My first AOG

Jim K

Jim K

Final Approach
PoA Supporter
Joined
Mar 31, 2019
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CMI
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Display name:
Richard Digits
Flying the family back from Branson this morning, the fuel pressure gauge was fluctuating again (https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/com...uel-pressure-fluctuation.130941/#post-3055164). Didn't think much of it until I felt the airplane surge a bit. It was nearly imperceptible at first, but eventually it became obvious we had a problem as the egt and fuel flow also were bouncing around more than usual.

I tried troubleshooting it when I probably should've put it down, but it was still making power and there weren't any good options. I decided if I didn't get it sorted by SUS (west side of st louis) I'd land there.

Of course it got worse. I told Stl approach i needed to divert, and answered the "souls on board" and "fuel remaining" questions. Teresa told me that's what got her scared as apparently she's heard that in some videos shes seen me watch...

Approach told me to descend and I told them I'd stay where I was, as the one thing the lance is really good at is descending fast. It eventually got bad enough that we were losing speed, but by then we were within gliding distance. The only weird thing is that approach seemingly forgot about us. I called them multiple times to clarify if I was cleared to descend and fly the visual, especially as there was other traffic still inbound to sus, but they were too busy talking to an air tractor(why is it always an air tractor?). I suppose I should've squawked 7700 to remind him, but honestly flying the airplane was consuming all my clock cycles. I eventually gave up and switched to tower. They were aware of the situation and cleared me to land. I was about 3000' agl in the downwind and went power idle and put her down just a bit past the td markers.

The kids thought we were home until they saw the firetrucks. Exchanged info with them. Apparently tower wanted my phone number, but never called (story of my life). Not sure if I should file an asrs on switching away from approach without being told. I guess it wouldn't hurt. Then the rigamarol of getting a rental car which entailed a trip across town to lambert, and the 3 hour drive home turned a 2 hour flight into a 10 hour ordeal. I'd forgotten how much I hate driving.

Now to deal with a long distance airplane repair.

Airplanes.
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So did you officially declare? I guess if the trucks rolled then yes?
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
So did you officially declare? I guess if the trucks rolled then yes?
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They asked if I was, and like an idiot I said not yet. They obviously did for me. By the time I felt it was really an emergency and had to land NOW, approach wouldn't respond to me. I was pretty sure they had declared for me, so I just flew as I felt necessary.
 
Glad you’re good. This exact issue actually kept me out of Oshkosh. Mine was much less dramatic.
 
Jim K said:
Flying the family back from Branson this morning, the fuel pressure gauge was fluctuating again (https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/com...uel-pressure-fluctuation.130941/#post-3055164). Didn't think much of it until I felt the airplane surge a bit. It was nearly imperceptible at first, but eventually it became obvious we had a problem as the egt and fuel flow also were bouncing around more than usual.

I tried troubleshooting it when I probably should've put it down, but it was still making power and there weren't any good options. I decided if I didn't get it sorted by SUS (west side of st louis) I'd land there.

Of course it got worse. I told Stl approach i needed to divert, and answered the "souls on board" and "fuel remaining" questions. Teresa told me that's what got her scared as apparently she's heard that in some videos shes seen me watch...

Approach told me to descend and I told them I'd stay where I was, as the one thing the lance is really good at is descending fast. It eventually got bad enough that we were losing speed, but by then we were within gliding distance. The only weird thing is that approach seemingly forgot about us. I called them multiple times to clarify if I was cleared to descend and fly the visual, especially as there was other traffic still inbound to sus, but they were too busy talking to an air tractor(why is it always an air tractor?). I suppose I should've squawked 7700 to remind him, but honestly flying the airplane was consuming all my clock cycles. I eventually gave up and switched to tower. They were aware of the situation and cleared me to land. I was about 3000' agl in the downwind and went power idle and put her down just a bit past the td markers.

The kids thought we were home until they saw the firetrucks. Exchanged info with them. Apparently tower wanted my phone number, but never called (story of my life). Not sure if I should file an asrs on switching away from approach without being told. I guess it wouldn't hurt. Then the rigamarol of getting a rental car which entailed a trip across town to lambert, and the 3 hour drive home turned a 2 hour flight into a 10 hour ordeal. I'd forgotten how much I hate driving.

Now to deal with a long distance airplane repair.

Airplanes.
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Good job. You simply told them you weren’t going to descend rather then getting into a ‘requesting’ not to conversation with them. I would file the ASRS report. It could be useful in recognizing a problem that could keep someone else from experiencing what you did. Good job on going to the Tower on your own when it was the obvious thing to do. You were an emergency. Them coming back to ask if you were declaring after having asked for souls and fuel was unnecessary. That the crash crew was waiting for you is evidence of this. But it happens. I will say that when you made the decision to divert you should have declared then.
 
luvflyin said:
I will say that when you made the decision to divert you should have declared then.
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I agree completely. I always told myself that if there was any doubt whether I should declare, then I should. In the moment however, I didn't want to admit anything was wrong. More to myself than to anyone else. I felt like if I didn't admit there was an issue, it might clear up and be fine, even though I could tell it was getting worse.

I think that's the takeaway. It's hard to say those words. Not because I was afraid of the fsdo, or inconvenienceing anyone, but actually just admitting it to myself.
 
Jim K said:
I agree completely. I always told myself that if there was any doubt whether I should declare, then I should. In the moment however, I didn't want to admit anything was wrong. More to myself than to anyone else. I felt like if I didn't admit there was an issue, it might clear up and be fine, even though I could tell it was getting worse.

I think that's the takeaway. It's hard to say those words. Not because I was afraid of the fsdo, or inconvenienceing anyone, but actually just admitting it to myself.
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Yeah. I’m gonna get what may seem a little harsh here. You did admit something was going wrong. That’s why you diverted. The trucks were waiting for you. Yeah, they weren’t needed. This time. Even your ‘not yet’ when asked later if you were declaring didn’t make that part of the ‘emergency response’ go away. I would say the worse part of your analysis is that you ‘didn’t want to inconvenience anyone.’ That ‘not yet’ may or may not have been the reason the Approach Controller became less than responsive to you. Anyway, once again, good job on your aviating decisions other than maybe your decisions on the continuing saga of whether to declare or not. Hope you get plane fixed and back without to much grief.

EDIT: Oh yeah. Don’t let the kids con you into declaring when it’s not an emergency just because they want more Fireman Hats.:D
 
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Glad it all worked out. Good job and good airmanship. Your kids can tell stories of how dad saved the day...:)
 
Glad it worked out OK! Cute family!
 
It's a pretty cool thing to see a family safe on the ground smiling, especially contrasted to some of the incidents in the past few weeks. You diverted and brought the plane in when it started to act weird. Perfect choice.

My engineering background is electrical and computer, not mechanical, but those mechanical injection systems (if that's what it is) look pretty complicated to me. Maybe overkill, and easy for a clueless person like me to speculate, but I'd be tempted to have it completely inspected or overhauled before taking that up again.
 
Yeah AOG far from the house sucks. The logisitcs of getting home sight unseen are the worst, especially these days with the post rona landscape, the rental car one way availability being ultra skosh. Then the extraction of the airplane and the driving, the *******g driving. That said, Im just glad mine happened 7 hours away in OK and not in the bahamas during my ocean crossing. International AOG is def not something i have much apetite for anymore.

Good job on getting the thing on the ground and not overreacting.
 
It would be interesting to hear what occupied Approach so much that they couldn't respond to you. Have you checked liveatc for the audio? Or post the approximate time and frequency you were on and we can try to find it.

Glad you're safe.
 
Good job on handling what could have been much worse.

Reminds me of my similar “non declared emergency” complete with family except in my case, no fire and rescue appeared.

Cheers
 
Albany Tom said:
those mechanical injection systems (if that's what it is) look pretty complicated to me. Maybe overkill, and easy for a clueless person like me to speculate, but I'd be tempted to have it completely inspected or overhauled before taking that up again.
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It is an injected engine. The system is pretty simple if you look at a diagram, and is built to compensate for fluctuations on fuel pressure. I think the problem is in the servo. The mixture knob didn't change fuel flow the way it normally does. I don't know if they repair the servos or just exchange them.

I also found the engine ran rough when I turned off the left mag, so it's possible it's unrelated to the fuel system. I'm guessing that was a symptom and not the issue though.

hindsight2020 said:
Yeah AOG far from the house sucks
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Thankfully STL isn't that far, and I've already had a couple friends offer to fly me down. Still have access to the club plane too if I need to go down there. I posted this on a Facebook group I'm in an got shop recommendations and offers to help. The pilot community never ceases to amaze me.
RussR said:
Have you checked liveatc for the audio?
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No, I didn't want to hear myself bumbling like an idiot. If you guys are super bored we landed around 10:45 at ksus.
 
Sounds to me like you did a good job getting it on the ground. There'll always be coulda-woulda-shouda's. Glad everyone is safe!
 
You live to fly another day.
Perfect ending to an imperfect situation.
Well done.
 
Good call putting her down and nursing her somewhere with decent services - not a lot of options on that leg prior to St Louis. Keep us posted on what they find.
 
Zeldman said:
I never got a fireman hat on the times I had to declare...:( :lol::lol:
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Ditto. I propose an amendment to part 139. "Regardless of the airport index, all airport fire and rescue operations require the authority to maintain sufficient quantity of children's firefighter hats to provide such hats to all children aboard any aircraft which uses the airport."
 
Arnold said:
Ditto. I propose an amendment to part 139. "Regardless of the airport index, all airport fire and rescue operations require the authority to maintain sufficient quantity of children's firefighter hats to provide such hats to children of all ages aboard any aircraft which uses the airport."
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I agree, with one slight change...:lol:
 
Did you turn on the boost pump?
 
masloki said:
Good call putting her down and nursing her somewhere with decent services - not a lot of options on that leg prior to St Louis. Keep us posted on what they find.
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I was thinking about landing at vih. That's the one decision I second guess. I was pretty certain I wouldn't be able to find a ride home anywhere besides st louis, and it was still making good power, but if the thing quit on me I was going to put my entire family into a corn field.
Zeldman said:
I never got a fireman hat on the times I had to declare...:( :lol::lol:
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I was really impressed that they even had pink ones.
Dan Thomas said:
Did you turn on the boost pump?
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Yes. It seemed to help at first, but eventually it started surging even with the boost pump on. That was when I knew it was pretty serious. I had been hoping it was the mechanical pump failing. Of course I tried switching tanks too. I even drained the fuel strainer for a couple seconds, thinking maybe it was full of water. I sampled the fuel after we landed and it looked clean & blue with no water.
 
Dan Thomas said:
Did you turn on the boost pump?
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I think that his other thread mentioned that the boost pump didn't change the fluctuations.

kayoh190 said:
Sounds to me like you did a good job getting it on the ground. There'll always be coulda-woulda-shouda's. Glad everyone is safe!
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A whole lot of this. If you do a survivable job on your first emergency, you can debrief all the little things you could have done better and get them right in your second emergency.

One takeaway I have from this thread: If ATC asks if I am declaring, I'm deciding now, long ahead of time, that the answer is an automatic "yes" without any thought.
 
kaiser said:
Ok come on… let’s be realistic here - who among us really know our hat size?
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dude, you've seen Jim's head.......

also, yeah, I have no idea what my hat size is.
 
Congrats on a good job. Good Airmanship!!!
 
eman1200 said:
Zeldman: I want to declare an emergency
ATC: what is the nature of your emergency?
Zeldman: I didn't get a fireman's hat last time I declared an emergency
ATC:
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ATC: There has been a run on those lately. Nearest Airport with any is Kaaa and they've only got one. Say souls on board and fuel state
 
luvflyin said:
ATC: There has been a run on those lately. Nearest Airport with any is Kaaa and they've only got one. Say souls on board and fuel state
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Lincoln, il? Random.
 
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