iFly GPS Forum

Impossible Turn...POSSIBLE.

On the way to one of many of our breakfast flights as a small formation, we lost (most of) the motor on departure out of HOME DROME, Carlisle, PA, N94.

My primary emergency landing area, the highway aligned with the runway (I-81), had a traffic jam that morning, so that was OUT.

My pre-planned landing zone for runway 28, which I have rehearsed many times, looked good -- so set up for a open field landing....checked iFly and had JUST enough altitude, wind at my back, airspeed and judgement (and a bit of luck) to try to make it back to the airport opposite direction....MADE IT without a scratch. Thank you Lord.

Made the impossible turn thanks to a quick scan of iFly information and a combination of favorable conditions.  Some days, you'd just rather be lucky than good!

Again, I thank God for getting me and my CFI (who was an excellent CRM co-pilot the minute it went bad) on the ground OK.

Turned out to be a bad jug...already rebuilt, installed and flown - GTG!

Mike N714AJ

Our flight path...we got up to about 900 AGL or so before we lost power. 

Don,

Thanks for asking - I am still in a bit of awe it happened, we responded correctly, and we placed the aircraft on the runway safely, by the Grace of God!

Elements of the iFly I employed during the IFE:

1. AGL altitude - did not use any mental bandwidth with math in public - saw it and decided.

2. Ground Speed - calculated the winds aloft and did a quick estimate of how far they could carry me back to the airport.

3. Distance to go to the aerodrome - rather than guess, it was right there.

The rest was pure muscle-memory and reliance on pre-planned landing areas I had thought about many times in advance. I knew EXACTLY where I was turning to land and that gave me a LOT of confidence and assuaged my sudden anxiety.  At that point, as strange as this sounds, I was actually thinking about landing without ruining the brand-new paint job! That is nuts but I am confessing what went through my mind. I had JUST painted the plane and installed new seats...and I did not want to turn it over to the insurance company!

I had a co-pilot with me, my CFI, who has 8,000 hours, so he immediately went into CRM-mode and started monitoring my airspeed and pitch...very helpful.  I got on the radios and cleared the runway of my wingman behind me. Aviate - Navigate - Communicate kicked back in from my USAF days flying.  

Visualizing this and preparing for it far in advance made it go smoothly, if you can say such a thing about losing an engine on take-off....

I thank God He was with me on this one...makes me think about what I would have done if this was NIGHT - probably the same thing.  

Thanks for asking. I hope it never happens to anyone reading this, but I can't over-emphasize the need to simply fly around your home-drome one day and select feasible places to land if you lose your engine on take-off. It is the worst possible time, IMHO.  However, you can and will survive this by having a plan, keeping cool, and doing what you were trained to do during every BFR since you earned your PPL.

Mike N714AJ