DJ
MEMBER
Bolivia
I guess I found one of the rarer ways to wreck a Cub. Thought I would write it up here so others can learn from my mistakes.
It started with a medical emergency call (supposedly life and death) in challenging weather to a difficult airstrip on Thursday, February 3.
I got a late start (10:30 am) due to weather and a late decision to take a doctor on the flight. This always raises risk in mountain flying. The patient was a long-time friend and though I felt that I was handling the emotional pressure fine, I later realized in hindsight that my risk tolerance on this flight was unconsciously much higher than normal, maybe 30% higher. This is very subtle and maybe one of the biggest lessons to remember.
The airstrip is a short one-way at about 11,500 ft msl with a challenging profile. Right at my limits in good weather. Even in dry weather, it has issues with orographic fog during the morning and increased risk of tailwinds on final as the day progresses. These factors, especially when I saw the humidity and winds aloft should have been reasons to abort the mission given the characteristics of the airstrip. It really doesn’t tolerate any extra groundspeed on final. I decided to “try” anyway and gave more thought to the weather than the landing. This desire to “try” and save a life was the way I justified going into conditions that I knew were probably beyond the limit. I even told the doctor there was only a 30% chance we could land, but the farther I went successfully, the more positive I felt.
En-route we were able to follow river valleys west and then north in good visibility, avoiding the numerous rain showers. The conditions were ideal for carb ice and we picked up a bunch in cruise, adding extra stress.
At the destination, the strip had fog and cloud around and above it but after a few minutes of loitering, I saw a clearing trend in the fog and thought I could try an approach. It would have to be a short high base, turning to final at about ¼ mile. I was outside my comfort zone but I rationalized that it was just a practice shot. There is a go around option down to about 1/8 mile final and I let that be my out without actually deciding if this was a landing attempt or not. About then we got some misty rain on the windshield. This was against my rules for a STOL approach. I almost broke off the approach but with the pressure that this might be my only chance I impulsively chose to continue anyway.
The approach was a little rushed with high groundspeeds on the GPS initially. They seemed to be trending downwards and a final check before my committed point showed maybe 4 kts left-quartering on the tail. Everything else looked pretty good and I committed. At the threshold I felt some excess groundspeed and must have also been a few feet high due to my fear of being low with water on the windshield. I floated about 100 feet and touched near the base of the steep section of the strip. This immediately creates a bad situation on this strip due to the length and contour challenges.
The strip is about 450 ft usable with additional 130 ft narrow curving, crowned overrun at the top end with steep drop-offs on both sides. The first ~120 ft is gentle upslope (~8%) then a short 100 ft pitch of 25%, then 10% undulating and becoming narrow towards the top. Off the right side there is a bit of a bowl which sucks the airplane right if care is not taken.
When I hit the steeper slope still fast, the tail dropped from inertia, I went airborne up the steep pitch and landed at the top. I was right of centerline and drifting toward the bowl on the right. Braking on the wet grass was poor. I knew there was room to get stopped if I could keep it on centerline. With brakes alone, that was not happening so I added a bunch of power and rudder to the left and ended the landing run with a low-speed power ground-loop to the left.
We came to a complete stop pointing north, perpendicular to the strip and sitting in the bowl off the right side below the crown and maybe 30 ft off centerline. As the plane stopped, the right, outside, uphill wing dipped momentarily but didn’t touch the ground. Then we started to rebound back to the left. The plane balanced for a moment and rolled super slowly onto the left (downhill) wingtip.
I panicked, thinking the wing would be damaged. In hindsight I am sure it was not. The ground was spongy tundra moss and the tip over was super slow (tire folded). Very anxious to get the plane upright, I shut down and jumped out without setting the brakes. I had tunnel vision at this point from the adrenaline of my bad landing. The plane was more or less perpendicular to the slope in the bowl. I wiggled the strut and noticed the left tire was rolled under and the plane showed no tendency to move so I pulled down to tip it onto both wheels. With the doctor’s help we easily tipped the plane upright. After I let go of the strut to walk back to the cockpit he called out, “watch out, it’s moving!” The tailwheel swiveled and swung downhill aligning the main wheels with the slope which was probably 15%.
I believe the correct action would have been to grab the tail and steer it back perpendicular to the slope. Instead, I went for the brakes. Pushing on the right brake by hand was not quite enough to lock up the wheel. We were getting pulled slowly down towards the steeper terrain behind and below.
From there it was like a nightmare as we steadily lost control. Finally the doctor yelled at me to let go. It was a good thing he did as my mind was 100% focused on the plane. When I jumped clear we were moving downhill at close to a run with zero hope of changing the situation. The horror of helplessly watching and hearing a Cub go off the mountain backwards is hard to compare to anything except maybe watching your pet get hit by a car.
It reached about 30 mph, tail-first. Then the tail fell down a vertical, caved-out part of the hillside and dug in. It reared up vertical, flipped backwards and out of sight into the gully below.
I sat for a moment on the hillside in utter disbelief hoping I would wake up from a nightmare. I told the doctor, “this is the worse day of my life.” The moment passed and I realized we needed our gear from the plane. When I got to the plane there seemed to be no indication of fire so I got access to the cockpit and shut off the master. I also shut off the 406 ELT which had activated. I didn’t want anyone looking for us as we were not lost or injured and I knew the way to shelter and the way out to a road.
Gas was trickling out of wing tank vents so I grabbed the fire extinguisher and my Garmin Inreach (broken) and got a little way away. The doctor soon reached me and since there seemed no immediate risk of fire, we retrieved our backpacks and survival gear out of twisted tail of the plane. We also spent nearly an hour looking for his cell phone which we finally found, also undamaged.
From there we hiked out to the patient’s house in light rain. On the way we found some cell signal but my phone would not connect and had the "emergency calls only" message. Finding no one home at the patients house we assumed the family had evacuated her by land (she ended up being fine). We left our medical gear, gps, headset and handheld radio to save weight for the hike out to a road. About 30 mins farther up the trail I heard a single turbine aircraft approaching. When it circled directly over the wreckage I knew it was one of my friends in the Mano a Mano C-208. There was full cloud cover and light rain so they couldn’t see us or the wreck. I really regretted leaving the handheld behind and thought of returning for it but decided they would only make a couple of circles, giving up the search before I could reach the radio. We hurried up the trail hoping to get cell signal on the ridge. I was wrong. They circled for at least 20 mins directly over the 406 ELT and SPOT tracker coordinates in dangerous conditions trying to get a look at the plane. Once and a while we would see the silhouette of the Caravan through a thin spot in the cloud. I knew these holes made it extra dangerous as they would be motivated to keep trying. Finally, to my relief, they left and shortly after, we reached cell signal and made a call home that we were fine. From the ridge to the next village was an easy hour of downhill and we arrived well before dark and stayed the night with a friend. The next day we hired motorcycles to take us to a main road and arrived home about 42 hours after the incident.
Comments and criticism welcome. You won't hurt my feelings. I want to learn as much as possible from the mistakes I made.
P.S. Steve do I get a flip flop hat for this, even though I wasn't in the plane?
If anyone is cleaning out their hangar, I'll be posting WTB ads for a bunch of stuff for the rebuild effort.
The recovery effort was unnecessarily exciting...another story. To be continued...
It started with a medical emergency call (supposedly life and death) in challenging weather to a difficult airstrip on Thursday, February 3.
I got a late start (10:30 am) due to weather and a late decision to take a doctor on the flight. This always raises risk in mountain flying. The patient was a long-time friend and though I felt that I was handling the emotional pressure fine, I later realized in hindsight that my risk tolerance on this flight was unconsciously much higher than normal, maybe 30% higher. This is very subtle and maybe one of the biggest lessons to remember.
The airstrip is a short one-way at about 11,500 ft msl with a challenging profile. Right at my limits in good weather. Even in dry weather, it has issues with orographic fog during the morning and increased risk of tailwinds on final as the day progresses. These factors, especially when I saw the humidity and winds aloft should have been reasons to abort the mission given the characteristics of the airstrip. It really doesn’t tolerate any extra groundspeed on final. I decided to “try” anyway and gave more thought to the weather than the landing. This desire to “try” and save a life was the way I justified going into conditions that I knew were probably beyond the limit. I even told the doctor there was only a 30% chance we could land, but the farther I went successfully, the more positive I felt.
En-route we were able to follow river valleys west and then north in good visibility, avoiding the numerous rain showers. The conditions were ideal for carb ice and we picked up a bunch in cruise, adding extra stress.
At the destination, the strip had fog and cloud around and above it but after a few minutes of loitering, I saw a clearing trend in the fog and thought I could try an approach. It would have to be a short high base, turning to final at about ¼ mile. I was outside my comfort zone but I rationalized that it was just a practice shot. There is a go around option down to about 1/8 mile final and I let that be my out without actually deciding if this was a landing attempt or not. About then we got some misty rain on the windshield. This was against my rules for a STOL approach. I almost broke off the approach but with the pressure that this might be my only chance I impulsively chose to continue anyway.
The approach was a little rushed with high groundspeeds on the GPS initially. They seemed to be trending downwards and a final check before my committed point showed maybe 4 kts left-quartering on the tail. Everything else looked pretty good and I committed. At the threshold I felt some excess groundspeed and must have also been a few feet high due to my fear of being low with water on the windshield. I floated about 100 feet and touched near the base of the steep section of the strip. This immediately creates a bad situation on this strip due to the length and contour challenges.
The strip is about 450 ft usable with additional 130 ft narrow curving, crowned overrun at the top end with steep drop-offs on both sides. The first ~120 ft is gentle upslope (~8%) then a short 100 ft pitch of 25%, then 10% undulating and becoming narrow towards the top. Off the right side there is a bit of a bowl which sucks the airplane right if care is not taken.
When I hit the steeper slope still fast, the tail dropped from inertia, I went airborne up the steep pitch and landed at the top. I was right of centerline and drifting toward the bowl on the right. Braking on the wet grass was poor. I knew there was room to get stopped if I could keep it on centerline. With brakes alone, that was not happening so I added a bunch of power and rudder to the left and ended the landing run with a low-speed power ground-loop to the left.
We came to a complete stop pointing north, perpendicular to the strip and sitting in the bowl off the right side below the crown and maybe 30 ft off centerline. As the plane stopped, the right, outside, uphill wing dipped momentarily but didn’t touch the ground. Then we started to rebound back to the left. The plane balanced for a moment and rolled super slowly onto the left (downhill) wingtip.
I panicked, thinking the wing would be damaged. In hindsight I am sure it was not. The ground was spongy tundra moss and the tip over was super slow (tire folded). Very anxious to get the plane upright, I shut down and jumped out without setting the brakes. I had tunnel vision at this point from the adrenaline of my bad landing. The plane was more or less perpendicular to the slope in the bowl. I wiggled the strut and noticed the left tire was rolled under and the plane showed no tendency to move so I pulled down to tip it onto both wheels. With the doctor’s help we easily tipped the plane upright. After I let go of the strut to walk back to the cockpit he called out, “watch out, it’s moving!” The tailwheel swiveled and swung downhill aligning the main wheels with the slope which was probably 15%.
I believe the correct action would have been to grab the tail and steer it back perpendicular to the slope. Instead, I went for the brakes. Pushing on the right brake by hand was not quite enough to lock up the wheel. We were getting pulled slowly down towards the steeper terrain behind and below.
From there it was like a nightmare as we steadily lost control. Finally the doctor yelled at me to let go. It was a good thing he did as my mind was 100% focused on the plane. When I jumped clear we were moving downhill at close to a run with zero hope of changing the situation. The horror of helplessly watching and hearing a Cub go off the mountain backwards is hard to compare to anything except maybe watching your pet get hit by a car.
It reached about 30 mph, tail-first. Then the tail fell down a vertical, caved-out part of the hillside and dug in. It reared up vertical, flipped backwards and out of sight into the gully below.
I sat for a moment on the hillside in utter disbelief hoping I would wake up from a nightmare. I told the doctor, “this is the worse day of my life.” The moment passed and I realized we needed our gear from the plane. When I got to the plane there seemed to be no indication of fire so I got access to the cockpit and shut off the master. I also shut off the 406 ELT which had activated. I didn’t want anyone looking for us as we were not lost or injured and I knew the way to shelter and the way out to a road.
Gas was trickling out of wing tank vents so I grabbed the fire extinguisher and my Garmin Inreach (broken) and got a little way away. The doctor soon reached me and since there seemed no immediate risk of fire, we retrieved our backpacks and survival gear out of twisted tail of the plane. We also spent nearly an hour looking for his cell phone which we finally found, also undamaged.
From there we hiked out to the patient’s house in light rain. On the way we found some cell signal but my phone would not connect and had the "emergency calls only" message. Finding no one home at the patients house we assumed the family had evacuated her by land (she ended up being fine). We left our medical gear, gps, headset and handheld radio to save weight for the hike out to a road. About 30 mins farther up the trail I heard a single turbine aircraft approaching. When it circled directly over the wreckage I knew it was one of my friends in the Mano a Mano C-208. There was full cloud cover and light rain so they couldn’t see us or the wreck. I really regretted leaving the handheld behind and thought of returning for it but decided they would only make a couple of circles, giving up the search before I could reach the radio. We hurried up the trail hoping to get cell signal on the ridge. I was wrong. They circled for at least 20 mins directly over the 406 ELT and SPOT tracker coordinates in dangerous conditions trying to get a look at the plane. Once and a while we would see the silhouette of the Caravan through a thin spot in the cloud. I knew these holes made it extra dangerous as they would be motivated to keep trying. Finally, to my relief, they left and shortly after, we reached cell signal and made a call home that we were fine. From the ridge to the next village was an easy hour of downhill and we arrived well before dark and stayed the night with a friend. The next day we hired motorcycles to take us to a main road and arrived home about 42 hours after the incident.
Comments and criticism welcome. You won't hurt my feelings. I want to learn as much as possible from the mistakes I made.
P.S. Steve do I get a flip flop hat for this, even though I wasn't in the plane?
If anyone is cleaning out their hangar, I'll be posting WTB ads for a bunch of stuff for the rebuild effort.
The recovery effort was unnecessarily exciting...another story. To be continued...
