Get the nose down

gallois wrote:

If the EFATO is rare then the EFATO at Vx is even rarer.

Happily, an EFATO at Vx is impossible if you are already climbing at Vy, so with good pilot habits, that risk is eliminated. For those situations where a Vx departure is a requirement, the pilot must recognize that a safe landing following an EFATO may not be possible.

At attitudes required for Vx in some types, interruption of fuel flow with low fuel quantity is a greater risk. I have simulated this during testing.

gallois wrote:

Depending on height AGL you only have one choice and that is to get the nose down to your normal approach speed and land as normally as the terrain and obstacles will allow.

Of course get the nose down, and yes, your only choice is to land ahead. But, getting the nose down and achieving your normal approach speed is probably very difficult in the first few hundred feet up. You’d have to accelerate in the glide, and you didn’t have the altitude to give up to do that. Using the 182 amphibian as an example, The POH Vx is 57 KIAS. During testing, I determined the safe gliding speed for a power off approach and landing to be 80 KIAS, with 75 KIAS being on the scary slow side. So if you’re climbing at 57 and it quits, you have to get the nose down, and accelerate to 80 before you flare. Accelerating a plane 23 knots power off takes a lot of altitude! I was demonstrating exactly this to another pilot two weeks ago in a 185 amphib, and the numbers are real!

Airborne_Again wrote:

Pilot_DAR was talking about the amount of energy needed to arrest the descent during the flare.

What I was thinking about was to be aware that (kinetic) energy is relative to the air mass you are flying in. When there are large gradients in wind speed, as it usually is near the ground and especially if there are some terrain, simply lowering the nose might not be enough. IAS is king Getting the nose down is essential of course, but near the ground, in a strong headwind, you must lower it more/longer (and lose more height) to get the wanted IAS than you can do with zero wind. You will get the same effect when you are low and turning into a headwind in a descent at best L/D (and constant AoA). If you got say 5 knots surplus speed, you may end up losing all of it before finishing the turn. Turning into a tailwind in a descent close to the ground, and you will gain IAS (but also ground speed, so it’s not such a good idea after all )

I think most people are aware that at a constant wind speed, turning into or out of a tail wind/head wind makes no difference because the aircraft moves with that constant wind. With wind gradients, this is no longer true at all. Of little importance when flying a B-737 I guess, but very important training STOL in a STOL aircraft

@LeSving the downwind turn is one of the great mis conceptions in aviation. Wind shear and gusts will have an effect on IAS but in a steady air stream the aircraft doesn’t ‘know’ that it’s ground speed is changing, and aerodynamically there is no effect while turning.

LeSving wrote:

Getting the nose down is essential of course, but near the ground, in a strong headwind, you must lower it more/longer (and lose more height) to get the wanted IAS than you can do with zero wind.

I think you mean that in a headwind with a strong wind gradient your head wind is de creasing and therefore you need to lower the nose to maintain a descent profile as ground speed increases (5 x ground speed giving you a 3 degree slope ROD)

Some years ago while I was a student pilot, I experimented with MS Flight Simulator (so take the results with a grain of salt of course…) – using the default C182, an EFATO at Vy and an EFATO at Vx, happening suddenly at 50 feet with the customary “4 second startle factor”.

Vy was quite recoverable, even with a delayed reaction. But at Vx, even an instant reaction resulted in the simulator detecting it as a crash – it seemed that there was just never enough energy starting from Vx at 50 feet to sufficiently arrest the descent at the end.

(I’ve actually had an EFATO at 50 feet, an intake valve stuck in my Cessna 140, but having 4000’ of runway remaining, and climbing away at Vy, it was a non-event – relax the backpressure, throttle to idle (so as to make sure the engine didn’t burst into life again at an awkward moment) and land on the remaining runway).

Fatal EFATO with two instructors. Interesting comment on the analysis that two instructors increased the risk score in the USAF flight risk assessment pre flight form.

eurogaguest1980 wrote:

I’ll bet they didn’t brief the takeoff

Not very many private pilots do in my experience. Those who think that they’ll pull off an EFATO every time are deluded, so it’s worth trying to mitigate risks as much as possible IMO.

Example, if I’m flying at a new airfield, I spend 10 seconds looking at what’s off the end of the runway so I know which way to turn in the event of EFATO.

Then a briefing before takeoff…

“Taking off runway 20, wind is from the left, rotating at 70kts, gear up straight away then accelerate to 90kts before climbing. Engine failure below 500ft I will turn right, after 1000ft I can consider a turn back…”

Or, for runway 02 at my home airport I know there are loads of fields off the end of the runway so I say “engine failure before 1000ft, pick a field straight ahead”. I’d rather bend the plane landing in a field than die trying to turn back at low altitude, but that’s another discussion.

For me anyway it helps to have that in my head. If it means I turn in the right direction when the engine goes pop, it’s worth doing.

Gallois wrote:

In the French PPL handbook it recommends “attitude, power, climb to safe altitude”
The book explains that the reason for this is really a matter of inertia. In a normal light aircraft and starting the go around at low height, adding power could well take you into the ground before the climb can actually start.

We actually covered this during the PPL, where the instructor said something like, “there’s no real difference in a Robin, but if you fly a T-tail later it will be important, so doing it this way you’ll have the right reflex”.
It’s now later, and I do fly a T-tail, so I’m going to do some homework and compare the methods from a safe height.

IO390 wrote:

Example, if I’m flying at a new airfield, I spend 10 seconds looking at what’s off the end of the runway so I know which way to turn in the event of EFATO.

On my PPL exam, before landing, I said to the examiner, “there’s trees to the left, so if we have an engine failure on takeoff later, we have to turn right”. This completely blew him away

The FFA published something in Summer 2020 which said that the success rate in cases of partial power loss was dramatically lower than that of total engine failures. Food for thought. If I can find it again I’ll post the actual statistics. Partial power loss:

• Isn’t specifically trained the same way the engine failure is
• Is ambiguous when it comes to decision-making i.e. not normal flight, but not immediately an emergency
• The pilot may try to avoid a forced landing, which in reality might be the best option
• The flight may be continued to a point where a total engine failure is not recoverable (e.g. go-around at very low level if the engine recovers)
• Greater likelihood of distraction and mistakes (an example was a stall on downwind, which should have been a straightforward landing as the power setting was the same)

29 May as I returned to Inverness I heard a voice and registration I knew say he was diverting due to engine problem. Then that he wouldn’t make it. Then that prop had stopped, at 3,000’ and he was looking for a field near Invermorriston. No Mayday. Very calm voice. Inverness had the rescue helicopter on the way very quickly. He made a no-damage landing in a field in a narrow valley and the Jodel was dismantled and taken home.