Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

WingFlaps wrote:
On Mar 9, 5:53 am, Dudley Henriques wrote:
Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
wrote in news:ef4a41c9-f87b-4afd-9045-
:
On Mar 7, 11:37 pm, "Ken S. Tucker" wrote:
Glide back to the runway
Ken
Students, this is dangerous. Do not turn back to the runway if
you
are below 1000' agl and lose the engine. You won't make it. You
lose considerable altitude in the turn and tend to lift the nose,
reducing speed, and to keep near the runway you'll tend to tighten
the turn using a skid. It's death waiting to happen via a stall
and spin.
Normal practice is to pick a spot with 30° or so of your
flight
path. Not a pleasant choice, considering the location of some
airports.
Well, I'll add to this. You can turn back and make . it can be
done. The guy in the airport coffee shop who says it can be done is
probably right. I have done it in practice, form fairly short field
in standard lightplanes like cubs and 150s. Most of the instructors
where I worked agreed that it was the thing to do as long as you
were proficient and it was planned before the takeoff roll started.
We knew they couldn't neccesarily be done in all airplanes and in
all situations. The wind had to be considered as well as traffic (
bad idea to turn back toward a runway with something rolling on it)
and so on. We had it sussed. then one of the guys had one one day.
Very good stci as well. Better than me back then anyway. He had a
good bit of altitude, too 50 or so, he turned around and made the
runway but stalled coming across the threshold and cartwheeled donw
the runway. He and his father in law survived, but they were lucky.
They would definitely have been better off going straight ahead.
Bertie
The reason we teach straight ahead is sound. One has to consider
some kind of average pilot in dealing with this issue.
Whether or not it can be done successfully as a turn around is so
full of variables it muddies the equation.
Considering altitude, wind, and exact position in relation to the
departing runway, on the extreme high end of the experience level, a
highly trained aerobatic pilot on one hand might could possibly even
make the turn using a half turn accelerated stall done in the
vertical plane, (modified hammerhead with practically no vertical up
line using the vertical plane to reduce the horizontal turning
component) This is even possible done by such a pilot flying
something like a 172 or a 150, but I would never recommend doing it
to anyone. For the "average Joe", that straight ahead within
reasonable degree offset approach to the engine failure scenario on
takeoff is still the safe way to deal with this issue and probably
always will be in my opinion.

I'm not a n acro pilot so I'd like you (or some other pilot) to try
that manouver power off from the glide and see how much altitude they
loose. I'm guessing 200' minimum.

Cheers
Depends on the airplane and the pilot combination. Such a maneuver
assuming a normal climb speed at entry of 80mph as the engine quits
would require an immediate aggressive pull into accelerated stall
followed by aggressive pro spin rudder to induce a required yaw rate.
The trick is to catch the spin entry on the first half turn nose down.
200 feet could easily be required in some airplanes.
This isn't something you argue on the specifics. The variables are
just too vast.
Put it this way. If I had 200 feet in a 172 with an engine failure,
I'd be looking for a landing area straight ahead, or more properly I'd
already know if such an area existed for the runway I was using since
I would have asked :-) (There are runways where no such landing is
possible of course)
On the other hand, in a Pitts or an Extra in the same scenario, I
wouldn't hesitate to attempt what I have described here.
I've done this easily in the Pitts with under 100 feet lost and a 180
change in the flight path.


One of the problems is you need to do more than 180 degrees, of course.
This can be minimised by turning into wind if you have some across and
if your runway is wide you've saved a bit of turn that way as well, but
you're probably going to have a bit of 'essing' to do on finals and
that's going to cost. That's where my friend lost it.


Bertie

Yeah, that's right. No matter what you do the chances are you will have
a heading "adjustment" to make after the reversal. It can get sticky,
and requires a lot of judgment. You screw up and it could spoil your
whole day :-))

--
Dudley Henriques