NW_Pilot's Trans-Atlantic Flight -- All the scary details...

In article ,
Matt Whiting wrote:

Stefan wrote:
Larry Dighera schrieb:

A more experienced pilot who had studied the aux tank system may have
been able to mentally diagnose the cause of the fuel venting.


He did everything by the book, but the book was wrong. A pilot is not
supposed to assume that an FAA approved book is wrong! In fact, I'm
scared of pilots who establish their own ad hoc procedures because they
think they know better than the book.

So you think Al Haynes and crew screwed with their DC-10 improvisation?
Personally, I think it is imperative that pilots create their own ad
hoc procedures when the book is wrong or nonexistent. I'm much more
afraid of pilots who keep doing what the book says and are afraid to
think and improvise.

The problem with that statement is that many GA pilots haven't even read
the book to know what it says.

Steven, I'm curious to know what your thought processes were in that dire
situation.

"If I die out here, I'll never hear the end of it from the gang at
rec.aviation."

Funny as that may be, Steven *was* very cognizant of how he wrote this
story up, for fear of being flamed by certain members of this group.

It shames me to think that a man brave enough to do what Steven just
did is scared of screwing up a write-up for this group. And we wonder
why aviation is a shrinking club...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay Honeck wrote:
Steven, I'm curious to know what your thought processes were in that dire
situation.
"If I die out here, I'll never hear the end of it from the gang at
rec.aviation."

Funny as that may be, Steven *was* very cognizant of how he wrote this
story up, for fear of being flamed by certain members of this group.

The fact is, you're always going to get flamed, no matter what you do.
You can't worry about it.

On Sun, 01 Oct 2006 21:23:34 -0500, Emily
wrote:

The fact is, you're always going to get flamed, no matter what you do.
You can't worry about it.


How true is that! Best intentions aside, the nits always get picked.

z

"Jose" wrote in message
et...
From NW_Pilot's adventu
Apparently the added pressure in the fuel
tanks pushed the floats in the fuel tank
up, which got the Garmin confused, causing
an error that made it reboot.

Steam gauges don't get confused like that. While they do sometimes go bad
or give an incorrect indication, the fault is isolated to that one gauge;
it doesn't cause the entire airplane to have an apoplectic fit. That is
left to the pilot. One of the real dangers of glass is that it usurps the
pilot's perogative to panic (or not) by doing so itself.

If there's ever an argument against glass (or "advanced integrated flight
instrumentations and controls"), this is it!

ibid:
Day 5: Shut down in Iceland with 55 knot headwinds. I make the call "No
Go"!!!

NW-Pilot, would you have gone with 55 knot tailwinds?

ibid: (spelling note, day 11)
After everything else that has happened, this makes me not want to every
own a newer model Cessna, or anything with a G1000.

...not want to ever own...
(public service, not nitpicking)

(same day)
Everything else was uneventful, as I went direct KAD and had a small
dialogue with the tower about my permission to land.

Anything interesting in that "dialog"?

Just dialiaog about my permissions on landing.


Anyway, that's quite an adventure! Would you do it again?

Hell, Yeah!!! You Bet !!

Jose
--
"Never trust anything that can think for itself, if you can't see where it
keeps its brain." (chapter 10 of book 3 - Harry Potter).
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"houstondan" wrote in message
ups.com...
i posted a link at a couple of cessna "type" clubs (c.p.a. and c.p.s.).
i noticed someone did that on an earlier edition so i guessed it was ok
to do that.

someone said "a more experienced pilot would have......", well, i think
he did just great. turned around, got it back on the ground, figured it
out, flew on and made the contract. i think he needs to be
congratulated for doing something really big and doing it well. i'm
about finished reading "the flying north" and i expect any of those
guys would have bought steven a beer and listened to his story.

my airplane budget looks at getting a good harness system, fuel and
engine monitors and enough gas to do some real traveling so i don't
have to worry about a G-1000 any time soon. clearly it is a cautionary
tale about putting too many avionics eggs in one glass basket.

again, jay, thanks for being the conduit on this. great stuff.


dan

Thank, You

I would feel a bit better about the system if they put manual engine
monitors and fuel qty indicators as a back up the cost to Cessna would not
be much more they have the panel space and would make the newer models safer
with manual back up instruments.

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
again, jay, thanks for being the conduit on this. great stuff.

It's been quite an adventure for Steven. His experiences could fill a
book already, and he's only 30!

Steven, I'm curious to know what your thought processes were in that
dire situation. Stuck in IMC over the North Atlantic, in the dark, no
primary displays, a possible carbon-monoxide leak, a known fuel leak --
I simply can't imagine it getting any worse.

You did a great job keeping everything right-side up, and your head on
straight.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"


Well, my thoughts were not to panic and keep as calm as i can and think!!
How I kept calm was saying to myself yes it can get much worse!

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...
On 1 Oct 2006 06:47:05 -0700, "Jay Honeck" wrote
in om:

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/nwpilot's_tranatlantic_flight.htm

Man, if the new details of his story doesn't chill ya, nothing will!

A more experienced pilot who had studied the aux tank system may have
been able to mentally diagnose the cause of the fuel venting. But
Garmin's role in this incident is unforgivable.

I did study the fuel system and so did the engineer that designed it and
wrote the instructions for it's usage! I would also assume so did the faa
inspector that approved the system description and usage instructions. Once
you go changing the factory fuel system design you go from the engineered
description of the now modified fuel system. They left out something very
very important in the new systems description!

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message
...
On 1 Oct 2006 08:33:39 -0700, "houstondan"
wrote in . com:

someone said "a more experienced pilot would have......", well, i think
he did just great.

There's no question Mr. Rhine did the right thing in his case.

Thank You, Mr. Dighera

Ron A. wrote:
A more experienced pilot who had studied the aux tank system may have
been able to mentally diagnose the cause of the fuel venting. But
Garmin's role in this incident is unforgivable.

Garmin needs to wake up! To have out-of-bounds sensor inputs reboot the
system continuously, especially something as unreliable as fuel sensors,
is horrible system design.

I agree that continuous rebooting is a bad idea. Rebooting _once_ might
help, but the screen and/or manual should present it along the lines of:

"One of my inputs is flaky. I can ignore that input and keep going with
reduced capabilities, OR I can try rebooting to see if that clears up
the problem. There is no guarantee that rebooting will help, and there
is no guarantee that I will be able to keep going with reduced
capabilities after the reboot. What do you want to do?"

The idea of rebooting to fix an embedded safety system is not that great -
it shouldn't get into that state in the first place. But I think the
option should be there. If you want to work under the assumption that
you might get into an odd state, probably a better plan is to somehow
announce "I'm confused, but I'll keep going" and give the pilot the
option of rebooting by cycling power, rather than going into a reboot
loop on your own.

At work, I sometimes help engineering students who are trying to design
a (road) vehicle control system. If they are new to the subject, they
tend to want lots of lockouts and "clearly, this is always an illegal
condition" cases. I have had to give examples like "so, what if the
computer control of the 5-speed transmission decides it knows best and
cuts your thrust, right when all you can see in the rear-view mirror is
a huge chrome RENILTHGIERF"? The idea I try to get across is that a
large percentage of the time, the driver will have more information
about the situation than the computer will. Whether the driver acts
appropriately based on this extra information is a whole other
discussion, but at least the possiblity of doing the right thing is
there.

Sometime before early 1989, one Cal Keegan summed this up quite
succinctly: "It's not just a computer -- it's your ass."

Even Microsoft has awakened to this. They now have fewer browser bugs
per year than Firefox.

Hooray! Let's run airplane computers on Internet Explorer.

Matt Roberds