Plane Down-Western Iowa

Cykoguy

Cykoguy

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Jan 19, 2014
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405
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Cedar Rapids, Iowa
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Cykoguy
tragic. i lost a buddy, a student pilot at the time, in a double fatal crash 40 something years ago on a training flight at C09. RIP to those aboard.
 
That's sad. I flew into Worthington MN that day in the afternoon. Sky conditions were overcast at around 6000. I was coming from the north and had to divert quite a ways to the east to get around some snow showers and low clouds. But I think south the weather was better. I wonder how many hours the student pilot had, and how current they were.
 
What a sad loss of life, especially when you have an aspiring student onboard. I have to say, but this is a prime example where a parachute likely would have saved at least one of their lives, maybe both
 
Gotta add my two cents worth since I suffered 2 heart attacks within days in January. First one absolutely no pain, numbness, tingling the usual signs. All I had was the driest, not sore, throat I've ever had. In local hospital for 4 days. Two days after being released, had great difficulty breathing (only symptom). Again, no other usual symptoms. Son rushed me to a different hospital where the ER dept did an outstanding job of stabilizing me in order to go to the Cath Lab for 2 stents and a balloon. Cardiologist said he wasn't sure I would make it and ER doc had told my son if he hadn't got me there (2 am) I would not have survived the night.

Only telling my personal story in the hope that if you feel something just isn't right, do something about it IMMEDIATELY. You never know.
 
Sad ,an unfortunate accident for all,maytgeyRIp.
 
old cfi said:
Gotta add my two cents worth since I suffered 2 heart attacks within days in January. First one absolutely no pain, numbness, tingling the usual signs. All I had was the driest, not sore, throat I've ever had. In local hospital for 4 days. Two days after being released, had great difficulty breathing (only symptom). Again, no other usual symptoms. Son rushed me to a different hospital where the ER dept did an outstanding job of stabilizing me in order to go to the Cath Lab for 2 stents and a balloon. Cardiologist said he wasn't sure I would make it and ER doc had told my son if he hadn't got me there (2 am) I would not have survived the night.

Only telling my personal story in the hope that if you feel something just isn't right, do something about it IMMEDIATELY. You never know.
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Thanks for your story. I had classic pain in my left shoulder and under my left arm, and first place I went to said it was a pinched nerve. To be fair, I had fallen off my porch railing a few days earlier, which is about 6 feet AGL, and landed on my neck and left shoulder. All summer I was getting winded quickly and had a constant light sweat going. I am getting old, and it was summer time. So I ignored those signs.

After the stent was put in I would occasionally have phantom pains that would scared the holy ned out of me . A couple times I woke my wife up in the middle of the night to take me back to the ER, only to find I was doing well and it wasn't a heart attack. Finally the doctor gave me a drug called Obecalp and that seemed to take care of my hypochondria.....
 
DaleB said:
Wow. I don't remember the last time I saw a page with that many popups and clickbait ads crowding out the actual content. Makes it almost completely unreadable.
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Hmmm... sorry. I did not have any problem on my computer. I hate popups as much as anyone.

Still, I hope you learn the warning signs somewhere.
 
Zeldman said:
Hmmm... sorry. I did not have any problem on my computer. I hate popups as much as anyone.

Still, I hope you learn the warning signs somewhere.
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My MI had none of the “classic” warning signs, but when it happened it was pretty unmistakeable. Never did get the left arm thing though. Just a midsize sedan sitting on my chest, with gravel under the tires.
 
God bless. That had to be a horrible way to go

Four ppl in a pa-28 going for a hunting trip?? Is that a lot for that plane?
 
old cfi said:
Gotta add my two cents worth since I suffered 2 heart attacks within days in January. First one absolutely no pain, numbness, tingling the usual signs. All I had was the driest, not sore, throat I've ever had. In local hospital for 4 days. Two days after being released, had great difficulty breathing (only symptom). Again, no other usual symptoms. Son rushed me to a different hospital where the ER dept did an outstanding job of stabilizing me in order to go to the Cath Lab for 2 stents and a balloon. Cardiologist said he wasn't sure I would make it and ER doc had told my son if he hadn't got me there (2 am) I would not have survived the night.

Only telling my personal story in the hope that if you feel something just isn't right, do something about it IMMEDIATELY. You never know.
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I had the classic sign: crushing chest pain radiating into my jaw. Pain 10 on a scale of 1-10, as bad as childbirth and I had no meds at all with childbirth. Turns out it wasn't a heart attack, it was esophageal spasm. So the reverse is also true. You can't tell at all from the symptoms.
 
Yikes. When I initially read this report I was wondering why the student pilot didn’t get it on the ground somehow relatively safely. But CO intoxication makes a lot more sense.
With the onset of cabin heat flying season I put my CO detector up about two weeks ago. Right on my eye-line
 
benyflyguy said:
Yikes. When I initially read this report I was wondering why the student pilot didn’t get it on the ground somehow relatively safely. But CO intoxication makes a lot more sense.
With the onset of cabin heat flying season I put my CO detector up about two weeks ago. Right on my eye-line
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Our plane doesn't use a heat muff for cabin heat, and the canopy seal leaks fresh air like mad. I still bought one for the panel. They're dirt cheap, no reason not to have one.
 
I met a pilot last year who miraculously survived a CO-induced crash. He passed out trimmed for climb not long after departure, the plane flew til it ran out of fuel and came down in a snowy field in Minnesota. Along the way he was shadowed by NG fighters for crossing through MSP Bravo without permission or communication.

Afterwards, he spoke to CO Detector manufacturers and arranged discounts with two of them. His own testing showed that the colored-dot-card that I had was pretty much worthless. These devices are good, they show the numbers and they work. Mine is mounted with Velcro, position determined by moving it around the cockpit for where it's near airflow and I can see it.

Here is a link to a thread he wrote this week about this same accident, with links and discount codes for a real CO detector. Please get one!

https://mooneyspace.com/topic/28176-fatal-carbon-monoxide-crash/
 
Hank S said:
I met a pilot last year who miraculously survived a CO-induced crash. He passed out trimmed for climb not long after departure, the plane flew til it ran out of fuel and came down in a snowy field in Minnesota. Along the way he was shadowed by NG fighters for crossing through MSP Bravo without permission or communication.

Afterwards, he spoke to CO Detector manufacturers and arranged discounts with two of them. His own testing showed that the colored-dot-card that I had was pretty much worthless. These devices are good, they show the numbers and they work. Mine is mounted with Velcro, position determined by moving it around the cockpit for where it's near airflow and I can see it.

Here is a link to a thread he wrote this week about this same accident, with links and discount codes for a real CO detector. Please get one!

https://mooneyspace.com/topic/28176-fatal-carbon-monoxide-crash/
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Battery operated one makes a lot more sense for me. I might just get one of those
 
Hank S said:
I met a pilot last year who miraculously survived a CO-induced crash. He passed out trimmed for climb not long after departure, the plane flew til it ran out of fuel and came down in a snowy field in Minnesota. Along the way he was shadowed by NG fighters for crossing through MSP Bravo without permission or communication.

Afterwards, he spoke to CO Detector manufacturers and arranged discounts with two of them. His own testing showed that the colored-dot-card that I had was pretty much worthless. These devices are good, they show the numbers and they work. Mine is mounted with Velcro, position determined by moving it around the cockpit for where it's near airflow and I can see it.

Here is a link to a thread he wrote this week about this same accident, with links and discount codes for a real CO detector. Please get one!

https://mooneyspace.com/topic/28176-fatal-carbon-monoxide-crash/
Click to expand...
Thanks for posting. I just ordered one. If you have an account on Mooney Space - please thank that guy for me.
 
I have seen many of those dirt cheap card board detectors in planes that are indicating black. I won't trust my life to one.
 
I have a battery powered one and agree that it's easy and cheap insurance.
 
Maybe I’m paranoid but I just don’t run the heater. I’m lucky I’m in California where it doesn’t get too cold, but my wife and I always just dress warm when we go fly.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
Peter Anderson said:
Maybe I’m paranoid but I just don’t run the heater. I’m lucky I’m in California where it doesn’t get too cold, but my wife and I always just dress warm when we go fly.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
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That might work in California, but not so much in Iowa in November.
 
Hank S said:
I met a pilot last year who miraculously survived a CO-induced crash. He passed out trimmed for climb not long after departure, the plane flew til it ran out of fuel and came down in a snowy field in Minnesota.
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These accidents do happen but are actually quite rare. It has always struck me that the risks are so low as to not justify the costs of these electronic detectors, especially the certified ones.

But I guess everyone has a somewhat different risk/$ trade off.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
These accidents do happen but are actually quite rare. It has always struck me that the risks are so low as to not justify the costs of these electronic detectors, especially the certified ones.

But I guess everyone has a somewhat different risk/$ trade off.
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You're right. I find my life is worth $100 plus an AA battery every year.
 
Hank S said:
You're right. I find my life is worth $100 plus an AA battery every year.
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But you have to multiply by the odds of it helping you. If it is a 1 in 100,000 chance and you spent $100 on preventing it, you just valued your life at $10 million dollars. Most people effectively can’t afford to do that.

What that means practically, assuming those numbers, is that it is quite likely there are better ways to spend the $100 if you want to improve your personal safety.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
But you have to multiply by the odds of it helping you. If it is a 1 in 100,000 chance and you spent $100 on preventing it, you just valued your life at $10 million dollars. Most people effectively can’t afford to do that.

What that means practically, assuming those numbers, is that it is quite likely there are better ways to spend the $100 if you want to improve your personal safety.
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Ask the value to the guy who dozed off after take off and his guardian angel landed it in middle of a field. $127 is a rounding error when it comes to aviation
 
Peter Anderson said:
Maybe I’m paranoid but I just don’t run the heater. I’m lucky I’m in California where it doesn’t get too cold, but my wife and I always just dress warm when we go fly.
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Me too. Even on chilly days the bubble canopy warms things up with greenhouse effect.

Check your exhaust systems/heat muffs regularly, folks.
 
Is inspection and (replacement if required) of the muffler system as part of the annual not comprehensive enough action to guard against CO poisoning? I'm not arguing against the CO monitor at all, just trying to understand if people are actually making the argument that the muffler shroud system is that unreliable that it can't be trusted even when inspected. I don't have the stats in front of me, but at least anecdotally it doesn't appear that hazardous when inspected as part of the yearly annual.
 
A lot can happen in a year. Fatigue failures of exhaust system components are not unheard of.
 
PeterNSteinmetz said:
But you have to multiply by the odds of it helping you. If it is a 1 in 100,000 chance and you spent $100 on preventing it, you just valued your life at $10 million dollars. Most people effectively can’t afford to do that.

What that means practically, assuming those numbers, is that it is quite likely there are better ways to spend the $100 if you want to improve your personal safety.
Click to expand...

This post makes a valid point about the economics of safety and contingencies - not just the cost, but what's the probability of occurrence and what's the severity of the consequence. Because of the latter many people will make the expenditure regardless of the probabilities.


WannFly said:
Ask the value to the guy who dozed off after take off and his guardian angel landed it in middle of a field. $127 is a rounding error when it comes to aviation
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That may be the case, but let's take this argument to its logical conclusion. What is the amount beyond which the value of an additional $1.00 spent on safety contingency adds no value? $127? More? How much more?

This could just as easily be "Ask the value to the guy who lost his engine after take-off and his Cirrus CAPS landed it in the middle of a field."
 
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PlasticCigar said:
What is a better way to spend $100 in aviation that will save your life and protect you against something that you would otherwise have NO way of protecting yourself from?
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In terms of a rational calculation, one should probably consider potential risk reductions outside aviation as well.

Another way to look at it is that GA is somewhat dangerous overall. About 1 chance of a fatality per 100,000 hours of flight. So if you fly 1000 hours, on average, you just took a 1% chance of death. That is the average, and we have a lot more control than in something like driving, but that is the overall average.

I suspect the CO poisoning events are rare enough, particularly as noted by hindsight2020 with exhaust inspections, that there are likely bigger risks even in aviation to worry about. (I thought I had posted in another thread about some research that showed the actual level of risk previously but could not for the life of me find it.) Nonetheless, I would speculate that $100 and time and effort spent on CO monitors would be better spent on part of a lesson with an instructor or some type of training activity, if one is concerned about actual safety of flights.
 
Was looking for data on frequency of this type of event. It seems there has not been an attempt to analyze this systematically.

Here is an FAA document on the subject https://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pilotsafetybrochures/media/CObroforweb.pdf which identified 360 fatalities between 1967 and 1993. Mike Busch also identified a number in his AVWeb article https://www.avweb.com/news/aeromed/186016-1.html.

I suppose one could take the accidents in the NTSB database or those numbers from the FAA and divide by the same estimated hours of flight used estimate overall fatality rates to come up with something approximating the rate. Offhand, there are a lot of other types of accidents in the database each year whereas Busch's lists suggest 1 or 2 per year on average are due to CO poisoning.
 
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WannFly said:
Ask the value to the guy who dozed off after take off and his guardian angel landed it in middle of a field. $127 is a rounding error when it comes to aviation
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I'm that guy! Now I'm an advocate for CO protection. Even the "Expensive" Guardian panel mount units are worth the price in my opinion. Yes, I guess it is a rare way to die in aviation. But 4 people just did, one person in Alaska last year, I should have in Feb 2017, and another in Alaska in 2016. Enough people have died that the NTSB believes its a major problem.

After my accident I organize a discounted group buy for the Sensorcon portable for fellow pilots on Mooneyspace. I was expecting 20-25 pilots to participate and it has snowballed to well over 600 with the help of Beechtalk, other forums, and my public speaking events. Many report back problems they find. I have had 4 solid reports of "saves". And several more of situations that could have escalated given time to. Not all have been heater related. One Turbo Mooney (Bravo) owner had his alarm go off during a climb in IMC. He declared an emergency and flew the ILS back to his departure airport. Mechanics found that the V-band clamp on the hot side of the turbo had come loose. He was at the start of a 2hr X/C over IMC, that could have ended badly. The NTSB report wouldn't have mentioned CO, but the detector was what alerted him to the problem.

hindsight2020 said:
Is inspection and (replacement if required) of the muffler system as part of the annual not comprehensive enough action to guard against CO poisoning? I'm not arguing against the CO monitor at all, just trying to understand if people are actually making the argument that the muffler shroud system is that unreliable that it can't be trusted even when inspected. I don't have the stats in front of me, but at least anecdotally it doesn't appear that hazardous when inspected as part of the yearly annual.
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Just inspections alone are not adequate enough. My accident happened 88hrs since the previous annual, it was brought on metal fatigue and not corrosion. So it looked great and passed the low pressure look for bubble test at annual. I'm guessing the crack had propagated withing the proceeding 10hrs. Good low level detectors are much more reliable than a once per year inspection.

It's interesting to note that only 50% of the CO accidents are caused from a faulty heating system. Many exhaust failures can find there way into the cabin. So not turning your heat on mitigates the risk but doesn't eliminate it.

If anyone is interested in the discounts, both are for 20% off. I have no affiliation with either company.

www.sensorcon.com
Code: aircraft2017

www.guardianavionics.com
Code: coaware

Cheers,

Dan
 
hindsight2020 said:
Is inspection and (replacement if required) of the muffler system as part of the annual not comprehensive enough action to guard against CO poisoning? I'm not arguing against the CO monitor at all, just trying to understand if people are actually making the argument that the muffler shroud system is that unreliable that it can't be trusted even when inspected. I don't have the stats in front of me, but at least anecdotally it doesn't appear that hazardous when inspected as part of the yearly annual.
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It's obvious that annual inspections are not always enough, or 100% of these incidents would be caught before they happen. This thread has taught me something, though. The little card that most of us carry around somewhere in the plane and never look at would not be that helpful even if we looked at it all the time. I had planned to put an in-panel CO detector in my homebuilt panel anyhow, with alerting on my EFIS. I had written down $295.00 for the Flight Data Systems GD-40 and I consider that to be a fair investment for reducing the risk of CO poisoning. This thread is probably going to save me money on specific hardware, but I'm definitely going to have something in the plane to alert me to CO.

Talking to a more knowledgeable coworker about it, CO poisoning will fool a pulse oximeter because it binds to hemoglobin just like oxygen does. CO just makes you high and relaxed until it knocks you out. Because of that, I consider the total risk of CO poisoning to be higher than other problems that are more likely to occur, because it is less likely that I will notice and correct for CO poisoning without help from a machine. I will probably notice if my engine quits or my wings ice up and have a chance to consciously do something about it. I will probably notice if I stall the plane and do my best to recover before hitting the ground. But with no CO detector, in the event my plane starts pouring carbon monoxide into the cockpit, I'll probably just feel sleepy and then die without ever becoming aware of what is going on. Risk is the probability of something happening times the probability of the pilot failing to correct it times the probable outcome of failing to correct it. So you can't just look at the probability of CO poisoning and brush it off as being a low risk. You have to consider the probability that you will not catch the problem in time to fix it.
 
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