I wasn't going to post thiis, but as it was so recent and is still fresh in my mind and a couple of fellow pilots have suggested it may be useful here goes.
En route to maintenance for a SAS computer replacement, under 8/8s white at 500ft just off the coast. Arrive within 2 miles of base and turn inland, base surrounded by hills trying to maintain VMC and fly over the valley top and let down to the hangar.
Can’t maintain VMC, wheels up caution activates (which it does sometimes spuriously). Pull up into IMC and climb like a bat out of hell. to MSA.
Pop out the top @ 2000’ into 8/8s blue and hear one the other pilots calling on the radio, I guess he must have heard me go around and straight over the top of the site. Brief chat to discuss ways to let down. I am considering my options when out of the blue the aircraft starts yawing left and right and sounds like I imagine a p**ssed off rhinoceros would. My first reaction is what did I hit, or whats fallen off, so I look over my shoulder, nothing appears to be hanging off. As I look back at the panel I see ‘2 engine N2 and Tq bouncing around the 75% mark (instruments difficult to read due to vibration). Lowering the lever, I look at the panel to confirm which engine, it must be #2 the TOT has fallen to zero, oh no it hasn’t its hard against the stop from the other side so way above 1000 degrees. I reach and grasp #2 Fuel control lever and retard it towards idle, the yawing stops. I try and tell the guy on the ground, but he’s just gone off the radio as he walks back to the hangar, back to the last frequency for ATC, the call goes something like ‘Approach this GXXXX back with you 2000’ over base, I’ve had an engine failure on #2, tell St. Mawgan I am on the way, this is a Mayday’ Apparently it came out rather hurried and in a slightly concerned tone. At this point a complete calm descends upon me as I head off for my intended landing site. ‘GXXX squawk emergency, heading 270 and St. Mawgan 128xx they are expecting you’
I change frequency and speak to one of the best controllers I’ve ever spoken to. I tell him of my problem, and he gives me vectors for their ILS.I am now very interested in the good engine and set it well below what I am allowed to pull and accept a slightly lower than achievable speed en route. He offers me the wx, I don’t really want it, but listen intently, overcast at 200’ and 1000ish m viz gets my attention. I set up the procedure from the plate on my knee and confirm that this is correct. The procedure had just changed (within days) and my updates were very helpfully just being delivered to my house that morning. Slightly disconcerted we discuss the finer points of the procedure (it hasn’t changed that much). The DME fails, I inform the controller, and remind him I am single crew, so working quite hard. He calls radar ranges every mile for the next 15 minutes. I notice on the GPS I am almost over my house (how ironic).
‘Would you like a slighty closer vector say 7miles, you are being vectored towards a 10 mile ILS at the moment’ I am asked’ I accept.
I spend the next 10ish miles thinking about the good engine, the procedure I am about to fly and what to do with the bad one, I keep it a t ground Idle, but am ready to kill it at a moments notice. The wheels up caution activates again.
A local helicopter is established on the ILS and he says (probably for my benefit that he is visual at 620ft), procedure minimum is 590 and threshold is 390.
Can you climb, says the controller, ‘No says I’, I am thinking I want on the ground, and don’t want to overtax the good engine.
After what seems like an eternity , I establish on the localiser, then with the glide.
The previously mentioned helicopter stays out talking to tower giving them constant cloudbase reports.’Mayday GXX is cleared to land’. Now at about 3 miles I get ranges every ½ miles at 1 mile to go still solid IMC, then at about half a mile the lead in lights appear faintly through the clag, I am going to make it. At 590’ now visual, I check wheels down, brakes off and nosewheel pin in is in (for the 5th time). I inform them I am going to land long, I float along the runway bleeding off what speed I have, not moving the lever at all , just slowing to Max Landing Speed, I call for a wind check 90 degrees off at 17kts. The best run on landing I’ve ever done on type follows, as soon as the weight is on the wheels I reach up and shutdown #2, close the fuel valves and taxi onto the north side of the airfield. It is at this point that apparently that my calm tone changes and the controllers now realise how human I am feeling. An uneventful taxi off and park follows on one engine.
After many phone calls (owners, maintenance, family) I eventually get to visit the man to whom I will always be grateful, the controller who talked me in. What an absolute professional. A man without whom I would have had a much more difficult afternoon. I am then very kindly driven home by one of the other ATCers, who had just come off duty.
The engine is still in the airframe as of this afternoon, but a visual inspection down the intake seems to show the compressor in a very sorry state of repair.