are going to die. What percentage of the time do you find yourself over the upwind threshold at 800 ft or above in a light single? Shall we say a generous 5%.

Now I must introduce one more factor. We have to take another guess. What are your chances of survival if you limit your choice of landing places to a 180 degree arc (90 degrees either side of straight ahead). OK this is a big guess because if you only operate out of Rand your chances are very different to only operating out of say Kimberley. But let's put a figure to an "average" field, if there is such a thing, and call it 70% survival.

Put 90 degrees into your EFATO reaction subconscious and you could kill yourself at lower altitude.

I would consider this just about out of true EFATO territory, almost a crosswind failure, and I would agree with Facthunter that you don't want to go trying to land in a rough paddock with trees, stumps and fences at downwind groundspeed which will be above your already 120 km/hr or so touchdown speed.

Working on a 65 kt approach speed and 15 kt wind, you would be landing at 92 km/hr straight ahead, 148 km/hr downwind, and 120 km/hr (normal zero wind speed) crosswind

This has the potential of being a very good learning thread.

Moderators, I'd like to see the thread name change to EFATO - You have been told by Kevin Walters, and the fake videos deleted, (we now know they were not EFATO's, and could kill someone who copied them).

That way in a year's time someone can search for EFATO and get a result, rather than skip past "you have been told"

Trouble is Col some of them may get permission. Remember we are talking about student pilots who are yet to fully comprehend, or be tested to prove comprehension of Navigation, Meteorology and Performance & Operations.

David you silly boy, surely after all that has been publicly aired over the last 18 months you didn't expect the situation to heal itself did you?

There are nearly 10,000 RAA members who don't vote and they have no right to question what the CEO does or doesn't do.

Many posters on here consider their annual subscription mere petty cash, money well spent; it completely escapes them that self-regulation means that they are the RA Regulator.

They are quite content for Chardonnay and Glenfiddich to be paid for with those subscriptions.

I know I keep repeating this but your elected representatives are NOT a Board of Directors, they represent you, and you have complete power to kick out a fat cat any time you like.

So forget about the Secretary or the President or John McKeown and get off your arses if David's new revelation raises concern.

I just seems to me that these discussions expose a shortage of information coming from some instructors. I must admit that reading them makes me realise I was very lucky in terms of being given heaps of information as I progressed, particularly in the night classes.

or (2) 90 degrees either side of straight ahead depending on altitude.

I got 30 degrees turn in one, heading for the paddock just missed a B Double going along the highway and still got bawled at for not keeping the nose down. So there's not muh clearnce to play around with.

Engine failure after takeoff is much lower than a forced landing in the circuit, that's where a lot of confusion is coming in.

Where I was a few hundred metres away, you could add to that observing pretty much all the cars with their lights still on mid morning and disappearing into the distance, and no horizon for 360 degrees.

Why the questions on here? What is happening with the instructors out there? Are they too shy to tell you these secrets?

Looks very pitchy??

Yes, sad, seems he was a nice guy.

Another lesson in the different levels of attention and preparation we have to make before a flight vs before a car trip.

Your Instructor will take you through, once is enough because if you get your entry points right the lights are as bright as the death rays of Atlantis.

Great shortcut through to the Western District.

The other key navigation point you need the Instructor to show you is Kilmore Gap, which on many days is your only route below cloud to the north.

I find that a lot harder to locate.

Suggestion was that he'd left his diabetes medication in the car.

In GA it's more sensible, you are confined to the Training Area, which has known borders pointed out to you by your instructor during training, so you are familiar with your boundaries.

I'd suggest the reason for this boundary (RA or GA) is the same as being limited to the circuit area in the beginning - you learn a little at a time and as you become compentent, you move on to the next step.

The 25 Nm limit is necessary because you have not been trained in Navigation to that point, and desirable because you can carry out essential training like stalls, precautionary landings, forced landings, steep descending turns etc. without the added distraction of having to establish where you are.

Similarly, when you progress to navigation exercises, you can carry out this difficult phase of training without the distraction of not being up to speed in basic training - they are two very different phases.

There are places like the Latrobe Valley with mountains on one side and ocean on the other where eyeball navigation is a breeze and a student would never get lost, but as Mick pointed out above there are hundreds of thousands of square miles of Australia where you require navigation skills to survive.

Navigation is a subject best learnt in a night course with others present to ask questions you didn't think of and provide answers to all sorts of scenarios. It's also the subject which requires the most re-reading and re-training at regular intervals to keep up recency. Many people have become lost over the years by miscalculating compass track.

The threads we've had on this subject before were very telling, with people unaware of how to navigate with a map, admitting to gambling their lives on a Chinese GPS which they really couldn't work anyway, and assuming that because they could navigate visually in their local area, everywhere else would be the same.

They are all in a hurry to get nowhere, in their little tin tops. Motorbikes get little courtesy and care from a lot of drivers. They still reckon they can say I didn't see him and it's ok. Nev

The Turnback story, Fighter Pilots, Edited by Jon E. Lewis

Story by Duncan Grinnell-Milne, training for military service in WW1, in 1915

At the aerodrome a treat was in store for us. A brand-new aeroplane of the most modern type had just arrived on a visit. It was being flown around the country upon a series of test flights by a well-known pilot from the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough, accompanies by a civilian expert.

We gathered in wonder, mindful of the pilot’s request that we should not touch anything......

.....I gazed at the pilot with envy while my imagination soared faster than the swiftest biplane.

Some day I too would wear Flying Corps “Wings” upon the left breast of my tunic, I too would steer a wonderful B.E.2c, and learn to manoeuvre it with graceful ease. I would fly such a machine in France; my wings would darken the skies above the expectant battle-front.......

At lunch in the Mess that day we were very quiet, listening in awed silence to the instructors and the pilot from Farnborough, discussing technicalities almost entirely over our heads.

It was thrilling to hear the names of famous airmen bandied familiarly about , to hear of all the different types of aeroplanes with exaggerated speeds which we might hope to fly, and particularly to hear this so experienced pilot (a test-pilot!) give his views on how to do this and that, how to turn quickly and with almost vertical banking, how to do a spiral glide, how to deal with the ever mysterious “spinning” and so on. It was rumoured that this pilot had frequently looped.

......He decided to leave. We hurried down to the aerodrome to watch him go.

The beautiful machine was wheeled forward, her engine started, warmed up. The test-pilot and his civilian passenger donned much leather flying clothing , climbed into their seats.

The engine having been run up and found satisfactory, the wooden chocks were removed, and the machine turned and taxied out to the far side of the aerodrome. A short pause, and the pilot gave the engine full throttle, taking off obliquely towards the sheds.

Against the wind the machine rose at once and began to climb steeply. The pilot waved farewell as he passed us by, about fifty feet up, heading west into the sunlight.

Against the bright sky the machine was silhouetted, hard to see beyond the end of the sheds. But, as we watched, shading our eyes, there came to us suddenly the spluttering of a starved engine.

The steady roar of the exhaust died down, the nose of the machine dropped.

And now this too expert pilot made his great mistake.

In the course of the short flight, he had attained a height of about one hundred and fifty feet and had crossed the boundary of the aerodrome.

A road, a line of telegraph wires were beneath him, ahead a series of small meadows intersected by ditches. Rough ground, but possible in an emergency, especially as the strong wind against him would make the run on landing exceptionally short.

There was, strictly speaking, no alternative for a safe, a wise pilot.

But this pilot was exceedingly clever, and he wanted to save his beautiful machine from damage. Not that it would have suffered anything worse than a broken under-carriage, possibly a smashed propeller, from the forced landing; he wished to avoid even that much.

And so he tried something which, in this instance, he had not one chance in a thousand of bringing off.

He turned back to the aerodrome.

In the very few seconds that followed I remember feeling, in spite of my utter ignorance of piloting, an intense admiration for the brilliant way in which he handled the machine. Without a moment’s hesitation he turned down wind as quickly and as flatly as possible so as not to lose the little height he had gained, held a straight course for an instant, then over the shed began another sharp turn that, when completed, would bring him into wind with a space of fifty to sixty yards of smooth ground on which to land.

Actually it was just possible of achievement , although as I see it now he was taking a terrible risk; but the whole performance was cut too fine. He failed by much more than inches.

As he came towards the sheds, his speed downwind seemed terrific, yet in trying to maintain his height he had in fact lost the essential flying-speed. He was stalling even as he banked over the sheds. The nose went down with a jerk in the first turn of a spin.

He missed the roof by a miracle, but within a second of the machine’s disappearance behind the shed we were horrified to hear an appalling crash.

Naturally we rushed forward in spite of the first-shouted order that all pupils should stand back – the sight of a probably fatal crash, it was rightly thought, might - we had to see; we ran for it.

Beyond the shed the new aeroplane lay flat on the ground, a mass of wreckage. Both men sat in their smashed cockpits motionless. Unconscious or dead? We were not long in doubt for worse was to follow. As we came nearer the wreck from which mechanics were already trying to extricate pilot and passenger, there was a flicker of flame from beneath the fuselage. And all at once the mechanic sprang back as with a roar a great flame shot up from the burst petrol tank.

It swept back over the passenger; when it reached the pilot he moved uneasily; seemed to shake himself, fumbled with his safety belt, then jumped out just in time, his clothing on fire.

There were cries for extinguishers, for axes to hack through broken wings, for help to pull away the wreckage, for the ambulance – for anything and everything to save the passenger. He was still in the machine and still alive. Mercifully he did not recover consciousness – afterwards it was found that his skull had been fractured in the crash – but he kept moving. And we were powerless. The extinguishers had no effect upon thirty gallons of blazing petrol. The strong wind blew the flames into his face. Before our very eyes he was burnt to death, roasted. It took a long time, it was ghastly.

The fire died down, smouldered awhile, went out. The wind dropped, the sun set and the sky glowed with rare beauty. But we pupils walked back to the Mess in glum silence.

Upon the following morning all officers were summoned to the squadron office. We expected the summons, although I do not quite know what we expected to hear. I suppose that, among other things, we thought to be given news of the pilot in hospital, but possibly to be complimented upon the vain efforts we had made to penetrate the barrier of fire, and upon the sang-froid we had shown afterwards. Perhaps more than anything we hoped to hear that the fire had not been so intense as our eyes had led us to believe, that the unfortunate victim had in some way been protected – by his goggles, by his flying helmet or by his leather clothing – from the devouring fury of the flames, so that there might be a chance of his recovery. Or did we hope to be told that something mysterious had gone wrong with this new aeroplane, something very startling and unusual which could not occur again, that flying was not like this, horrible, cruel?

The Squadron-commander strode into the office, flung his cap upon the table, drew a cane chair forward. Placing one foot upon the chair, he rested an elbow upon his knee.

“With regard to this unfortunate and unnecessary happening” he began harshly, “the first and only thing to do is to find out the causes of the accident, to see where the pilot was to blame so as to learn what lessons we may.

“Now in this particularly stupid case......”

I thought him terribly callous.

“A pilot must never turn down wind at a low altitude when faced with the possibility of a forced landing.

“A pilot in difficulties after leaving the ground must keep straight on.

“A pilot must save himself and his passengers first, not the aeroplane. It is better to smash wheels and propeller than burn a man to death.

“A pilot must take particular care to maintain flying-speed after engine failure....”

Those were the lessons. If the manner of their teaching was hard, it was also effective.

A: A good pilot is always learning.I am guessing the "no turn around" rule came into practice during WW2 when having a fully fueled and armed plane trying to make a forced landing was risking more lives and planes. I could be wrong but I am guessing that's how the rule eventuated.

The story is quite apt because the power to weight ratio and flying characteristics are not all that different to the slower RA aircraft, and the pilot involved was a cutting edge military pilot and test pilot.

Good point Pow.The problem is, there are too many variables. At what height could you normally perform a steep power off 180? In what type? On what sort of day? At what % of All up weight etc.

The biggest and most dynamic factor is height. Its changing by the second on a takeoff, every second in the air presents more opportunities with regards to glide distance etc. When dealing with these sorts of things, the more "normal" you can keep the "abnormal" situation, the better. For instance, we dont like to do much turning below 500 feet. So by commencing a turn onto crosswind at this height should see you leveled out on xwind by say 600-700 feet. From that position its no longer an EFATO, its a forced landing with the usual rules of thumb applying.

 

If from that postion the best option is back towards the runway then a normal glide to that spot would not be too much of a drama, providing a good attitude is maintained.

 

But the initial leg engine failure, as a rule, straight ahead is all you should consider.

 

cheers

Remember, with subconscious action you'll have taken action to get glide speed straight ahead in about 1/5 of a second, and once the aircraft is flying without power you aren't going to have a fatal unless fate steps in and puts a tree/ditch etc in the way after touch down.

On the other hand, if you have to remember something, your reaction time extends to 2 to 3 seconds, and that's about the time span of when it all went wrong in the Luskintyre accident.

Yes it had its day at the top of the tree, even if the quality was so bad that you would often find different seat colours in the same car.

Well at least two dead RA pilots in recent turn back accidents would be only too pleased to see their nannys again.

Thes types of videos can do more harm than good.

We will all come across situations where we take off in clear conditions, and without apparent warning fog rolls in and obscures the landscape making it impossible to navigate, or obscures our destination landing site.

Although the Met forecast should give indications that fog may be or become present en route, the above situation could be considered accidental.

What differentiates this incident is the massive blanket of fog over the outer southeast of Melbourne that morning.

20 minutes before they landed there was a tick blanket over the south eastern suburbs, and no aircraft at all in the Moorabbin Training Area which extends to the east past the north of Frankston.

Where I was, around 500 metres west of where they landed, I'd been driving in fog for 20 minutes.

Another poster on another site reported fog over Tooradin to the east.

You couldn't really miss it on that day, even if you hadn't bothered with a forecast.

Performance and Operations is a critical subject which forms part of training, but we certainly don't hear about it enough.

There's already a thread on this

http://www.recreationalflying.com/threads/what-is-there-to-investigate.40381/

Certainly a lot more serious than a quiet news day given the thick blanket of fog around

6x2 is a truck with lazy axle ie 6 "wheels" of which two wheels are driven (not 3) A "wheel" may consist of a single or double tyre on a rim6 x 4 is a powered double rear axle (ie one driveshaft to two differentials and 4 wheels).

 

Other past time is 4WDing...

Sorry, 3 was a typo.

The 6x2 dosen't have to be a lazy axle - it can be a twin steer single drive.....which is why this nomenclature isn't perfect

Old Koreelah

More intriguing, I'm not sure where 4x4 originated but is it the more specific description, for example

4x2 - 4 wheel groups, 2 driving

4x4 - 4 wheel groups, 4 driving

6x2 - 6 wheel groups, 3 driving (then a confusion, either a lazy axle, pusher axle or twin steer)

6x4 - 6 wheel groups, four driving

6x6 - 6 wheel groups, all driving