not seriously ,,,,
 

Caithness and Sutherland are about the only places in the uk where you have a long empty stretch of road safe to put a plane down on, but then there are the suicidal sheep, deer and every few hours a van that doubles as a bus a post van breadvan and.. but I digress, Far more more fields to get down in really.

and then you have to think of the passing places once your landing has completely blocked the road.....after six or seven hours you might get someone going past who could help you :ok: but ther batteries on your epirb will have gone dead by then anyway

I've also had occasion to make forced landings over the years, and have experienced in the order of 40 or so engine failures (11, I believe, in single engine airplanes).

***************************************

What were you flying?

I have had a few engine failures over the years but never had one in a single that required a forced landing.

Were these failures in certified aircraft with certified engines?

I'd be changing my maintenace organisation if I was you.

One thing I would add to this thread... If you are concerned about having an engine failure over unsuitable terrain - fly higher for a better glide distance, or fly around the bad lands (airspace allowing)

A new chum to the flying game recently told me how he runs his flight planning through google earth looking for more terrain freindly routes (dont ask me how its done, its a bit new tech to me)

Yes, all certified engines, ranging from the A-65 to the R-2600 the T-56. The last one, resulting in a forced landing as previously described was a TPE-331-10. I'd say more of them in radial engines than any, but those who have radial experience will probably understand that.

The Garrett (TPE-331) involved the failure of the rear turbine bearing seal, with loss of all engine oil. I discovered it at the bottom of a canyon at 150' AGL, when I pushed the power up. The EGT came up normally, with a perfectly functioning gas generator, but only about fifteen percent torque. It increased to nearly 56% for several seconds before dropping to zero, without any signs of trouble from the gas generator section. Just no oil to move the propeller, hence no torque. It didn't feather, obviously no NTS...it just sat out there flopping around until I touched down shortly thereafter.

Other failures have ranged from engine oil loss with a cracked governor stephead base to lifted cylinder heads, to pressure carb failures, blocked induction, one carb ice failure in IMC with a subsequent failure of the carb heat control, etc. Most have been relative non-events.

Most of the failures occured with 6 different employers, some excellent maintenance, some very rough operating conditions with respect to the engine, over the course of more than 20 years, in a number of different airplanes. In most every case, maintenance was not the culprit.

A useful technique in planning flight through mountainous country is to use a roadmap in conjunction with your other charts and publications. Highways often make use of the best transit through the mountainous areas, including the best passes and valleys, and give a clue as to how best to base your routing...as well as providing an excellent navigation tool, and quite possibly a forced landing site, beneath you most of the way.

Guppy, I read all your comments on forced landings and you have some very good advice.

However I do disagree with this part.

One should touch down at minimum sink to minimize vertical forces on landing. One should touch down in water at minimum sink too...but all too often I hear pilots describng their idea of a water landing...holding it off and stalling into the water. Anyone who has any water landing experience understands the fallacy of this,

That does not hold true in all circumstances as it can vary depending on what you are flying and the water conditions, sometimes it is better to full stall on the water.

Another reason, since it's practice you might say "Lets use this road even though theres people on it, we aren't touching down and we'll overshoot at 200feet agl or w/e" And then you end up losing your engine and you can't turn to a field..

Landing on waves on on swells with a roughened surface is different than landing on glassy water. Even the most experienced water pilots often can't judge height above glassy water. Even water birds crash into glassy water. When discussing water landings with the common denominator, particularly in an audience that is not primarily made up of experienced water or float pilots, I see zero advantage in ever suggesting that attempting stalled landings into water is a wise idea.

Among other issues, water which is rough enough for a reference isn't flat. It's made of moving hills and valleys; swells and troughs. Very often the pilot who's landing on them will find that when he thinks he's at the water level, suddenly it either rises up to meet him when he flared into a trough, or it falls away leaving him to fall out of the stall or spashdown...which can prove disasterous.

Holding minimum sink creates the minimum steady state vertical descent speed. Vertical speed is by far the most critical. Pilots often erroneously believe that they can judge height and minimize their forward and vertical speed by stalling the airplane onto the water...just like they think they can do it into the trees. This fallacy, usully borne because the pilot is ignorant of the challenges of landing on water, increases the liklihood of a bad outcome substantially. I counsel students, particularly those at any certification level who have not had hands-on actual water landing experience, to put every thought of stalling into the water out of their mind.

In most light airplane, minimum sink equates very closely to the published sea level Vx speed. A little experimentation can quickly nail down what the number really is for a given airplane. Holding that speed until impact will usually yield the most survivable chance for a pilot to make a successful ditching. It also means the pilot doesn't react to the illousion of depth perception over water, and try to flare high. If the pilot is taught not to flare but to hold that stable descent to the water the probability of a good outcome will increse significantly.

Landing on waves on on swells with a roughened surface is different than landing on glassy water. Even the most experienced water pilots often can't judge height above glassy water. Even water birds crash into glassy water. When discussing water landings with the common denominator, particularly in an audience that is not primarily made up of experienced water or float water landing experience, to put every thought of stalling into the water out of their mind.

We obviously have different training methods, I first teach them to make all landings on the water with the power at idle right to touch down in the normal attitude for the airplane being flown so they learn to judge height accurately while landing. ( except of course on glassy water... Note: I do not consider full stall landings normal attitude and treat them seperate just like glassy water is a seperate method. )

In most light airplane, minimum sink equates very closely to the published sea level Vx speed. A little experimentation can quickly nail down what the number really is for a given airplane. Holding that speed until impact will usually yield the most survivable chance for a pilot to make a successful ditching. It also means the pilot doesn't react to the illousion of depth perception over water, and try to flare high. If the pilot is taught not to flare but to hold that stable descent to the water the probability of a good outcome will increse significantly.

I guess we do not have the same ideas regarding judging height during landings on water, I see no reason that a pilot should not be taught to flare on the water exactly the same as on land.

What will happen to a pilot who is taught only power assisted landings on the water if the engine fails and they are forced to land without the power " crutch " to find the water?

I guess it depends on how accurately you can judge the height. I assume minimum sink in a C152 would be about 250-300feet/min or 2-3kt

Assuming that if you stall the aircraft and all lift disappears (which it doesn't), then stalling at 50' will give you 33kt vertical speed at the bottom. Stalling at 10' will give you 15kt.

Assuming typical-ish C152 numbers, you will arrive with 50% less total energy by stalling it on at 10', compared to minimum-sinking it on, however if you just consider vertical energy (is there such a thing?) it is 25x higher.

These would be upper bound figures, since the lift doesn't disappear instantaneously with a stall, so your vertical acceleration would be nowhere near 1g. If the wing continued to produce at least 0.5g lift during your flare and descent, then a 10' flare wouldn't reduce your final total impact energy all that much, but the 'vertical impact energy' would still be 12x than using minimum sink.

On the other hand, carrying the extra speed of a minimum sink ditching might increase the risk of a nose-over when you have fixed landing gear?

A

"I counsel students, particularly those at any certification level who have not had hands-on actual water landing experience, to put every thought of stalling into the water out of their mind"

My experience totaling less then 10 hours on floats has shown me that Guppy's advice is on the money.

Chuck, we're talking about two different subjects. You're talking about instructing seaplane students, I'm talking about discussing emergency procedures for private pilots who haven't any experience landing on water.

Of course a float pilot is taught to land on water. However, we're talking here, in the private pilot's forum, about making forced landings, not normal landings. When an individual is already up to his neck is stress, with his first time setting down in the water, providing even the remotest encouragement to stall it into the water is ludicruous.

I'm not sure where you came up with powered on vs. power off water landings; this is about gliding to a forced landing site after an engine failure...hence the purpose of minimum sink vs. best glide.

This is an example that you better not land on a road... i would have taken the golf course next to it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4Xa8SsNT5g

Roads are dangerous enough, without some pillock trying to land an aeroplane on one. You took the thing in the air, it is therefore your responsibility to make sure you do not injure/kill and innocent parties on the ground. This should come before saving your own skin.

I'm not sure where you came up with powered on vs. power off water landings; this is about gliding to a forced landing site after an engine failure...hence the purpose of minimum sink vs. best glide.

Guppy I am aware this is a private pilots forum and the subject is power off forced landings, and I am in agreement that minimum sink vs. best glide speed will give the best landing results in most cases.....

...where I have difficulty with your advice is in judging height above the water, maybe I have misunderstood what you are saying but judging height above water is not difficult at all and you should be able to glide to the surface at minimum sink airspeed and then contact the water at whatever attitude would give the best results for the conditions.

Most of the posters here are Brits and they are relating to the area where they fly and for sure landing on their roads is far different from the roads in North America generally speaking.....however if a Brit has an engine failure over water the chances are he/she will be over the ocean as there are not all that many lakes in Britain that they couldn't glide to land from. So back to the English Channel or the North Sea and a engine out forced landing with very high seas running...the object of the exercise is to contact the water at the lowest possible forward speed and lowest vertical sink rate to avoid slamming into the wall of water that will be a large wave. Landing on waves and swells with a roughened surface is different than landing on glassy water. In that case I would suggest a full stall touchdown to minimize forward speed as you hit the wall of water.

I don't understand why you would consider landing with the lowest kinetic energy as being ludicrous?

I have probably misunderstood what you posted and thought that I would elaborate on your advice that full stall landings have zero advantage, because there are instances where minimum forward speed is critical such as landing on the face of a very large wave...of which there are plenty all around the British Isles.

Anyhow we are chasing our tails in circles here due to it being the internet and sometimes it is difficult to glean exactly what the poster means.....

...so in closing I would like to opine that judging height above water is not a big deal unless it is glassy water then it is impossible to judge height.

By the way I have on numerous occasion full stalled an airplane onto glassy water during training sessions...but you have to be in the right place at the right height as you stall.

Originally Posted by Chuck Ellsworth View Post:

I guess we do not have the same ideas regarding judging height during landings on water, I see no reason that a pilot should not be taught to flare on the water exactly the same as on land.

Andy_RR responded:


I guess it depends on how accurately you can judge the height.

Andy if someone has been issued a Private Pilots License would it be unreasonable to expect that the individual be able to judge height during the landing phase of flight?

Or has flight training been dumbed down to the level of teaching monkeys to ring a bell to get a banana?

To suggest that judging height over water is any more difficult than over land unless it is glassy water is being disingenuous in my opinion.

Once again, falling out of a stall doesn't equate to the lowest kinetic energy.

A landing surface that is rising and falling makes judging height difficult, especially for one who has not landed on the water before. My answer would be different if I were responding to seaplane pilots experiencing an engine failure.

No, if one learns to land on land, landing on water, glassy or rough, isn't at all the same. Landing forces can be dramatically increased by attempting to stall it onto the surface of the water.

Well I guess you and I will just have to agree to disagree on this SNS3

After having made tens of thousands of water landings maybe my view of what the differences are is skewed by experience and I am assuming to much.

I can see that regardless of what my opinion is ( a full stall onto very large waves gives the best chance of lowest impact vs hitting it at higher speed at an attitude and air speed that allows the airplane to bounce and keep flying to the next impact.) you and I are not going to agree.

You say landing on land and water is not the same and I agree, however I fail to understand why judging height would be any different unless the waves were very high...then of course the surface is changing height wise between the waves.

By the way do you have any open sea landing experience ..by open sea I mean landing and taking off ocean experience?

I also must have been teaching this wrong for over thirty years on large sea planes and should not have payed any attention to how the large sea planes were landed on rough seas by the military guys.......

Under normal circumstances this is not an unreasonable expectation. The discussion was about an unusual landing, with potentially unusual visual cues in what could quite justifiably be a tense situation. Misjudging height for a flared, full stall landing is somehow not possible under these circumstances?

Having said that, I've done some pretty bad landings myself under normal circumstances and 'they' gave me a PPL - not one actually, but two! :}

A

Landing out is normal practice for some...
 

Another avenue to explore: get training in how to select where to land without an engine. This is standard tuition at gliding/sailplane clubs, because people regularly "land out".

They also do regular training in engine failures at 100ft-1000ft when climbing at 35 degrees. The rule of thumb is that if the mud floats in front of your face, you've got it about right; if it plasters itself over the inside of the canopy then you've been too enthusiastic.

And being told to deliberately enter a spin at 800ft (just to liven up the downwind leg and check you really are prepared to put the stick forward) is also interesting.

Motto: leave that nasty noisy dangerous engine where it belongs: on the ground.