Originally Posted by
mary meagher
Good point raised that the more likely happening is a loss of power rather than a dead stop! In the Supercub, 2,000' over Banbury, the examiner, who I know to be one of the most crafty and knowlegable of pilots, told me that I now had only half the usual power, and what was I going to do about it?
I was already aimed at the airfield, 7 miles away, so decided to carry on, as not yet losing a lot of height....and as the wind was not all that strong, I made a straight in downwind landing. That surprised the examiner, who had expected me to go for a complete circuit and screw up a final turn....
But in the US, at gliderports, gliders and tugs land downwind all the time, to save walking. Other things being equal, it is worth considering. In fact, any instructors reading this, have you tried it lately?
The Cessna 150/152/172 POH's explicitly allow landings with up to 10 knots of tailwind component. I try to get all of my CPL's to do at least one max component tailwind landing. This gives them the feel of what a downwind approach looks like as well as the actual experience landing with a tailwind.
With respect to partial power failures, my experience is almost no one knows what the approximate minimum RPM (or Manifold Pressure) their aircraft requires to maintain level flight. In the event of a partial engine failure, you should be able to look at the power gauges and know right away whether you can continue or whether you are going down, as the decision making process will be different for the two possibilities.