Rich Holt
Line Up and Wait
TL;DR: This lesson learned had a happy ending and a few things to take away from the experience. 1. Brief the flight. Fly the brief 2. I've added a section to my take-off brief that deals with a partial loss of power and remaining runway ahead.
I somehow managed to get a PPL without ever doing a take-off brief. That seems odd to say, knowing what I know now. I had always had a "plan." When a CFI or DPE asked, I had a decent response. At least passable. It wasn't until many years later when I was learning to fly a T-6A that I was taught the proper way to give a take-off brief. It wasn't until nearly 1000 flight hours later that I really knew why we do all these briefs.
I was on an IR training flight with a (very young) CFI in the seat next to me. I taxied the Cherokee to the run-up and conducted a thorough run-up and instrumentation check. We were ready to go on what was to be my shortest flight to date. Before I switched to Tower to request take-off clearance, I gave the standard take-off brief that I have given hundreds of times before. I briefed Vr and what would happen if the aircraft was not performing as expected up to that point. I briefed that awkward in-between time where we would not likely make it as there were no "soft areas" to put it down. I briefed at what altitude I thought, from experience, that I could safely return to the field. And then I briefed what the initial clearance was until we contacted Departure. All standard stuff. Tower gave us clearance to take-off and we had 9300 feet to get the bird off the ground.
As we passed 300' AGL the exhaust header separated from the engine and the power rolled back to nearly mo thrust at all. There I was 300' off the ground and no engine. The lag between reality and the dreamlike state you often find yourself in when something unexpected happens did not last very long for me, longer for the CFI in the right seat. I noticed the sound change and the speed rolling back through best glide rapidly. I instinctively pushed the nose down hard to recover some necessary lift to keep us not dead. As I was reaching for the manual flaps the CFI sprung to action taking the controls to put the aircraft down on the remaining runway in front of our bird. Somewhere between 300' AGL and touchdown, the tower noticed that we were no longer climbing and asked what we doing, obviously while we were in the flare, because why not then.
I somehow managed to get a PPL without ever doing a take-off brief. That seems odd to say, knowing what I know now. I had always had a "plan." When a CFI or DPE asked, I had a decent response. At least passable. It wasn't until many years later when I was learning to fly a T-6A that I was taught the proper way to give a take-off brief. It wasn't until nearly 1000 flight hours later that I really knew why we do all these briefs.
I was on an IR training flight with a (very young) CFI in the seat next to me. I taxied the Cherokee to the run-up and conducted a thorough run-up and instrumentation check. We were ready to go on what was to be my shortest flight to date. Before I switched to Tower to request take-off clearance, I gave the standard take-off brief that I have given hundreds of times before. I briefed Vr and what would happen if the aircraft was not performing as expected up to that point. I briefed that awkward in-between time where we would not likely make it as there were no "soft areas" to put it down. I briefed at what altitude I thought, from experience, that I could safely return to the field. And then I briefed what the initial clearance was until we contacted Departure. All standard stuff. Tower gave us clearance to take-off and we had 9300 feet to get the bird off the ground.
As we passed 300' AGL the exhaust header separated from the engine and the power rolled back to nearly mo thrust at all. There I was 300' off the ground and no engine. The lag between reality and the dreamlike state you often find yourself in when something unexpected happens did not last very long for me, longer for the CFI in the right seat. I noticed the sound change and the speed rolling back through best glide rapidly. I instinctively pushed the nose down hard to recover some necessary lift to keep us not dead. As I was reaching for the manual flaps the CFI sprung to action taking the controls to put the aircraft down on the remaining runway in front of our bird. Somewhere between 300' AGL and touchdown, the tower noticed that we were no longer climbing and asked what we doing, obviously while we were in the flare, because why not then.
