How to crash land a single(Bush Flying Pt 2)

[Flying Bean]

Please come here after the "Bush Flying" Thread.
When you spend a great deal of your time 1000 - 6000 ft above the bush it is good to get as many opinions as possible about what to do when the prop stops.
It has happened to me once in a C210 at 6000 ft agl. The first thing you learn is that the thought that you will always find a couple of hundred meters of spare space somewhere in that bush below is wrong wrong.
I was in a postion of getting down to 1000 ft and still finding absolutely nothing.
There seems to be 2 schools of thought.
Get the speed to minimum and then just try to thread the nose between the tree trucks.
OR Stall it onto the top.
In my case I selected the biggest tree top I could find and stalled it into the top. The plane bouced off and then plonked it self on the ground snapping of the tail and engine and leaving us all mostly unharmed in the intact cabin section. Amazingly lucky and I do not think a full endorsement of the technique. Can we have some feedback and opinions. I am sticking to singles because the low stall and final impact speeds make the technique used a factor in survival.

[Flintstone]

Aaah, a thought that must have occupied my mind during most of the 1000 or so hours I spent in clapped out C210s a third of which were at night.

As someone once said to me about engine failures at night, "At 300 feet you turn on the landing lights and if you don't like what you see, turn 'em off".

Seriously though, I always felt that I would have had more control trying to weave between the trunks (or at least trying to make sure I didn't hit one head on) than stalling into the canopy. I also thought that striking the wings might absorb some energy and slow me down.

Trying to stall in at a precise spot would be damn near impossible and if the stall comes above a relatively clear patch you're going to go straight down nose first.

Let's face it though, either way is not going to be pretty. Glad to hear you walked away from yours.

Best thing you can do is get on to a reasonable twin as soon as possible ;)

[Genghis the Engineer]

A few years ago I went to a talk given by a chap called Derek Piggot, who is a well known author of books on gliding. I think he lives in the South of England somewhere, he used to fly at Lasham but I'm not sure if he still does.

It appears that DP has also done enormous amounts of film flying - those magnificent men, blue max, etc. He talked about this, and also showed videos of aircraft he'd crashed for films; apparently he's regarded as THE expert in the subject. I have no contact details for him, but it might be worth trying to contact him, he may well have far more wisdom to offer than the rest of us who spend our time trying not to crash.

G

[Luftwaffle]

I spoke with an insurance adjuster once who said that based on the many accident sites he had attended, he would definitely choose the slow approach between the trees, over the stall into the tops approach. In general, the approach method trashes the airplane (but you'd be surprised what the leading edge of a Cessna cuts through before it crumples), but the occupants survive. Stalling leads to nose down plummeting - how far do you want to fall? - and being skewered. Another pilot told me of attending a crash site where the airplane was almost entirely intact, except that it was skewered through by the trees it had stalled into. No one on board had survived the G-forces of the impact.

That said, there's actually some wisdom in the adage about turning the landing light off if you don't like what you see: it's probably easier to fly a stable approach if you can't actually see the stuff you're going to crash into.