Moderator: drseti
Agreed, but that almost certainly saved him and his passengers (and dog!) from an in-flight expanding, fuel-fed fire, and also from a post-crash fire on the ground. Once the engine let go, there was no way that plane was going to make the runway anyway, though at the time he didn't know that.hirschr wrote:Yes! Jason did a great job under tense circumstances. Overall he continued to fly the airplane, and that made all the difference. The decision to pull the mixture and dive to put out the fire, knowing that meant an off airport landing had to be a tough one.
Yes, flying at night in a single engine airplane compounds the risk significantly over daytime operations. I have never flown my CT at night, but I'm planning to do so with my CFI soon, just so that I have *some* experience if some unlikely combination of events puts me in the air after dark.Jack Tyler wrote:"...a *great* time for a ballistic parachute pull to be considered in an airplane so equipped."
Agreed. But let's acknowledge what Jason's conclusion was, during his introductory remarks. He's not nearly so inclined now to fly at night behind a single engine a/c.
One point made by the flight school owner was, I found, somewhat interesting. He directs his students to set up their GPS-based nav displays to either a 15 nm or 30 nm scale for all flights. His rationale is that, depending on the kind of training being done, those distances can correlate with the likely gliding distance of the training a/c. His point was that this preselects the nav display so it supports dealing with a loss of power and so removes one step the pilot must take to utilize the nav picture in the cockpit during such an emergency. I hadn't previously heard that recommendation.
And one takeaway from the experience I didn't hear Jason articulate: An engine fire should produce the immediate removal of the fuel supply from the engine compartment (mix out, pump off, tank valve(s) closed). Sniffing acrid odors or seeing a bit of smoke in the cockpit, I would begin by choking off the possible electrical sources of fire (master off, begin checking fuses, etc.)...but an engine fire is an entirely different animal. Very scary stuff.
Don't be daft. I said that I'd be with my CFI, he will act as PIC. My airplane is night legal.CTLSi wrote: As a sport pilot you are not allowed to fly after evening and morning civil twilight. Getting 'caught' out at night with a sport pilot cert is a ticket loser.
The regulations also require your aircraft to be equipped for night flight. Requires you to maintain currency for night flying (which could also mean you violate the rules trying to stay current flying alone at night). And there are a set of written questions/knowledge on the subject that are required also, to be safe. Not just flying around at night.
Having a parachute is critical to night flying. Anyone flying at night no matter how few or many engines they have without a parachute is at greater risk.
The AnywhereMap series have that. You enter your aircraft performance (best glide speed, glide ratio, etc) and it puts little green circles around the airports on the map showing how close you have to be at your current altitude. They call it "cones of safety".FastEddieB wrote:Not sure which ones, but some modern displays will show effective glide range, even taking winds into account.
