Originally Posted by
Step Turn
I agree, from an established glide at 60 knots, a practiced pilot can make a fine power off landing. There won't be a lot of time to get the flare right, but enough.
However, as the topic is EFATO, and the differences in that situation, are in my opinion, under trained, I opine that many pilots will have a more difficult time making a good power off landing, if after takeoff, while climbing at 60 knots, and at 100 feet, the engine stops. In that scenario, you have to get the nose down really fast. The instant you get the nose down, you'll be at about 50 feet, and you'd better be ready to flare. There will be no time to establish a glide as such.
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Initial flight training is going from no knowledge and skills to enough knowledge and skills to fly safely. As experience grows so does a pilots capability to expand their skills. But the core purpose of the PPL is to make sure the student has a solid set of foundation skills and knowledge. The advanced stuff can only happen after the basics are nailed down.
So training for the low altitude EFATO scenario that Step turn has raised is really a subset of a larger issue, namely "what should I as a PPL be practicing". There are a great many things that could be reviewed and expanded upon in further training. IMO the best way to approach this question involves judging the probability and severity of the event you are practicing.
As Step Turn very correctly pointed out a complete engine failure at very low altitudes will be mean that the transition to the glide and then the flare to landing will happen very fast and thus an EFATO at 50 feet would be more demanding than a EFATO at 200 feet with the aircraft landing straight ahead in both circumstances.
What is the probability of this happening ? My thought is that it is very small as the time from rotation to say 200 feet is maybe 20 seconds.
What is the severity of the event ? My thought is that as long as the nose gets lowered the airplane won't stall, however the likelihood of a heavy landing with probable aircraft damage is fairly high. However I think it is unlikely anyone is going to get hurt.
Personally I am OK with the consequences and the fact that the window of vulnerability is so small.
However if one doesn't agree with me it would seem that the only way to "train" for this event is to have the instructor quickly close the throttle at say 50 feet on an actual takeoff. Personally I think this is a bad idea as the potential for this going bad far out ways the training value obtained.
When teaching the EFATO as part of the PPL I do mention the challenges of a low altitude failure but realistically it all happens so fast I doubt my student is going to remember. What I hope will save the day is robust general handling skills, but if the airplane gets bent and nobody gets hurt it is still a win in my book.
Bottom line: If you see a C 152/172/Pa28 sitting behind the hangar with a busted off nosewheel and other damage indicative of a hard landing it
could be a result of a badly handled low altitude engine failure.
However I would suggest that it is a
100 times more likely that the damage was the result of a plain unstable too fast approach followed by a nose wheel first touchdown followed by increasingly violent proposing until something broke.
Therefor if you are looking for something to practice, go do some circuits and be demanding of yourself. Don't be happy until the landings are on centerline with the aircraft straight and at a nice tail low landing attitude.
Finally a bit off topic but one thing that never seems to get talked about much is rejecting takeoffs before the aircraft reaches flying speed. There have been plenty of after takeoff crashes where, in hindsight, the lack of engine power would have been evident during the takeoff roll.
I also should note that the most important part of a rejected takeoff is to first immediately retard the throttle to idle even if the engine has stopped.