Simulating OEI at 5000' bears no relationship whatsoever to just after takeoff. There would be absolutely no training benefit.
The Duchess is a very fine training aircraft and has enough performance to fly away from an EFATO on one engine, at typical training weights, climb to 2000' odd feet and return to land or divert to a nearby alternate.
Flown well of course.
I know because I have done exactly that during an IF renewal with John Chesterfield (neither of us light weights) and near full fuel - we were at Lismore having departed Cooly with full tanks, flown a RWY 15 GPS NPA and landed.
For our departure I briefed what I would do before and after the gear was up including a practical escape route on one engine in IMC away from the terrain that feature of Lismore. It was summertime too.
Just airborne with the gear in transit he failed one engine on the mixture and I flew the entire escape route (under the hood) I had briefed to the 2200' MSA.
I had never flown a Duchess before that day - ended up with an endo as part of my IF renewal - and was mighty impressed with that capable little aeroplane
In those days I had CASA ATO approval for the Falcon 200 including initial issue and renewal approvals for command and copilot instrument ratings. I have previously held training approvals for all manner of piston twins.
NEVER EVER do you fail an engine at night for training - you just don't.
Having said all that by way of laying out what I know the BE76, and a well trained pilot, is capable of the crash at Camden could have been averted by the pilot under training by simply pushing the mixture back in and calling the rest of the detail off.
He was 'caught unawares'?
So a real engine failure would have led to the same result?
What happened to 'an amateur is surprised when an engine fails but a professional is surprised when it doesn't'?
I am sorry but he would have had adequate warning of what the ATO was intending to do (despite assurances he would not) when he stuck the map into the throttle quadrant. Anyone with more than 5 minutes ME time knows what happens next when an instructor/examiner does that. All he had to do was say "NO" firmly and either block the mixture from being pulled to ICO or pushed it back in again if his hand was busy with the gear. There is just no excuse for being caught flat footed in this scenario.
The aeroplane WAS capable of climbing away on one engine but was mishandled.
Darkness complicates the situation inordinately which is why we train in the daytime and HOPE we can pull it off if it happens on a pitch dark night - I sincerely hope I am never tested thus. I only THINK/hope I could manage based on 1000s of daytime mixture cuts in piston twins over 30+ years and a ****load of EFATOs in class D jet sims in IMC/dark.
Having climbed away on two engines and reached a safe height you end the training detail and RTB. You don't have a big discussion/argument in the cockpit - you merely say "I am calling this flight off, we will return to XYZ and discuss it further on the ground. Do not touch another thing in this cockpit"
Yes I have done exactly that.
Whether it goes further than that is up to the individuals concerned - if you felt strongly enough and depending on the reaction of the miscreant instructor/examiner you might take the nuclear option.
Yes piston twin EFATO training is higher risk than just flying around. That is not an argument for not doing such training in real aircraft absent a sim with realistic fidelity.
Whether you simulate failure by pulling throttle or mixture is a wash in my experience in both seats. What elevates the risk to unacceptably dangerous is the attitude, experience and skill of the instructor/examiner not whether you pull the mixture or throttle. I prefer the mixture for good engineering/physics reasons.
It is a disgrace that young instructors with bordering on zero ME time, and certainly no meaningful ME time, are able to obtain META purely so they can get more hours in the ME Command column (despite the fact they won't typically be the flying pilot for most of it) for their airline application.
By 'meaningful ME time' I mean hours logged in the real world as opposed to the circuit/local training area while they get the minimum (10-20?) hours before applying for a META.
I had several hundred hrs in the Islander in PNG before I was initially tested/approved for BN2 (and ONLY BN2) training. Similarly I had several hundred hours on C402s before I was granted approvals for that aircraft...couple of hundred on the Aerostar etc. This system of young instructors with little, if any, real world experience endorsing pilots on any twin they happen to have a handful of hours on is just crazy. The only time I have ever had to put my foot down and end a flight was with just such a instructor while on leave from PNG and renewing my Oz rating. I defined the parameters of what I would accept and I guess he either thought I wasn't serious or mentally dismissed my requirements as irrelevant.
Big...BIG mistake.
I have never been in a piston twin with a young ME instructor since. I happily fly with people like Chesty.
And yes it is also a disgrace that very experienced ME instructors who show ONGOING disdain for safe practices are not stripped of their approvals.
Certainly I have been guilty of that same 'overzealous' trait early on in my ME training experience as centaurus alludes to. That is just human nature but also quite different to an sustained disdain for what is 'safe' and what is plain stupid. I can honestly say that at my 'most zealous' I NEVER raised my own, or my trainees, pulse to alarming levels.
