pilots only, please - gps or altimeter?

On 12 Nov 2006 13:02:38 -0800, "Huck" wrote:

There is no reason whatsoever a real pilot would/should get into a
situation where there is only 10 mins left worth of fuel. NO matter
what.

Medical emergency. Pilot passes out with autopilot running, comes to just
before the fuel runs out. IIRC, it was an incident like this that got the late
Gordon Baxter to finally quit flying.

You won't find too many people who'll say that Gordon Baxter wasn't a "real
pilot."

Ron Wanttaja

I'd declare an emergency, ask for vectors for the lowest ground around
hoping the clouds wouldn't be on the deck there. I'd also want to have
the engine running when I got close to the ground, I may need some gas
to avoid something ugly and gliding at a few knots above stall might
not let me get above or around that tree.

For sure be sure the door is open before impact. If you have your wits
about you, idle cut off and master off would be a good idea but
probably both are minor protections.

Promise yourself you'll fly the airplane into the ground, don't stall
out at 50 feet. I think the statistics are on your side, a lot people
survive general avaition crashes.

Makes me wonder, will I be clever enough to do all of that? Coming down
in the clouds is more likely to happen to someone like me, I do lots of
SEL IMC flying.

Here's an interesting exercise. Next time you're flying around VFR,
look at what you're flying over. If it's Nebraska, you'll probably come
down on a field. If you're over the Rockies, you're probably not going
to make it. In PA, if you know the characteristic direction of the
mountains, flying parallel to them would be a good idea. Those worn
down mountains were seriously feared and ate a lot of airplanes in the
40s and 50s. I seem to remember airplanes flying on airways defined by
rotating beacons in that era.





On Nov 12, 5:41 pm, "Morgans" wrote:
hypothetical situation: you're a blue sky vfr flyer and somehow you
wind up in the soup - after having gone 2 hours and 200 miles from your
take-off point , you wake up from a nice little nap and discover you're
inside the milk bottle.Head in the direction of the airport, lean as much as possible, start a best
climb speed to gain as much time in the air after the fan stops, then
communicate.

Hope that your altitude is enough to glide to the airport, glide at best glide
speed until close to the ground, then set up for stall plus 5 and wait to come
out of the clouds, or to hit the ground, which ever comes first.
--
Jim in NC

Sexist son of a bitch.

Jim



"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...


Any real pilot who refuses to participate solely because of my
participation is not only a pilot but also a petulant little boy, and
since that would not bode well for the quality of his replies, it may
be just as well if he abstains.

tony...good thoughts. seems wise to give center or approach or whoever
might have you on radar a chance to send you away from the worst of the
bad things "as they know them". the way it's going, that person in
center might be in bangladesh and doing credit verification between
calls.

but i digress...

my 396 has terrain awareness and it did warn me off a tower i had not
shown proper respect so it's certainly not a useless feature.

about sneaky fog and trapped on top; y'all know good and well that it
happens all the time that perfectly good pilots happily boogieing on at
mach 2 listening to the tunes, enter the accident chain without doing
anything real wrong. they've got an hours reserve and once they snap to
the fact that their destination is closing in they'll just divert over
yonder where it's bound to be better and then......damn.

we get sneakey fog around here. big, deep. i know a guy who lost all
the local airports coming back from galveston one evening, he did not
have enough fuel to outrun it north (and not enough motor anyway).
used the gps and the vors and iah approach and anything else he could
think of but at then end...as he was decending into the milk toward
what he hoped was a runway way below any kind of rational minimum, the
last instrument he was watching was the altimeter.

and by the way, darwin would have liked him just fine. since any
licensed pilot represents the top 3% of the population, even the
really bad ones improve the species by breeding.

although some do get kind of mean and testy when they get old and can't
breed any more.

dan







Tony wrote:
I'd declare an emergency, ask for vectors for the lowest ground around
hoping the clouds wouldn't be on the deck there. I'd also want to have
the engine running when I got close to the ground, I may need some gas
to avoid something ugly and gliding at a few knots above stall might
not let me get above or around that tree.

For sure be sure the door is open before impact. If you have your wits
about you, idle cut off and master off would be a good idea but
probably both are minor protections.

Promise yourself you'll fly the airplane into the ground, don't stall
out at 50 feet. I think the statistics are on your side, a lot people
survive general avaition crashes.

Makes me wonder, will I be clever enough to do all of that? Coming down
in the clouds is more likely to happen to someone like me, I do lots of
SEL IMC flying.

Here's an interesting exercise. Next time you're flying around VFR,
look at what you're flying over. If it's Nebraska, you'll probably come
down on a field. If you're over the Rockies, you're probably not going
to make it. In PA, if you know the characteristic direction of the
mountains, flying parallel to them would be a good idea. Those worn
down mountains were seriously feared and ate a lot of airplanes in the
40s and 50s. I seem to remember airplanes flying on airways defined by
rotating beacons in that era.





On Nov 12, 5:41 pm, "Morgans" wrote:
hypothetical situation: you're a blue sky vfr flyer and somehow you
wind up in the soup - after having gone 2 hours and 200 miles from your
take-off point , you wake up from a nice little nap and discover you're
inside the milk bottle.Head in the direction of the airport, lean as much as possible, start a best
climb speed to gain as much time in the air after the fan stops, then
communicate.

Hope that your altitude is enough to glide to the airport, glide at best glide
speed until close to the ground, then set up for stall plus 5 and wait to come
out of the clouds, or to hit the ground, which ever comes first.
--
Jim in NC

That's Toto, btw.

Even blue sky vfr flyers have minimal instrument training, at least enough
to keep the sucker upright if they can keep their heads screwed on straight.
Most of us won't sign the bottom line on the recommendation form if we think
the student will scatter themselves (and worse, innocent passengers) across
the landscape if they get their tits in the wringer.

GPS won't list private or duster strips on their database, so the best you
can hope for is an ATC troop that has been on the local job long enough to
know the terrain.

First rule, don't touch nothin'. Somehow your machine flew itself straight
and level into this mess, let it keep on keeping on.

Second rule. Come to best glide speed and reduce power to keep the altimeter
steady.

Third rule. 121.5 and 7700. SOMEbody is going to hear you real soon. If
you are not in mountainous territory, there are damned few locations in the
country that don't have ATC coverage 3000+ AGL. If you ain't 3000+ AGL,
burn a little fuel to get there.

Hope to hell the ATC on the other end of the horn has a clue what's flat,
long, soft, and cheap to hit (in that order).

Jim
(who has been there twice, in the mountains, with zero warning, but not in
IFR)

"houstondan" wrote in message
oups.com...
rather than hijack a perfectly good arcane science thread; i'll start a
new one 'cause the core question is a darn good one.

hypothetical situation: you're a blue sky vfr flyer and somehow you
wind up in the soup - after having gone 2 hours and 200 miles from your
take-off point , you wake up from a nice little nap and discover you're
inside the milk bottle.

gps(not waas) says nearest airport of any kind is 30 minutes away and
gas-totalizer says the fan stops in 10 minutes.

not mountainous but you ain't in kansas either todo...whatcha gunna
do??

really.

dan

"karl gruber" wrote:

You'd do better by listening to MX on the subect of GPS. He has shown a
greater understanding of GPS than most of the pilots here.

No, he hasn't.

In Dan's hypothetical situation, a GPS would be fine for determining
altitude--better than an altimeter.

--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

"houstondan" wrote in message
oups.com...
rather than hijack a perfectly good arcane science thread; i'll start a
new one 'cause the core question is a darn good one.

hypothetical situation: you're a blue sky vfr flyer and somehow you
wind up in the soup - after having gone 2 hours and 200 miles from your
take-off point , you wake up from a nice little nap and discover you're
inside the milk bottle.

gps(not waas) says nearest airport of any kind is 30 minutes away and
gas-totalizer says the fan stops in 10 minutes.

not mountainous but you ain't in kansas either todo...whatcha gunna
do??

really.

dan


Sounds like I'm screwed, might as well see if the bad boy can do an aileron
roll and loop!

First I would shat myself and then come up with a new plan.

------------------------------------------------------------
DW

Why come down so hard on Mx? He made a reasonable reply.

Personally, I wouldn't be anywhere in the air with only 10 minutes of
fuel left. I'd say the accident chain is well on its way by then.

--Walt
Bozeman, Montana


houstondan wrote:
what part of "pilots only" do you not understand? you have your thread
and your opinion has been heard. now go away. many real pilots will not
participate if you're in the thread and i'm really trying to talk to
them.

dan
Mxsmanic wrote:
houstondan writes:

gps(not waas) says nearest airport of any kind is 30 minutes away and
gas-totalizer says the fan stops in 10 minutes.

GPS is reliable for this type of issue, even without WAAS. Just don't
rely on it to determine your altitude.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Tony wrote:
I'd declare an emergency, ask for vectors for the lowest ground around
hoping the clouds wouldn't be on the deck there. I'd also want to have
the engine running when I got close to the ground, I may need some gas
to avoid something ugly and gliding at a few knots above stall might
not let me get above or around that tree.

I seem to recall a study that said if you manage to glide for at least
45 seconds after shutting down your piston engine, then the cooling
reduces your chances of a post-crash fire by over 50%.

If true, then if you're low on fuel, your advice is good because you
have little to burn anyway. But if your motor is sputtering and the
plane is loaded with gas, it seems to argue that we should shut down
the engine as early as practical in hopes of avoiding a fire. Hard
choice!

Kev

I'd think if you're out of fuel -- just the unusable in the tanks,
chances of fire are pretty low. If I knew I wasn't going to get to an
airport (like my gauges are that accurate, right?) I would not fly to
fuel exhaustion then glide into the ground. I'd want enough fuel so if
I did break out or see the ground before impact I'd have enough power
to make a choice or two. If nothing else, I'd bring that sucker way
back on the power curve and drag it onto the dirt hanging on its prop.
That might buy me a few fewer knots of airspeed, and energy goes as
speed squared of course.

One could always have a tank spring a leak, of course, but a consistant
fuel management scheme can make fuel exhaustion a little less likely.
My fuel management checklist goes like this.

Before startup, switch to the less fuel tank.

Start up and start to taxi out on that tank. Now I'm pretty sure that
side is sweet.

Switch to the takeoff tank, finish the taxi out and run up on that one.
Now I'm pretty sure that tank is sweet too.

Take off, fly away a little less than half that fuel. Switch tanks. If
the new tank had become sour there should be enough left in the take
off tank to get me back to where I came from.

Otherwise, fly that tank to nearly empty.

Then, switch tanks, land and refuel, even if my destination is only 100
miles away. I'll always have at least 25% fuel on board.

The Mooney I used to own carried 33 gallons on each side, and could be
leaned to sip less than 10 GPH. I just described a 5 plus hour flight.
I'd been lucky enough to fly from LA to the northeast coast a couple of
times that way with just two en route fuel stops, going mostly at
11,000 feet and riding the wind. Adventures like that are best done
solo or with PX who know they have to moderate their water intake.
Ziplock bags are a poor substitute for on board toilet facilities! My
experience is most times the airplane has a LOT more endurance than the
PX (and sometimes, the PIC)!

Yeah, I know about keeping hydrated.

On Nov 12, 11:12 pm, "Kev" wrote:
Tony wrote:
I'd declare an emergency, ask for vectors for the lowest ground around
hoping the clouds wouldn't be on the deck there. I'd also want to have
the engine running when I got close to the ground, I may need some gas
to avoid something ugly and gliding at a few knots above stall might
not let me get above or around that tree.I seem to recall a study that said if you manage to glide for at least
45 seconds after shutting down your piston engine, then the cooling
reduces your chances of a post-crash fire by over 50%.

If true, then if you're low on fuel, your advice is good because you
have little to burn anyway. But if your motor is sputtering and the
plane is loaded with gas, it seems to argue that we should shut down
the engine as early as practical in hopes of avoiding a fire. Hard
choice!

Kev