Good morning fellow aviators I see this thread is progressing as I had hoped it would and we are still focused on the desire to hopefully learn form the experiences of others.
Contrary to what some have been suggesting my use of the private pilot forum to discuss PDM by using real life flying in the professional world has been a winner as evident by the responses of the less experienced here.
Piper.Classique has shown that the message is not really that difficult to grasp...thinking trumps acting without thinking.
Piper. C, just to touch on your post again:
How many people let themselves make stupid decisions because they have been hammered into doing it by the book? And to get back to the poster's original point - how often do you need to do anything in a hurry? If the aeroplane, or glider, or ballon or whatever is ahead of you and you are reacting instantly then you are not far short of panicking, and that is what will kill you. Like he says, slow down! Take a deep breath and THINK before you move.
I was the training pilot for The Flying Fireman in B.C. for 12 years that operated nine PBY water bombers and one of the most important lessons that I taught the crews was your best friend is inertia and you should always strive to have your friend on your side to assist you in an emergency condition. It is simple and free to have inertia helping you, all you have to do is insure you have enough speed avaliable to give you those vital moments to do nothing except think and evaluate.
To reinforce this simple fact I would have them practice engine failures just after liftoff from the water after picking up a full load of water.
I had them accelerate to five knots above the normal climb speed after liftoff and at that point close the throttle on the critical engine and do three things.
(1) Maintain the pitch attitude and keep straight with rudder.
(2) Count to ten before making taking any further actions.
(3) Check the airspeed to determine how much airspeed you have lost during during that count to ten.
The airspeed loss would have been three knots maximum.
Safety wise they were still ahead of the normal climb out airspeed because they still had two more knots than the normal climb out airspeed even though they had lost an engine and did nothing for the count of ten.
Paulc:
you are correct...the brakes on the PBY were built to stop the Titanic and your description of their working parts is correct.
I can't be bothered arguing about these side issues that de rail the intent of what I am attempting to relate....even with people who go into great detail to explain something that has no relevance to the issue being discussed.
Anyhow gang .....if nothing else we seem to be having fun here and hopefully someone will benefit from all this.
Late finals:
