If you were to lose your engine do you know how to think through that and how to deal with it?
I'm Jason Miller, a full-time professional flight instructor. On the Finer Points channel, you can
join me as I bring you tips and tricks that I've learned from 20 years on the flight-line.
Hello aviators, welcome back to the Finer Points. In this video we're going to continue working with
Jeremy – you remember he's got a primary CFI, he's been working with me on filling in some
of the holes and building out some of the basic aspects of good airmanship, and in this video
we're going to look at simulated engine failures and how to practice them in a way that would
increase the probability of you succeeding if it ever actually happened to you in the real world.
So just a review for you, in flight training we use the ABCs: Airspeed, Best field, Check systems,
Declare an emergency, and Exit the airplane to help you kind of process the information.
I was recently flying with Jeremy and I asked him about that for two reasons: one to kind
of see how much of that he really knew, and the other is to give him a chance to sort of
work it out in his mind before I reach forward, pulled the power to idle and said let's do this.
If you were to lose your engine do you know how to think through that and how to deal with it?
It's been a while since we went over it, but first thing I would do is get to 68 – glide speed –
turn my fuel pump on, pick a spot to land.
Where would you go now if you had to?
I'd go to this flat field right out here.
And then what would you do? Then I'm at a high enough altitude for that
area I'd start to circle and then I'd try to bring the engine back on, so fuel pump on,
mixture best power and start the engine check as I've got to a glide speed ...
Alright good, let's practice, there we just lost our engine.
When you go for the speed don't pull up and zoom. Don't try to gain altitude to slow down. There has
been some trigonometry done to show that you're going to get further across the ground if you
simply hold your altitude and reduce your speed. So don't give anything away. Continue to increase
back-pressure and therefore pitch angle as you slow down and trim for it, so that when you get
distracted you'll be able to maintain the speed but then you just follow the glide speed down
Also, survivability in a forced landing is going to depend on you not stalling the wing and landing
as slow as absolutely possible, so in a perfect world – and no world is perfect but let's go
for it right – in a perfect world you always know where the surface winds are coming from.
And you sort of think like a monkey swinging from vine to vine right, like that's my spot,
that's my spot, I'm gonna go there, I'm gonna go there, I'm gonna go there, I'm gonna go there,
but I'm not going there anymore now, I'm going to this other spot in front of me, kind of like that.
And you can play a game with your CFI where I always tell my students, you can ask me at any
time where would I go and I should know. You know no one's perfect but let's work for it.
Some of the stuff is rote right, like checking systems and
declaring the emergency. This is stuff you should practice, practice, practice at home.
You know what Charlie Parker, the great jazz musician used to say: Practice,
practice, practice, practice and when you perform, forget everything you know right.
So get that stuff ingrained. Check systems in this airplane. Make sure
the fuel pump is on. Make sure you've checked the mixture. Maybe check each
mag. Confirm the fuel's on both. Check left tank, check right tank.
Altitude permitting do a checklist right. All of this while gliding, and that's why you trim for
your speed. Then declare the emergency: Mayday mayday mayday, NorCal approach Cessna 2360P,
or whatever the heck you are, engine failure five miles to the south of Livermore,
two souls on board, white aircraft, mayday mayday mayday. Repeat it and then get off the radio.
ATC is gonna want to talk to you. They're gonna want to distract you but you have to focus on
the real skill here and the real skill is not that stuff. You might solve the problem via that stuff
but the real skill is what we said before: keeping the wing flying and landing into the wind right.
So part of what we're practicing here with Jeremy is to see how the fields change as you get lower.
Are there power lines you didn't see? Or is there terrain that you
couldn't make out? Or is it really going to work for you? And as we get lower here
we find that his initial spot was not working.
I'm going to come down, circle in this way. Fuel pump on, mixture best power.
I'm at 2000 now so I can probably throw in the best power right?
Yep I'll actually do that but I'm glad you did that.
Then I try to start the engine.
Squawk 7700 and then see if I can get it squawked and then mayday mayday,
one zero six romeo alpha going down next to the San Andreas reservoir, two souls on board, and ...
Alright, let's see if we can maneuver at least a
little bit into this field to see if we would have made it or not.
Is it still looking good to you or are you seeing stuff you don't like?
So actually I'm starting to see stuff I don't like.
Fortunately, there was a really good field. We just had to turn we can see it's right
into the wind, you can kind of see it here as we look through the back window
and the plan now is to draw in your mind the touchdown point so you're literally
going to draw a runway in your mind into the wind and work to hit that point.
Most of the 'hitting of that point' is accomplished by getting yourself on a high
tight base-leg and shedding off altitude via flaps, the geometry of your approach,
do you extend the base or do you turn early? That's a great tool, and finally a forward
slip. So that's all part of the real skill but if you get there early you have to circle.
On this first approach, Jeremy was not used to taking it as low as we took it,
but remember, an examiner or a check-pilot is going to want to see this
down to an altitude where they can actually determine if you were, in fact, going to make it.
So I would pick that flat spot over there I think.
Alright, can we make it there? Yeah, I think so.
Which way are the surface winds coming from?
It looks like we'll be landing into a crosswind a little bit.
Let's see if we can't get into a headwind if at all possible.
So the winds are coming from over here, it looks like by the way the water's blowing. That way.
I guess I'll come over here and I'll land right along the length.
Very good.
Another thing that's going to help the survivability of an event like this
is securing the motor and fully committing to the task at hand.
So before you touch down, once you are sure this is what's next for you,
you should shut the fuel off after you use your flaps, turn the master switch off,
all the electrical equipment off to minimize the possibility of a fire,
and open the doors. They'll kind of stay shut they won't fly open but they won't jam on impact.
Let's see that we're gonna hit this spot and then we'll go around.
So right here i'd throw my flaps. Let's see it, put your flaps in.
Any other options available to you?
I'd sideslip down.
OK, let's see it.
OK, let's go around, full power, full power, pitch forward, pitch forward flaps to ten.
Right rudder in there too.
And kind of like a left-hand spiral to just keep climbing around with the terrain.
I liked the way you modified your spot.
Did you see there at the very end we probably could have got the flaps in a little early?
I should have gone in earlier yeah.
Okay, so I want to see Jeremy go around and try this again. We're gonna practice the
'real skill' part of this to give him some confidence and make sure that he
can understand that I can actually land this airplane in that field.
But there's a little ground shyness to work through here and as we
get back over the field I'm telling him to turn to
circle – we've got a thousand feet below us and we don't want to end up too high again.
Look at your altitude here. You're a thousand feet up okay, go one more circle here.
You can see right here the bank angle stops. The airplane stops turning.
So I took the airplane here to demonstrate just what was possible,
what I was thinking about and to help work off some of that ground shyness he's feeling.
It's changing all the time here. I'd banks deeper now.
Here let me show you. So I would keep this circle, so ideally you'd want
to say, I'm going to put my wheels down right here So you're circling in that abeam position.
I didn't mean for that to be quite that extreme.
You get the idea there we are, so get yourself down to the altitude more like that.
Put power in. I mean there we are, now I'd use my flaps and land in that field.
Alright, and then after this – I'm not going to show you in the video – but what we did was go
over to Hayward Airport and start working on this in the traffic pattern where we can actually take
the airplane down to a full stop landing, power off approaches, land the airplane on the runway,
power off, glide to the landing, power off, glide to landing as many times as we can,
to help ensure that he really gets a feel for how the airplane glides
and to know confidently that if this ever happens to him he can go through
this procedure and have a good chance of walking away from that forced land.
Alright aviators that's all for this episode. A huge thanks to
Jeremy for letting me publish his flight training to the internet.
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