Plane breaks up mid air over Long Island
- Thread starter rocketflyer84
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simtech
En-Route
How do you keep yours? I use to keep mine in the gel pad that came with it on the dash in the centerline of the plane and the AHRS was crap. So then I thought the vibration was playing with it there so I got a ram suction cup mount. On my side rear window the AHRS operates just like it did in the glareshield. Would never hold level and would always climb, dive, bank while taxi and was pointless in the air. This is on the stratus 2.
Challenged
Pattern Altitude
On my last flight, I used the emergency approach feature of Xavion, coupled with my SkyguardTWX with AHRS. I've only done limited testing with it so far, since that's a new feature of Xavion, but I'm very impressed with it so far. It basically gives you an approach, using power (not just glide), to any runway; just fly through the hoops using the synthetic vision.
Chip Sylverne
Final Approach
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Quit with the negative waves, man.
One of the guys on one of the other boards lives in the accident area, and his Mk1 eyeball observation was about 600' agl. Of course, we all know how asos works.
Dav8or
Final Approach
There seems to be a ton of speculation and assumption in this thread that the accident plane actually had a vacuum system. What if it had the latest and greatest all electric glass panel in it? Maybe that would explain the pilot's reporting of cascading failures. Maybe that would explain the lack of autopilot use. What if there were an electrical fire consuming back up after back up?
I am not saying this is what happened at all. I'm just saying that the jump to "vacuum system failure" is nothing but pure speculation and fantasy at they point. The only thing in this thread I agree with is, a BRS might have saved them.
I am not saying this is what happened at all. I'm just saying that the jump to "vacuum system failure" is nothing but pure speculation and fantasy at they point. The only thing in this thread I agree with is, a BRS might have saved them.
rocketflyer84
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RocketFlyer84
The pilot reported on the radio that he had a vacuum failure (recording earlier in this thread). Could have been something else of course but people are simple reacting to the audio tape.
Fearless Tower
Touchdown! Greaser!
That doesn't sound right.
I use a suction mount. In the Baron, it is on a back side window. In the biplane it is mounted in the baggage compartment to the bulkhead behind the pilot seat.
I don't know if it makes a difference, but when I have used it, I didn't mess with it on the ground. I opened the app and calibrated in flight.
Dr. O
Pattern Altitude
I don't have a dog in this fight. But I do know from experience that 99.9% of today's pilots cannot let down through an overcast with needle ball and airspeed (or under the foggles for that matter).
It would seem to me that if you learned to fly in the era of glass you owe it to yourself to at least once a year do an hour of needle ball and airspeed under the sim. You will learn vastly more about instrument flight than what you think.
edit: oh yeah, and a whisky compass (but that was implied)
It would seem to me that if you learned to fly in the era of glass you owe it to yourself to at least once a year do an hour of needle ball and airspeed under the sim. You will learn vastly more about instrument flight than what you think.
edit: oh yeah, and a whisky compass (but that was implied)
Somedudeintn
Cleared for Takeoff
I don't know about the 99.9% number, but if that's true, then I'd like to think everyone one on POA is in the 0.1%.
Dav8or
Final Approach
Oh, OK. Got it. Maybe during decent through the cloud the pitot iced up, or a static port iced up? That would make things much tougher.
Chip Sylverne
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Quit with the negative waves, man.
I posed that over on the Beech board. Someone dug up the skew-t for the closest airport at the date/time of the accident and it showed freeze level at 10k.
Dav8or
Final Approach
Rain then maybe?? Sometimes rain water can cause a pitot static system to be erratic.
Chip Sylverne
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Quit with the negative waves, man.
Turbulence. An A-340 pilot has posted that he was in the area that afternoon, and was bounced around enough to sicken pax. Scattered heavy precp, tops 4k to 20k with widespread low IFR. Imagine what it must have been like in a Bo.
If that was the case, this pilot was playing against a stacked deck.
scjohnson243
Filing Flight Plan
Guys, forgive my ignorance - I understand we are all going under assumptions at this point - But for a non-pilot (who is about to start training TO be a pilot), I am still learning a lot of these terms... From what I put together on these posts the guys instrument panel went out (partially, vacuum outage refers to the instruments, right?) -- he ended up trying to correct in an overcast sky and more of the panel went out and he got disoriented since he had no instruments and it was low visibility and either stalled out or got the plane in a non-recoverable spin?) I saw on the chart up there he was at 233 knots and diving at almost 400 (not sure the proper measurement) which is way to fast for that plane, which would explain it "breaking up" in flight...
Is that kind of the assumption at this point?
Just trying to learn more, very sorry for the extreme novice questions!
other than the instrument panel is there some sort of backup systems? How should/would you handle no vision and knowing your path if you had no visibility before it was too late?
Thanks all for the information!
Is that kind of the assumption at this point?
Just trying to learn more, very sorry for the extreme novice questions!
other than the instrument panel is there some sort of backup systems? How should/would you handle no vision and knowing your path if you had no visibility before it was too late?
Thanks all for the information!
Checkout_my_Six
Touchdown! Greaser!
mine isn't....the STec is driven by the T&B.
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jsstevens
Vacuum system drives two main instruments used in flying in the clouds: Attitude Indicator and Directional Gyro. So as soon as you realize these are bad (which isn't as easy as it sounds), you use other instruments for those functions, altimeter, airspeed and turn and bank indicator. If there are more problems (T&B is electrical for example), then you've got more trouble.
This pilot apparently wound up not stalling or spinning but in a "death spiral". (Google that term for more info.) The plane is banked and turning as well as going down and accelerating. If you pull "up" you are only steepening the turn. Eventually the plane break apart due to stresses from going to fast and being pulled too hard.
John
exncsurfer
Pattern Altitude
The other novice poster beat me to some of these questions but I'll go anyway:
Lets say you lose visibility, vacuum(ai, dg), your air speed and altitude info isn't reliable, static port issue. Is there any way to control pitch/speed at this point? (assuming you recognized these failures and aren't flying bogus numbers) What do you do? Pull some power?, listen for slipstream?(break the seal on your bose noise canceling headset(can you guys hear the air through those?))
If you have electric turn coordinator, you can use that for wing leveling, but how could you control pitch/airspeed without attitude, airspeed or altimeter information to go by? I suppose you're out of luck at that point.
You should be able to use an alternate static port for the altimeter as long as you have that port and have noticed the failure. But depending on how long it took you to figure that out, you could be at a critical speed where leveling the wings with your previous pitch trim level would produce enough lift to put you vertical or inverted, right?
All this goes out the window when you haven't realized a failure, suffering spatial D, and consider the short time it takes to get to a critical unusual attitude while you're figuring this stuff out.
Its mind boggling how quick you can go from straight/level to breaking. It seems my non-ifr rated(still non ppl rated!) chances would be less than slim to none. Note to self, stay out of IMC.
Here is an article which questions the common '180 to safety' procedure: https://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/inst_reports2.cfm?article=6153 (and assumes all your instruments are working)
Lets say you lose visibility, vacuum(ai, dg), your air speed and altitude info isn't reliable, static port issue. Is there any way to control pitch/speed at this point? (assuming you recognized these failures and aren't flying bogus numbers) What do you do? Pull some power?, listen for slipstream?(break the seal on your bose noise canceling headset(can you guys hear the air through those?))
If you have electric turn coordinator, you can use that for wing leveling, but how could you control pitch/airspeed without attitude, airspeed or altimeter information to go by? I suppose you're out of luck at that point.
You should be able to use an alternate static port for the altimeter as long as you have that port and have noticed the failure. But depending on how long it took you to figure that out, you could be at a critical speed where leveling the wings with your previous pitch trim level would produce enough lift to put you vertical or inverted, right?
All this goes out the window when you haven't realized a failure, suffering spatial D, and consider the short time it takes to get to a critical unusual attitude while you're figuring this stuff out.
Its mind boggling how quick you can go from straight/level to breaking. It seems my non-ifr rated(still non ppl rated!) chances would be less than slim to none. Note to self, stay out of IMC.
Here is an article which questions the common '180 to safety' procedure: https://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/inst_reports2.cfm?article=6153 (and assumes all your instruments are working)
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Ari
Just to add to this in more detail for the new pilot, when you fly VFR, the main way you know your plane is in straight and level flight is by looking out the windows and seeing the real horizon. You use the instrument panel as a secondary source of information about what is happening to the plane, except for airspeed and altitude which work by measuring the air pressure at the pitot tube (airspeed) and static tube (airspeed and altitude). If the pitot or static tube is plugged by ice or something else, you will get inaccurate indications from these instruments, as well as from the vertical speed indicator (VSI) which operates off static pressure like the altimeter.
When you fly IFR in IMC (instrument meteorological conditions, a/k/a clouds), the real horizon is not available and your senses try to play tricks on you. (They actually try to play tricks when you are VFR, but the real horizon gives them a harder time.) That is why "continuing VFR flight into IMC" is one of the top killers of small airplanes, even for instrument-rated pilots who are either not current or otherwise not prepared for the transition into the clouds. In IMC, you instead rely on the indications of the instruments to tell you what the plane is doing.
There are seven main instruments you use for this (not including navigation, which is a separate task from controlling the plane): Airspeed, turn coordinator or turn indicator and ball, attitude, heading, altitude, vertical speed, and power (which can be manifold pressure, RPM, or another gauge depending on the type of engine in the plane). The first task in instrument flying is instrument cross-check, to verify that those instruments are in agreement. If they don't agree, you have to figure out which of them is out of whack. Then you have to interpret the working instruments to figure out what the airplane is doing, and finally control the airplane to make it do what you want it to. Flying the plane when one or more instruments is not giving reliable indications is called partial panel flying. It is normally simulated in instrument training by the instructor suddenly covering up one or more of the instruments with paper or a black plastic circle with a suction cup on it that you spent too much on to buy when you could have just used post-it notes (I proudly own three).
The attitude and heading instruments typically rely on gyroscopic principles and are operated by a vacuum line, which has a lower than ambient air pressure because of a vacuum pump that is driven by the engine. If the engine, vacuum pump, vacuum line, or instruments have problems, their readings will be unreliable. But they typically fail slowly (gyros spin at high RPM and take a while to slow down, vacuum leaks can grow gradually, etc.) so it is not immediately obvious that they are giving unreliable indications unless you are very diligent about instrument cross-check. Add in the fact that many pilots fixate on the attitude indicator and you have a disaster brewing when it slowly dies and he hasn't adequately cross-checked to determine that it is dying.
The turn coordinator is a gyroscopic instrument but normally powered by electricity. Flying "needle, ball, and airspeed" means that you rely on the turn coordinator or indicator to know if you are turning or flying straight, the ball to know if you are flying in coordinated or uncoordinated flight, and the airspeed to know if you are diving, climbing, or in level flight. This is harder to do than using the attitude indicator, heading indicator, and altimeter. It's MUCH harder to do when those instruments are still visible but giving conflicting information.
But anyhow, if the electrical system dies you can still use the vacuum-driven gyro instruments. If the vacuum system fails you can still use the electric-driven gyro instruments. This is just one of the many redundancies built into almost all airplanes built since WWII to help pilots and passengers get home safe.
This pilot apparently (I didn't listen to the recording) believed that he had lost some instruments and then later believed that more instruments were failing. Everyone here is speculating about what actually happened. Maybe he was right at first that one instrument failed, but after that became disoriented and mistakenly believed that more instruments had failed. Or maybe multiple instruments did fail. Or maybe he just got disoriented and thought the vacuum instruments had failed. The NTSB will probably figure it out eventually. But until they do--and even afterward--Pilots of America will rampantly speculate on what happened.
If you have a turn coordinator and an alternate static port (which may consist of breaking the glass on the VSI), you probably still have some hope of maintaining control by flying wings level at a constant altitude and power setting. If you have no attitude, altitude, or airspeed, though, I don't know how you would recover. Perhaps you could just as well stall the plane and try to keep the ball centered until you find a visual reference to either recover by or crash into. Even a spin is safer for the plane than a death spiral. But I just hope I never manage to lose the vacuum and static instruments at the same time.
azure
Final Approach
Very interesting article. I'd have to disagree that climbing is always the best advice if there is any question of rising terrain up ahead. I think it depends on circumstances. Where is the freezing level? What kind of clouds are you in? Is it more turbulent higher up or less? Is there precip up there? All things being equal, if there is terrain or obstacles up ahead, the 180 might be the best move after all unless the pilot is very sure that climbing is safe... after first adjusting to flying on instruments, and of course not exceeding standard rate.
And I'm really not sure that flying a few IAPs gives a non-IR pilot much in the way of tools to get on the ground safely in the event of unintentional VFR-into-IMC. I tend to think the kind of precision instrument flying needed to shoot an approach successfully under stressful conditions is something for which you need serious instrument training backed up with recent experience. I think if someone wants that degree of proficiency they're probably better off going for the IR and staying current. But it can't hurt to give a non-IR PPL some experience with flying approaches, as long as they're aware that this is Plan C or D and NOT something they should count on being able to use to save themselves in a pinch.
But I totally agree that keeping one's instrument skills sharp is essential for any pilot, VFR-only or IR, who is using aviation for serious travel. Even if you never intend to fly IFR, the ability to control the airplane without visual reference could save your bacon someday. It's too easy to get into instrument conditions, even without flying into a cloud, particularly if you fly at night. Minimum standards just isn't good enough, IMHO.
TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
In the original install with a vacuum driven heading indicator, yes. My 300A is tied to a Bendix King HSI with an AD converter. No vacuum dependency at all.
TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
Mine's rock solid stable. How do you have your Stratus 2 oriented in the airplane? To use the AHRS, it needs to be secure (you have it suction cupped, so that should work!) and .... per Stratus: "If you are using the AHRS feature of ForeFlight Mobile, ensure that your receiver is mounted parallel to the aircraft’s centerline (that runs north and south) and the LEDs and Stratus logo are facing the back of the aircraft."
If you're doing that and it's still not stable and right, I'd send it back for service / replacement.
TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
See my comment in post 102. You can mount it upside down, but not vertically.
This is okay; vertical is not.
Fearless Tower
Touchdown! Greaser!
That's what the Stratus folks will tell you. FWIW, I have mine mounted vertically in the Baron and it seems to do just fine.See my comment in post 102. You can mount it upside down, but not vertically.
This is okay; vertical is not.
MauleSkinner
Touchdown! Greaser!
Interesting, considering the 180 was ASF's baby back n the 50's & 60's.
dmspilot
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DISPLAY NAME
Sorry, but I started laughing at the end...a 180 degree turn is too hard, but the author thinks it might be a good idea to do an instrument approach?
camel
Pre-takeoff checklist
Watching it now, nice. I got a kick out of you cursing the 1-pixel-wide click area when trying to changing frequencies. Fitt's Law demonstrated!
denverpilot
Tied Down
This made me somewhat sad. I knew AOPA's other stuff had gone so downhill that I finally pulled the red handle on them, but I thought ASF would hang on as a professionally run sub-organization.
They used to base their "opinions" on significant testing and trials of the techniques they recommended and reported on that.
Now they have a single author just chair flying and making up new things.
Sad.
And I count the 180-degree turn training I had drilled into me in the early 90s with saving my life one day, long long ago.
I learned not to jack with a lowering but seemingly "flat" ceiling that was supposedly forecast to rise/dissipate, and was around 2000' - 3000' AGL with terrain slowly rising underneath, the hard way.
Sure seemed fine there 1000' below it puttering along VFR until I looked down at the chart for a minute and drove right into the lowered shelf of it that looked like just a couple of ragged scattered fingers sticking down a second before.
I was solid IMC as a VFR pilot with about 10 hours in sims and whatever the minimum was in airplanes back then.
The 180 wasn't difficult. It was the WAITING to pop back out that was.
Stupid stupid move but the 180 training saved that day back then.
The article just strikes me as amateurish and not very well researched, which is sad. ASF didn't used to publish stuff like that.
Another reason to throw the re-up notices away. I'm down to about one every six months.
jspilot
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jspilot
Tremendous post. The real issue here is- on the day in question, VFR on top was a deplorable pilot decision. I live about 20 miles from where this plane crashed and it was solid overcast all around for 100's of miles! Why on earth would anyone try and climb overtop and try and pick in hole in the clouds. It's overcast, by definition there are no breaks in the clouds!
The only way to control airspeed and pitch in a total system failure is to have a horizon- this guy was devoid of that. His last remaining hope was, if you have enough experience, is to fly by engine sounds. For example, when the 172 I fly pitches up, you can hear a noticeable sound change coming from the engine(pitch change). When you descend, the pitch of the engine noise also changes. I don't have noise cancelling headsets though so if you do, well then I guess you may not know what I'm referencing here. In all honesty though, if you are relying on sounds to control a plane you are truly down to the last resort!
Extremely sad loss but the loss was started by deciding to go VFR on top!
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rocketflyer84
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???
VFR on top is an IFR flight procedure. Based on radio transmissions and the FlightAware data it appears the flight was on an IFR flight plan so one would assume the pilot is also IFR rated. For an IFR rated pilot on an IFR flight plan it's not a "deplorable pilot decision" to fly in VFR above a solid layer... that's usually what IFR pilots are trying to do when clouds are out there!
It appears the pilot could have handled the system failures better, but I wouldn't seriously question the decision to fly above an overcast layer if he was indeed IFR rated. It was certainly overcast in the region but not "socked in"... ceilings were 600-1400 ft which should be no big deal for a qualified IFR pilot.
If you thought he was VFR OVER THE TOP (big difference) then yes I wouldn't encourage that... especially if the pilot is not IFR rated, but there's no indication that's what happened here.
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jspilot
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jspilot
Ahhh Ok. If he was IFR then I stand corrected. I thought I had read, or heard at first that he was flying VFR on top as VFR and not an IFR rated pilot. Certainly it makes more sense if he was flying IFR on the day in question.
My VS/Alt hold/GS coupling auto pilot has no "pitch" information input. All it knows is altitude (barometric) and displacement of the glideslope. It's up to the pilot to decide if the pitch it commands to track those things is getting out of accepted limits.
genna
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ТУ-104
I think you mean VFR "over" the top. And yes, I agree it is a bad decision. However,I'm not sure it made any difference if he was on an IFR clearance. Doesn't seem like a clearance is the deciding factor here
I suppose he could have tried a known elevator trim setting + a known power setting. It may not be perfect, but it should be relatively stable. Listen for the sound of wind rushing by to let you know if airspeed is relatively stable.
For what it's worth, the pilot reported he was VFR OVER the top. I don't know if he meant IFR on top instead. But that is what he actually stated.
jspilot
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jspilot
Right this was my confusion as well. VFR Over( not on--my bad) means you have VFR conditions but are possibly( most often maybe??) still on IFR. It should be, IFR over clouds and VFR over clouds.
rocketflyer84
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RocketFlyer84
Yeah, I heard that too. Flightaware indicates he had an IFR flight plan along V1 at IFR altitudes and that's where he was flying at 7k prior to the incident starting.
Concur with other comments that the whole VFR on/over the top terminology is confusing. They mean very different things but sound similar.
rocketflyer84
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VFR on top = IFR pilot on an IFR flight plan that's flying the enroute portion of the flight on top of a layer (or even in severe clear conditions) under VFR flight rules. You are still on the IFR flight plan but are operating under visual flight rules in so far as altitudes and cloud clearances. To get back down the pilot returns to IFR and then likely shoots an insturment approach. This can be useful if you want to fly visually direct to destination but just need to use the IFR ticket to get up and down.
VFR over the top = A VFR flight maintaining cloud clearance above a solid layer below. It's legal but not terribly smart if you are not IFR rated and trained to get down through IMC if there's an issue.
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Ari
Is the phrase VFR Over the Top actually used in the regulations anywhere? VFR On Top is a specific clearance an instrument-rated pilot can obtain while on an IFR flight plan in VMC. VFR Over the Top seems just to be the colloquial way of saying that you are flying VFR without "a visual reference to the surface." That's the actual language used in 61.89(a)(7) as a restriction on student pilots.