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Dead Stick!

Eddie Foy

MEMBER
South Florida
It finally happened after 45 plus years of flying. Catastrophic failure in a friend's 182. Luckily we were able to put it into KPHK. All is well after I extracted the seat cushion from my clenched cheeks. Engine totally seized on 1/2 mile final.

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Ouch. At least seat cushions are cheap. The engine? Anyone need a anchor. Glade you guys got down alright, engines are just money.
 
Continental has a promotion going where they will take any core towards a factory reman. The engine is a Texas Skyways 250 HP. Not casting any disparage until the post mortem. Just glad we didn't end up in a sugar cane field. The choice, until I spied Pahokee, was Okachobee levee or a cane field. The engine stayed running just long enough to reach the airport. If it had stopped dead we would have been screwed.

I will say an extra prayer tonight!
 
Yikes! Been practicing some dead-sticks and turn-backs lately. You've reinforced the decision to do so.

Good job!
 
Now that I have had time to reflect, I thought of several things we could have done. When the engine started to go South, we were not in range of Pahokee. I immediately started looking for potential landing sites. We were South bound along the Lake Okeechobee Levee. The lake to the right was out. The top of the levee is only about 6-8 ft wide. My first choice was a big sugar cane field to the left. I then spied KPHK at two o'clock. Luckily, the engine held together long enough to put us within gliding distance. I was very busy coaching as we ended up high and had to S turn and slip with 40 flaps.

What else could I have done.
1. Crack door
2. Master off
3. Fuel off.
4. Pray!

Next time I fly I am going to put my 180 above the 6300 ft of grass at X58 and dead stick it in. What is a good power setting to simulate a seized engine other than actually stopping the prop?




Yikes! Been practicing some dead-sticks and turn-backs lately. You've reinforced the decision to do so.

Good job!
 
Or do like Mark Murphy does, and just stop the prop. Seems unnerving until you do it a few times. There is an element of risk. Personally I probably wouldn’t do it alone at this point.


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...Next time I fly I am going to put my 180 above the 6300 ft of grass at X58 and dead stick it in. What is a good power setting to simulate a seized engine other than actually stopping the prop?
Over the years different people have told me different power settings for the simulation. None of them in my view matched the real thing. With your nice long grass strip, just do what you did with your Cub. Go up high, pull the mixture, find the best glide speed for your situation leaving enough excess to make a comfortable flair and just do it. You can always use the starter if you start feeling uncomfortable.
 
Or do like Mark Murphy does, and just stop the prop. Seems unnerving until you do it a few times. There is an element of risk. Personally I probably wouldn’t do it alone at this point.
I used to do it all the time in a J-3 and a C-172 with my father. One time we caught a thermal with the the J-3 and climbed 700 ft with the prop stopped. We then returned for our usual dead-stick landing.

He always said I wasn't allowed to do it in his planes solo until I had a glider rating. I never earned the glider rating and it took so long for me to get my own plane that I no longer feel the confidence I did then. I need to go do some practice on a long runway.

...and for those that haven't tried an air restart of a 65 hp J-3 (no starter), at least with this one it took a dive just about at red-line (122mph?) to get the prop turning again. We rarely did the restart choosing the deadstick landing instead.
 
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Twin landed one day at the airport the engine seized up right over the threshold that Rod was laying on top of the case the rest of the rods not much better


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Another thing Eddie, While the prop is windmilling change the pitch from full low pitch to full high pitch and notice the difference in rate of descent. Then compare that to the prop being stopped altogether. You may need to almost stall the plane to get slow enough to stop the prop.
 
It will be something to do that appeals to the engineer/test pilot in me. I plan to conduct tests in various conditions. 1.Windmilling prop with engine in idle and course pitch. 2. Windmilling prop in fine pitch. 3. Windmilling prop with mixture at cutoff. 4. Prop stopped. All this will be done overhead X58 in case Murphy rears his head. I also will try different glide speeds and note the descent rates.

Another thing Eddie, While the prop is windmilling change the pitch from full low pitch to full high pitch and notice the difference in rate of descent. Then compare that to the prop being stopped altogether. You may need to almost stall the plane to get slow enough to stop the prop.
 
Pete,
Give me your input on a test profile. I will take a second pilot to record data. Hopefully the same one I was flying with in the incident.
 
Wow great job getting on the ground in one piece! I gotta say you’ve been blessed all that time and no engine failures. I’ve had 5, three in single engine. One fire and numerous precautionary returns. That, that doesn’t kill us makes us smarter I always say! I think of those guys on YouTube waterskiing their aircraft and often think what would happen if the time for them is wrong........I guess it’s the old vs bold pilot thing.
 
Pete,
Give me your input on a test profile. I will take a second pilot to record data. Hopefully the same one I was flying with in the incident.
How about something like this on a spread sheet. You could calculate the distance over ground.

Throttle closed, Mixture rich, Propeller low pitch, Flaps up
IAS, Rate of Descent, (or altitude lost /minute, this is more accurate), Distance over ground/minute
100
90
80
70
60
50
Throttle closed, Mixture rich, Propeller high pitch, Flaps up
IAS, Rate of Descent, (or altitude lost /minute), Distance over ground/minute
100
90
80
70
60
50
Throttle closed, Mixture idle cutoff, Propeller low pitch, Flaps up
IAS, Rate of Descent, (or altitude lost /minute), Distance over ground/minute
100
90
80
70
60
50
Throttle closed, Mixture idle cutoff, Propeller high pitch, Flaps up
IAS, Rate of Descent, (or altitude lost /minute), Distance over ground/minute
100
90
80
70
60
50
Propeller stopped, Flaps up
IAS, Rate of Descent, (or altitude lost /minute), Distance over ground/minute
100
90
80
70
60
50
You will likely find that the maximum prop stopped speed is rather low. This varies from plane to plane, different propeller designs and with differing compression ratios

Preferably done in smooth air. The objective would be the best speed for the most distance over ground/minute.
You could do one with the flaps 10 degrees for comparison. I suspect that clean would be optimum.

For recording purposes, you could make two columns for the altitude lost. One for the starting altitude and the the other for the ending altitude for each speed. This may be more convenient for the data taker.

You also may learn that the propeller in high pitch is better. Thereby eliminating the low pitch tests, though completing the entire profile may prove to be eyeopening.

I await the results. This will be interesting. This will also show another advantage to the use of a constant speed prop in any airplane. It will also show the braking action (high drag) of the propeller being in low pitch.
 
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Just a point of view but why is it called a "dead stick"? The stick is the only thing that is working!
 
Shoulda known - that dang guy has too much time on his hands. Good thing too; took him over a day to think of that. :???:
 
In your glide calculations you are assuming the engine is not windmilling against a broken or damaged component which would create more drag. Plenty of dead stick landings aren't because of a fuel or ignition failure, but a broken component. It changes the math slightly, and BTW, don't forget weight at the time of occurrence, density altitude, wind - and as illustrated in the movie, "Miracle on the Hudson," how long it takes to figure out what is/was happening. From my own experiences, sometimes it isn't how far you can go, but how great an angle of descent you can accomplish without generating excess/unwanted airspeed. To rephrase that, I'm saying you might be "right on top of your spot" but too high to go straight in or too low to make a 360. Sometimes you want extra speed for maneuvering - like going around light poles, up over embankments, or over bridge abutments.
 
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Set to do the flight test Thursday. I think it will take several flights. Thursday, we will investigate the glide with the engine shutdown and the prop windmilling and stopped. If you don't hear from me again, you will know why. My co-pilot is the one from the dead stick incident. He is an MD who does base jumping and that crazy stuff. We won't attempt any dead stick landings. Maybe later when I am solo. I think he has a little PTSD.

If I can't dead stick into a 6300 ft runway with a good setup, I will surrender my ticket.
 
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