Partial EFATO in a single
It occurred to me, on Sunday, a short while after my third urgent landing of the year - in this case a Rotax 503 engined Thruster* that decided to rough-run at 400ft just after take-off from a short farm strip, that there's a teaching point here.
Most of my engine problems over the years have been other-than the classic sudden engine failure. This seems to have been a fuel supply fault preventing the carb bowls from both filling properly at climb power and attitude.
I know how *I* handle these - maintain as much height as possible whilst positioning from landable field to landable field until I'm able to make a runway, then taking an approach (straight in or constant aspect) to that which is consistent with still making the runway if the engine stops altogether at any point. A handful of such events and no scratched aeroplanes suggests to me that I'm getting this about right. I'd do something similar if worried that I'd f*****d up my fuel planning and was at risk of fuel starvation. (Actually I did do this a couple of years ago when I realised halfway through testing an Auster** that the fuel system was only drawing from one fuel tank, so my conservative plan to land with 40% of the fuel I'd started with wasn't enough!)
In teaching terms however, I've never come across somebody teaching this as an exercise. Field-to-field has mirrors in what we do recovering from a PFL, whilst everybody practices glide approaches from time to time. But as a complete set it's not a combination that I've ever come across being taught or even particularly talked about.
Should we?
G
*For the record, not my aeroplane; I was doing the annual Permit to Fly air test, which I declared the aeroplane to have failed.
** Nor was the Auster.