Declared first emergency last week

Sounds like you handled the situation well, but it doesn't sound like
an "emergency". My understanding is that you declare an emergency
when you need assistance or clearance RIGHT NOW. In this case, you
weren't in any imminent danger; notifying the tower of the situation
so that they know you'd be unable to go around or taxi off the active
runway once you killed the engine should be sufficient. The AIM
differentiates between "emergency" and "urgency".

Actually, the same thing happened to me about 25 years ago. A cotter
pin fell out of the throttle linkage on my Taylorcraft. The throttle
stuck in a position where I couldn't _quite_ maintain altitude.
Fortunately, the descent angle I could maintain got me to the nearest
airport, and I controlled the glide by blipping the ignition (no
mixture control on those old A-65's).

Even had I been so inclined, can't declare an emergency in a no radio
airplane.

After pushing the airplane off the runway, I found the clevis pin
inside the cowling. A scrap of wire sufficed to replace the missing
cotter pin and get me back home.

-Dana
--
Black holes are where God is dividing by zero.

We thought about a PAN PAN, but we *did not have throttle control*.

I didn't hesitate very long to call it an emergency. I had read a lot of
stories about pilots who told ATC - "we have a little problem" or "we
need some help" and things later deteriorated or ATC did not realize the
gravity of the situation. I figured nobody was going to yell at us with
a failure of a serious engine control. We were going to either be
landing dead stick or seriously compromising the way the engine was
going to run to land the plane. As it turned out, the tower cleared us
immediately to land on the runway opposite to prevailing pattern
traffic, and that shortenened our flight by 2-3 minutes and allowed us
to avoid passing over houses and a hill on the downwind, shopping center
on base and final of the other pattern direction.

I sort of figured "let them yell at me on the ground that I used too
severe a call for the situation" if they wanted to...


Event Horizon

Dana M. Hague wrote in
:

Sounds like you handled the situation well, but it doesn't sound like
an "emergency". My understanding is that you declare an emergency
when you need assistance or clearance RIGHT NOW. In this case, you
weren't in any imminent danger; notifying the tower of the situation
so that they know you'd be unable to go around or taxi off the active
runway once you killed the engine should be sufficient. The AIM
differentiates between "emergency" and "urgency".

Actually, the same thing happened to me about 25 years ago. A cotter
pin fell out of the throttle linkage on my Taylorcraft. The throttle
stuck in a position where I couldn't _quite_ maintain altitude.
Fortunately, the descent angle I could maintain got me to the nearest
airport, and I controlled the glide by blipping the ignition (no
mixture control on those old A-65's).

Even had I been so inclined, can't declare an emergency in a no radio
airplane.

After pushing the airplane off the runway, I found the clevis pin
inside the cowling. A scrap of wire sufficed to replace the missing
cotter pin and get me back home.

-Dana
--
Black holes are where God is dividing by zero.

In article 0,
EventHorizon wrote:

I sort of figured "let them yell at me on the ground that I used too
severe a call for the situation" if they wanted to...

This is exactly the right philosphy. I'd much rather have to deal
with a 6ft stack of FAA paper work then be 6ft under.

John
--
John Clear - http://www.clear-prop.org/

In article 0,
EventHorizon wrote:

We thought about a PAN PAN, but we *did not have throttle control*.

I didn't hesitate very long to call it an emergency. I had read a lot of
stories about pilots who told ATC - "we have a little problem" or "we
need some help" and things later deteriorated or ATC did not realize the
gravity of the situation. I figured nobody was going to yell at us with
a failure of a serious engine control. We were going to either be
landing dead stick or seriously compromising the way the engine was
going to run to land the plane. As it turned out, the tower cleared us
immediately to land on the runway opposite to prevailing pattern
traffic, and that shortenened our flight by 2-3 minutes and allowed us
to avoid passing over houses and a hill on the downwind, shopping center
on base and final of the other pattern direction.

I sort of figured "let them yell at me on the ground that I used too
severe a call for the situation" if they wanted to...


Event Horizon

In the vernacular: "You done GOOD!"

--
Remove _'s from email address to talk to me.

Dana M. Hague wrote:
Sounds like you handled the situation well, but it doesn't sound like
an "emergency". ...
-Dana

It turns out that pilots are reluctant to declare an emergency.
They need every encouragement to declare early.
It's like stopping your car to ask for directions apparently....

Brian W

On Sep 9, 8:44*pm, Dana M. Hague wrote:
Sounds like you handled the situation well, but it doesn't sound like
an "emergency". *My understanding is that you declare an emergency
when you need assistance or clearance RIGHT NOW. *In this case, you
weren't in any imminent danger;

Judgement call on the pilots part as you already know, but if you
can't control the engine, if that isn't an emergency, I don't know
what is. For all intent and purposes, he had a runaway plane until he
worked the problem!

He most certainly needed a clearance to land RIGHT NOW.

I can see you saying when I had a cylinder exhaust valve bite the dust
in flight 3500 feet AGL 6 years ago that it wasn't an emergency
because I wasn't in imminent danger and I still had 3 cylinders
providing power?

"BeechSundowner" wrote in message
...
On Sep 9, 8:44 pm, Dana M. Hague wrote:
Sounds like you handled the situation well, but it doesn't sound like
an "emergency". My understanding is that you declare an emergency
when you need assistance or clearance RIGHT NOW. In this case, you
weren't in any imminent danger;

Judgement call on the pilots part as you already know, but if you
can't control the engine, if that isn't an emergency, I don't know
what is. For all intent and purposes, he had a runaway plane until he
worked the problem!

No, you still had at least 2 ways to control the engine.

On Oct 25, 8:32 am, "Aluckyguess" wrote:
"BeechSundowner" wrote in message

...
On Sep 9, 8:44 pm, Dana M. Hague wrote:

Sounds like you handled the situation well, but it doesn't sound like
an "emergency". My understanding is that you declare an emergency
when you need assistance or clearance RIGHT NOW. In this case, you
weren't in any imminent danger;

Judgement call on the pilots part as you already know, but if you
can't control the engine, if that isn't an emergency, I don't know
what is. For all intent and purposes, he had a runaway plane until he
worked the problem!

No, you still had at least 2 ways to control the engine.

Sounds like OP had a good battery, something I would check then I
would've dialed the emergency frequency, tell tower my situation and
put myself into position for a 'dead-stick', mags-off.
It's a good case to practice some 'dead stick' landings. AFAIK you
should be able to kill the bird anyway in the circuit and dead stick.
That's how I was trained on a cessna-152.
Ken

Ken S. Tucker wrote:

It's a good case to practice some 'dead stick' landings. AFAIK you
should be able to kill the bird anyway in the circuit and dead stick.
That's how I was trained on a cessna-152.
Ken

It used to be training SOP to pull the throttle to idle onto base
until the cold shock issue forced a gentler kinder approach

Brian W

Black holes are where God is dividing by zero.

Sorry to be useless, but LOL