dmccormack
Touchdown! Greaser!
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Dan Mc
The Garmin handhelds and panel 430/530 all display secondary and primary roads.
Failed engine on a night flight...
- Thread starter Tracey
- Start date
The Garmin handhelds and panel 430/530 all display secondary and primary roads.
TMetzinger
Final Approach
At night, my choice if I can't find an airport or a known open place, is to pick someplace I hope will be empty and crash at the slowest speed possible. My prime concern is not to hurt anyone on the ground - they didn't sign up for my risks.
If there's a road and it's empty, I'll take it. If it's not empty I'll try and crash right next to it so people notice without being at risk.
Now, practically speaking, if you have an engine problem it's not likely to be a complete failure unless:
You ran out of gas - in which case you most likely deserve it you idiot.
You had some sort of major metallurgical failure, and in that case it's just not your day.
Otherwise, you should get some indications (temps, roughness, oil pressure) before it all goes wahooni-shaped (sorry reading too much Terry Pratchett lately). The moment you notice something amiss at night, you need to alter your plans.
If there's a road and it's empty, I'll take it. If it's not empty I'll try and crash right next to it so people notice without being at risk.
Now, practically speaking, if you have an engine problem it's not likely to be a complete failure unless:
You ran out of gas - in which case you most likely deserve it you idiot.
You had some sort of major metallurgical failure, and in that case it's just not your day.
Otherwise, you should get some indications (temps, roughness, oil pressure) before it all goes wahooni-shaped (sorry reading too much Terry Pratchett lately). The moment you notice something amiss at night, you need to alter your plans.
cavmedic
Line Up and Wait
MBDiagMan
Final Approach
I don't think there is an option for a PP with Night Flying restriction....
There was a way to do it 20 years ago, but I didn't look when I started over again. I think there is though.
Jeanie
Pattern Altitude
Wahoonishaped?
TMetzinger
Final Approach
It's a reference to a bunch of novels by an author named Terry Pratchett which take place on a mythical world. Anyway, it's another word for the smelly-brown-stuff-hitting-the-whirling-air-movement-machine.
But if you like to read and enjoy dry humor, I HIGHLY recommend the books.
Jeanie
Pattern Altitude
Thanks Tim, I'll check them out, I've needed a new author...
Sorry form the thread creep
Sorry form the thread creep
x10 if you are single pilot IFR at night.
Chip Sylverne
Final Approach
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Quit with the negative waves, man.
Remember to keep your engine instruments in your scan. Generally they'll tell you something is wrong well before it goes critical. Plus, it's a nice, reassuring sight to see that oil pressure, oil temp and fuel pressure guages rock solid in the green whe you start hearing things....
Good point, I'll do this.
And I appreciate your 2 cents, thank you!
lol
Hadn't thought of a parking lot. Unless it's got those big "A6" poles (to remember where you parked), this could be a good idea as well.
TMetzinger
Final Approach
Remember that once you take off, the only purpose for the airplane is to get you back on the ground, alive. Don't worry about breaking it, don't worry about saving it. Maintain control of the airplane until it stops moving and your chances of walking away go WAY up.
TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
Street Map view in ForeFlight is good for this too--especially if you have to let down without power in IMC and know you can't make it to an airport / runway.
TripleZ
Pre-takeoff checklist
And I almost forgot.
Bring clothes, gear, for an expected 3 mile hike in whatever temperature / area you are flying over. Along with wearing a flashlight and cellphone tucked in a button or zippered pocket. IF you land at night, the likely-hood of being seen landing is lower. You might have to walk or tough it out over night.
After you make that perfect landing on a bean field, its going to suck when you remember you only have a light shirt on, instead of a winter jacket to hike over to the nearest farm house.
Good to normally do, but more important at night.
Bring clothes, gear, for an expected 3 mile hike in whatever temperature / area you are flying over. Along with wearing a flashlight and cellphone tucked in a button or zippered pocket. IF you land at night, the likely-hood of being seen landing is lower. You might have to walk or tough it out over night.
After you make that perfect landing on a bean field, its going to suck when you remember you only have a light shirt on, instead of a winter jacket to hike over to the nearest farm house.
Good to normally do, but more important at night.
kimberlyanne546
Final Approach
Tracey,
I love night flying and have done a lot since I got my cert last September.
I am not "scared" when I go, but I do the following:
1. Take a long time on preflight
2. Make sure I have more gas (even if that means filling up self serve which does take time)
3. Make sure I have backup lights (one headlamp, one flashlight, batteries)
4. Only fly when there is a clear night - as in 100% clear. If clouds or IFR are coming in anytime before 2am-ish I cancel. I want to see all stars / etc.
Keep in mind, however, where I fly almost everything (except the water and some smaller hills) is lit up like a Christmas tree. This is not the case in other places. In the SF Bay Area I'm "lucky".
All my night flights, except for one where I went solo 3 times around the pattern to be sure I never went out of currency, have been with passengers. Two flights, they were non pilots, and the rest of the flights (probably three other flights, for a total of five) were with pilots as passengers.
Five flights means I "night fly" about once a month. And the strangest thing about flying at night is I normally have better landings. Odd.
I love night flying and have done a lot since I got my cert last September.
I am not "scared" when I go, but I do the following:
1. Take a long time on preflight
2. Make sure I have more gas (even if that means filling up self serve which does take time)
3. Make sure I have backup lights (one headlamp, one flashlight, batteries)
4. Only fly when there is a clear night - as in 100% clear. If clouds or IFR are coming in anytime before 2am-ish I cancel. I want to see all stars / etc.
Keep in mind, however, where I fly almost everything (except the water and some smaller hills) is lit up like a Christmas tree. This is not the case in other places. In the SF Bay Area I'm "lucky".
All my night flights, except for one where I went solo 3 times around the pattern to be sure I never went out of currency, have been with passengers. Two flights, they were non pilots, and the rest of the flights (probably three other flights, for a total of five) were with pilots as passengers.
Five flights means I "night fly" about once a month. And the strangest thing about flying at night is I normally have better landings. Odd.
gismo
Touchdown! Greaser!
When I was flying a single I didn't worry too much about making a dead stick landing in the dark. IME you are far more likely to come to grief by getting into clouds you can't see or snagging something unseen while landing at an airport under power than as a result of an engine failure and subsequent off airport landing. The statistics bear this out in at least a couple different ways. First as long as you eliminate the fuel exhaustion (ran completely out of fuel) and fuel starvation (no fuel to the engine but some in the tanks) engine stoppages are way down the list of accident causes day or night. Second in typical single engine fixed gear trainers (e.g. Cherokee or Skyhawk) something like 9 out of 10 off airport emergency landings at night are survivable.
So put your effort into not running the engine out of fuel (check the tanks visually before each takeoff, carry plenty extra, and use a timer to remind you to switch tanks if there's no "Both" feed. As to flying from airport to airport or following roads, I really don't see much if any benefit in the flatlands (mountains are a whole nuther story).
If you do lose the millions to one odds and actually have to make an off airport landing at night, I'd avoid any roads except freeways or divided multi-lane highways as the chances of snagging wires on any other road is way too high and even without wires there are usually plenty of signs, trees, and mailboxes to snag a wing and spin you off the road into something unfriendly. Other recommendations I've heard are pick the darkest spot you can see to make it less likely you'll hit a building or use the yard light that most farms have to show you those buildings so you can avoid them visually rather than by luck (there will be wires there too though). A well frozen lake would make a good choice but I'd stay away from open water unless the only other options involved killing people on the ground, even if you had a float plane and water flying experience you probably wouldn't survive a water landing if it was really dark.
In any case you want to carry just enough airspeed into your flare to reduce the sink rate to 100 FPM or less just before the wheels hit the ground (with full flaps). I'd also turn the landing light on and dim the panel lights to give you the best chance of seeing what you're landing on when you still have some options.
And aside from worrying about unlikely events like catastrophic engine failures you might want to choose a destination that has a visual glideslope (VASI, PAPI, etc) as it's very easy to mess up the glide angle in the dark going into an unfamiliar runway and you probably won't see the trees or wires that lurk below the approach before hitting them. To reduce the temptation to fly with insufficient fuel, call ahead to insure that fuel is available and bring two credit cards if it's self-serve in case one doesn't work.
On the flashlight/panel light/headlamp color I much prefer white or green. It is true that if you are perfectly night adapted (which requires about 20 minutes of near total darkness) low levels of red light won't deteriorate that adaptation but IME unless you turn off all the lights in the plane (including all the GPSs) and the moon isn't out your eyes will not likely achieve significant dark adaptation. And red makes everything "fuzzier" so it's harder to read the instruments and nearly impossible to read a chart with soft red light.
So put your effort into not running the engine out of fuel (check the tanks visually before each takeoff, carry plenty extra, and use a timer to remind you to switch tanks if there's no "Both" feed. As to flying from airport to airport or following roads, I really don't see much if any benefit in the flatlands (mountains are a whole nuther story).
If you do lose the millions to one odds and actually have to make an off airport landing at night, I'd avoid any roads except freeways or divided multi-lane highways as the chances of snagging wires on any other road is way too high and even without wires there are usually plenty of signs, trees, and mailboxes to snag a wing and spin you off the road into something unfriendly. Other recommendations I've heard are pick the darkest spot you can see to make it less likely you'll hit a building or use the yard light that most farms have to show you those buildings so you can avoid them visually rather than by luck (there will be wires there too though). A well frozen lake would make a good choice but I'd stay away from open water unless the only other options involved killing people on the ground, even if you had a float plane and water flying experience you probably wouldn't survive a water landing if it was really dark.
In any case you want to carry just enough airspeed into your flare to reduce the sink rate to 100 FPM or less just before the wheels hit the ground (with full flaps). I'd also turn the landing light on and dim the panel lights to give you the best chance of seeing what you're landing on when you still have some options.
And aside from worrying about unlikely events like catastrophic engine failures you might want to choose a destination that has a visual glideslope (VASI, PAPI, etc) as it's very easy to mess up the glide angle in the dark going into an unfamiliar runway and you probably won't see the trees or wires that lurk below the approach before hitting them. To reduce the temptation to fly with insufficient fuel, call ahead to insure that fuel is available and bring two credit cards if it's self-serve in case one doesn't work.
On the flashlight/panel light/headlamp color I much prefer white or green. It is true that if you are perfectly night adapted (which requires about 20 minutes of near total darkness) low levels of red light won't deteriorate that adaptation but IME unless you turn off all the lights in the plane (including all the GPSs) and the moon isn't out your eyes will not likely achieve significant dark adaptation. And red makes everything "fuzzier" so it's harder to read the instruments and nearly impossible to read a chart with soft red light.
TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
Lance, great suggestion on dimming the interior lights...
Thanks everybody for your suggestions, I really appreciate all of them. Excellent advice.
I just got back and that was FUN. I completely loved flying at night-- it was beautiful, the stars, the cities, it was gorgeous. And Kim, my landings were surprisingly good too-- which was strange-- I anticipated really cruddy landings. Maybe it was beginners luck, we'll see if I can pull that off again.
My only d'oh moment was when I was handed off to Boston Approach and I asked for Flight Following (which I already had).
Oops.
Other than that, it was uneventful, but really fun. I'm looking forward to my next one.
Thanks everyone-- you all gave really good suggestions that I will be using from here on out!
I just got back and that was FUN. I completely loved flying at night-- it was beautiful, the stars, the cities, it was gorgeous. And Kim, my landings were surprisingly good too-- which was strange-- I anticipated really cruddy landings. Maybe it was beginners luck, we'll see if I can pull that off again.
My only d'oh moment was when I was handed off to Boston Approach and I asked for Flight Following (which I already had).
Oops.Other than that, it was uneventful, but really fun. I'm looking forward to my next one.
Thanks everyone-- you all gave really good suggestions that I will be using from here on out!
We all knew you would love it..... Flying at night is "magical"... Kinda like when we were kids and had a model train set and you turn off the lights in the room..
:wink2:
Ben.
:wink2:Ben.
Yes, it is. I had no idea. I can't wait for the next one. Thanks Ben!We all knew you would love it..... Flying at night is "magical"... Kinda like when we were kids and had a model train set and you turn off the lights in the room..
Ben.
TMetzinger
Final Approach
So glad you had fun!
Me too!
Thank you Tim.
kimberlyanne546
Final Approach
Thanks everybody for your suggestions, I really appreciate all of them. Excellent advice.
I just got back and that was FUN. I completely loved flying at night-- it was beautiful, the stars, the cities, it was gorgeous. And Kim, my landings were surprisingly good too-- which was strange-- I anticipated really cruddy landings. Maybe it was beginners luck, we'll see if I can pull that off again.
My only d'oh moment was when I was handed off to Boston Approach and I asked for Flight Following (which I already had).
Other than that, it was uneventful, but really fun. I'm looking forward to my next one.
Thanks everyone-- you all gave really good suggestions that I will be using from here on out!
Probably not luck. My primary training CFI explained it like this:
I was "ground shy" in day time. In other words, I would not point my nose to the ground and therefore my flares were too high. At night, it is less obvious where the ground is, so you don't flare until it is coming up fast in your landing light.
kimberlyanne546
Final Approach
PS - Congrats on a fun part of your training! A night cross country! You will remember this night, and "uneventful" is a good thing.
Yes, uneventful is good! I didn't want to come back and tell everyone that we made an off airport landing, (although I suppose if I had the opportunity to post about it, that would be a good thing!).
(I'm still in that excited-that-was-so-fun mode, so forgive me if I get too chatty).
Interesting point about the "ground shyness." Thanks for telling me that, I'll have to figure out how to apply that to my landings during the day, so that they can be better.
Thanks Kim!
azure
Final Approach
Another reason why it's often easier to make nice landings at night is the smoothness of the air. When there's little or no wind at night, the difference is especially noticeable near the ground since during the day, solar heating is generating all those thermals rising off the pavement.
Oh good point. Boy that was nice....
gismo
Touchdown! Greaser!
Don't listen to these folks telling you that you made good landings because it was night time. There had to be some skill involved. FWIW, most pilots are less consistent with their night landings compared to the daytime ones. And the worst thing about making good landings in the dark is that no one outside the plane gets to see them.
After your long post with advice for night flying and then this? Ok, I love you.
Seriously- thanks for the vote of confidence! And yes, bummer that in the dark no one can see your nice landing!
kimberlyanne546
Final Approach
After your long post with advice for night flying and then this? Ok, I love you.
Seriously- thanks for the vote of confidence! And yes, bummer that in the dark no one can see your nice landing!
Sorry if you have heard it before, but apparently there is a "rule" about your best landings:
They happen when you are alone, and nobody is around at the airport, and you aren't recording the flight in any way.
In other words, you can NEVER show proof that they even happened!
Oh, kinda like that HUGE fish that I caught, right? Oh you should have seen it, it was massive. HUGE! lol You should have been there!! :wink2:
Hi Dan- It wasn't a very long one, KSFM to KMHT and back. But it was a great introduction to night flying. Where did you do your first XC?
Geico266
Touchdown! Greaser!
I'm going on my first night flight tonight and my instructor said that the thing about night flights is that if you have an engine failure and need to do an emergency landing, you can't really see any fields, so you're kind of hosed, but do your best. This wasn't a very comforting thought.
I thought I'd ask all of you pros here if you had any other ways to look at engine failure at night (without the benefit of the light from a full moon)... as far as landing ideas. (Although I realize there's always a lit up freeway, right? We can land WITH traffic...).
Any other ideas? Suggestings? Different perspectives?
Since approximatly 90% of engine failures at night are caused by running out of fuel I suggest working the odds to your favor and increasing minimum fuel at night to 2 hours reserve. Problem solved statistically speaking.
Flying at night is the best! Enjoy it!
LCI at night?!!! With those mountains right there?! Wo, Dan!
TMetzinger
Final Approach
That's why you have an altimeter and a map.... so you know you're higher than the mountains! There are other tricks too - if you see lights and they vanish, there may be something (like a mountain) in between you and them.