The DC3 can bite. A full flap power on stall will almost certainly result in a savage (and I mean, savage) wing tip stall and wing drop. The RAAF Dakotas had rubber de-icing boots the full length of the wing leading edge. I had one split wide open like a zipper just as the landing gear lever was selected up. Student under instruction in left seat thought we had lost an engine on that side and reached up to feather No 2. Managed to stop him in time. The loss of lift was serious bad news requiring around three-quarters of full wheel deflection to fly around the circuit and land. Ran out of aileron during the float but touched down in time.
Flat tyre on touch down on another occasion at Townsville. Gently swung off the runway with full opposite rudder and brake.
Landing Essendon 35 in gusty crosswind northerly. Geriatric captain as PNF then reached down as soon as wheels kissed runway and engaged autopilot "to help stop rudder from thrashing in strong wind" he says. Damned near lost control as the leg force needed to operate rudder with autopilot engaged is beyond a joke. Landing gear warning horn sounded as gear took the sideways strain as self tried to hold centre line with little success.
RAAF CFS instructor in strife at East Sale. Feathered one engine for practice at cruise. Pulled the firewall shutoff valve as part of drill. Bad thing to do as it turned out. Did a few turns and after re-setting the fire wall shut off valve he unfeathered prop. After engine warmed up at zero thrust or whatever, he throttled back the other engine and decided to practice a single engine go-around at altitude around 2000 ft. He applied METO power on just warmed up engine and a few seconds later the prop flew off the engine and sawed its way up the fuselage and cut the fire bottle in half situated immediately behind the copilot's seat.
Copilot understandably not impressed but had a splended viw of the outside world through gaping crack in fuselage. Prop fell into a field. The prop sliced through various hydraulic lines and other wires and tubes cutting info to temps and pressures gauges of live engine. Mayday declared and aircraft landed safely sans brakes etc. Reason why prop broke off was because re-setting fire wall shut off valve does not fully reset the oil shut off line and so the engine was steadily starved of oil. OK at warm up revs but disaster at high power causing engine to seize up and throw the prop. Memo for pilots: Do not pull firewall shut off valve if practicing feathering....
As I said earlier, nice aircraft the DC3 but it can bite sometimes...
One more. Just remembered. Windscreen wipers hydraulically operated using knob in cockpit near windscreen. Bad leak under pressure squirted hot hydraulic fluid over pilot very close to eyes. Another one but not me. RAAF School of Air Navigation East Sale was the venue for this one. The main landing gear hydraulic lines required I think 650 PSI with gear down. Two gauges on right side of cockpit - one with main system hydraulic pressure and the next gauge to it was landing gear down line pressure. On the ground the landing gear lever was set to neutral and the safety latch was locked in down. To retract the gear you had to first unlatch the small safety lever which was on the floor then you selected the real big lever to up for retraction. Once gear up and locked the main landing gear lever was set to neutral which is half way between up and down like a 737 gear lever
Often the landing gear hydraulic down line would show an excess of pressure up near 900 psi and to relieve the pressure back to 650 psi, the technique required the copilot to select the landing gear lever to down and then back to neutral. This was SOP on the ground. The captain at East Sale was conducting a high power run up on one engine.
He noticed the creeping up high pressure on the landing gear hydraulic gauge and said to his copilot "dump the pressure." Unfortunately in the spur of the moment the copilot raised the landing gear lever (safety catch was undone) to dump the pressure (the technique used when airborne not on the deck) and the gear retracted. The high revving prop hit the deck and cartwheeled over the tarmac scattering some airmen. No one hurt.
Last edited by A37575; 9th Jan 2009 at 12:51.