"Mortimer Schnerd, RN" mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com wrote in message
...
Kyle Boatright wrote:
The question in my mind was... Did the Cessna flying doofus even realize
that A) he was flying a dumb and dangerous pattern, being outside of
gliding
range from the field, or that B) he caused a bad chain reaction in the
pattern.??


I'm not arguing with the general point of your posting but I will take a
poke at your assertion about being outside of gliding range of the field.
With that sort of idea, how does one justify ever leaving the pattern to
go somewhere? Every cross country is outside gliding distance of the
field.

Altitude, baybee... And time. From pattern altitude, my airplane has a
minute's worth of glide time or maybe a mile and a half of "range" in a
power off glide. Assuming (incorrectly) that anything within 1.5 miles of
the airplane is within range, I have approximately 6 or 7 square miles of
potential landing sites from pattern altitude. Realistically, the figure is
probably 1/2 that.

From 3, 4, or 5,000 AGL the options go up exponentially. At 5,000', I have
about 7 minutes to restart the engine (assuming a switchology, tankology, or
similar problem). Also, my airplane can glide about 9 miles. Again,
assuming I can glide to anywhere within 9 miles, I have about 250 square
miles of potential landing sites, which greatly increases my chances of a
safe landing.

In my local area, there are enough public and private fields that one is in
range 80% or more of the time if I'm above 5,000' AGL.

That makes me feel a little better about leaving the pattern. As the old
farts say, the question isn't "if?", but "when?" the engine will fail. I
try and stack the odds in my favor if the answer to the question is "now"...


Aside from that: A) possibly; and B) probably not.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com