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Oops, darn it...

frequent_flyer said:
Opposite side of the thermal, eye ball to eye ball, working the core together. It's magic and something few power pilots will ever experience.
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Long ago I flew formation with a bald eagle in a Tomahawk. I was catching ridge lift over the Bridger Mountains near Bozeman--throttled back to idle and slowly climbing. 20 feet off the left wing I saw a bald eagle doing the same thing. we flew side by side for a coupled of minutes. He even looked at me and, I almost think, nodded....

One of my high point memories.
 
That is why we fly!!

RVBottomly said:
Long ago I flew formation with a bald eagle in a Tomahawk. I was catching ridge lift over the Bridger Mountains near Bozeman--throttled back to idle and slowly climbing. 20 feet off the left wing I saw a bald eagle doing the same thing. we flew side by side for a coupled of minutes. He even looked at me and, I almost think, nodded....

One of my high point memories.
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Eagles understand gravity. When they perceive danger they can go down faster than up, so they dive. I never fly under an Eagle if I can help it. I’ve never had an airplane encounter with Swans but I have had several close encounters in boats coming around creek bends. Swans a freakin big. Their wingspan is huge, and everything seems to move in slow motion. Really impressive when close enough that you have to duck.
 
I was doing Eagle surveys by flying over nest and the Biologists would count the babies in the nest. As I was passing one I saw a Eagle launch from a near by tree coming right at the C-172, he was attacking! I got out of there,lol, you have to respect anything that goes after something so much larger than them.
 
Peregrine Falcons will chase airplanes. Pass a nearby nest and they can zoom up then dive at speed on a slow mover. Seen it a few times along the Colville River on Alaska's North Slope. We avoided their summer nesting areas yet they'd still cross the river from the west given the opportunity. Book speed is over 200 in a dive I've read. I had one pass me on the left from behind in a C-185 doing half that looking for radio tagged fish below.

Gary
 
I replaced the wing and horizontal leading edge on a C182 years ago that hit two geese. Rivets were popping all down the wing as I started drilling. Blood and guts across the top of the wing and $hit across the bottom.

Took a duck between the strut and the wing of my Super Cub outboard of the jury struts. Was kinda in disbelief until my passenger verified what I just saw.
 
algonquin said:
I was doing Eagle surveys by flying over nest and the Biologists would count the babies in the nest. As I was passing one I saw a Eagle launch from a near by tree coming right at the C-172, he was attacking! I got out of there,lol, you have to respect anything that goes after something so much larger than them.
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I conducted bald eagle nest surveys for a number of years on Kodiak, where there are a lot of eagles. I never had an eagle threaten the plane during those surveys….that I knew of. We were generally pretty quick, largely because we had so many nests to check.

On the other hand, I was holding high and circling a bear we wanted to capture while the capture helicopter went back to camp for fuel. I was just keeping an eye on the bear, high and loose circles. There was an eagle nest near the bear, and at one point, one of the birds started up towards us. Both of us watched that eagle fly up in front of us, then fold and dive when it realized how big we were. Both my observer and I watched him fold and pass under the wing between us and the jury struts.

My observer, a rather calm and droll observer noted: “I wonder if that eagle is telling its mate….You shoulda seen the size of the eyes on those humans….”

I was a LOT more careful with extended circling of nests after that.

MTV
 
I have always been more reliant on the tail tiedown when had starting or running and engine while working. I have seen a Cessna going round in circles, that was interesting. It was fun to see a guy chase it and get in, thumbs up for him.

I also years back had a bird strike in a 172, outboard right wing damage did not go aft of the spar. It was a few days to fix it. Only time I both damaged and had to repair a strike.
 
mvivion said:
Actually, a C-117. That'll leave a mark, in any case. Too bad....

MTV
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After watching the video, it's pretty amazing that things didn't turn out worse. No idea if the gear was non-functional, but super impressed that there wasn't a worse outcome.
 
Gear was intentionally left up to extend the glide- they were pretty low over downtown and didn’t think they’d make it with the gear out.
 
Wow! Tough situation, but sounds like the crew made good decisions. Those are tough old machines, so hopefully will fly again soon. In any case, nobody hurt, and a beautiful job landing straight down the runway.

That could have been really messy…..

MTV
 
"trying to get a good rate of climb" mentioned prior to Merrill transition vs return to ANC. Whatever, they did good on that narrow 4000 x 100 ft runway.

Gary
 

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frequent_flyer said:
Why couldn't this aircraft even maintain altitude with one engine shut down and the prop feathered? A stock DC-3 at max gross, according to some sources, will make 200 fpm clean on one engine. Shouldn't the C-117D at max gross be at least as good as the DC-3?

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/1994/june/pilot/flying-the-dc-3
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And negative density altitude to boot. Either that good engine wasn’t producing full power, or I’d say they need to check their load, which I’m sure will be investigated.
 
AKjurnees said:
And negative density altitude to boot. Either that good engine wasn’t producing full power, or I’d say they need to check their load, which I’m sure will be investigated.
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Rumor is they had trouble feathering the inop engine’s prop. Looks like they took out some treetops and came damned close to some tied down airplanes. Amazing!

 
Narwhal said:
Rumor is they had trouble feathering the inop engine’s prop. Looks like they took out some treetops and came damned close to some tied down airplanes. Amazing!
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I'm no DC-3 expert but it looks feathered when back on the gear but it doesn't look feathered in the video frame that shows initial right wing contact. Perhaps someone familiar with that prop could comment - is it possible that air loads would prevent feather but it would feather when stopped on the ground? Video appears to show right feathered but left not feathered when raised back on the gear.

That was so close to going horribly wrong. Glad they had some luck to go with the skill.
 
Being an expert in nothing DC-3, and never having flown one, I have a couple of observations after seeing and listening to the videos linked:

1: Things went from bad to worse, hence the change to a MAYDAY and landing at Merrill from we have an engine failure and need to return
2: As calm as the transmissions started with the failed engine, and request return in a left turn only, those guys had things under control, and were on top of their game
3: It appears the difference between a plume of fire and a recoverable aircraft was a fine line, and the guys working the problem did one HELL of a job to make it look easy!
4: impressive piloting to set it down fairly smooth, and keep it strait on the runway with almost zero normal controls. I wish I was that good:up

I wonder how long it took for their knees to stop shaking, or start shaking after that. Holy cow, what a job.
 
Based on everything I’ve seen over the last day I don’t think they could maintain altitude. Took the trees off, and the once clip coming over the cub at Merrill was damn close. There’s a lucky cub owner and some damn fine freight pilots.

I’d bet a lesser crew would have been in the streets.


Sent from my iPhone using SuperCub.Org
 
I used to fly dc-3s for a living and have something like 1400 hours in them. I can tell you that they will usually maintain altitude on one engine just fine but not always. In the eight, yes eight, different in-flight shutdowns I had, I had at least 2 where maintaining altitude was less than expected. One was in ice and as we got heavier and poorer aerodynamics, we had to keep adding power to maintain altitude. The other I remember was flying, I think, from anchorage to king salmon. We blew a cylinder off with so much force, it split the cowling. The cowling then proceeded to move forward into the prop with all sorts of drag. We could not maintain altitude and we were mostly empty at the time. Eventually, we got to a point where we were able to stop descent and flew on in to king salmon. Anyway, yeah, most of the time they fly fine on one, but not always.

Wayne
 
Looks like they got into ground effect long before the threshold, and maybe that kept them up. This epitomizes fly it all the way to the ground, and then some.


Sent from my iPhone using SuperCub.Org
 
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