Midflight Engine Failure
So I just finished a flight on X-Plane 11 practising stalls / general flying skill like maintaining constant bank angle by reference to the horizon. I flew out of KFAR (Fargo Hector International) and was flying back towards the airport on long final for runway 13. All of a sudden, my engine quits.
Now this is pretty funny because just before this I was brushing up a bit on emergency procedures and the specific checklists listed in the Cessna 172 POH, and I was wondering if I would ever actually really practice them. So there I was, probably about 1000ft AGL with no way to make it to the airport (I was then under the glideslope according to the PAPI).
The way to deal with in-flight engine failures is ABC:
A - Airspeed (trim for best glide speed)
B - Best field (look for a suitable place to land)
C - Checklist (attempt to restart the engine / perform any other related checklists)
I knew that looking for a best field would be the best thing to do, more so than figuring out the problem due to the limited amount of time I still had in the air, and I tried to decide where I should put the plane down. But I forgot about the airspeed! I forgot to fly the plane. So there's a good lesson there.
Having pointed my plane towards the field I had picked, I turned my attention to trying to re-start the engine, following the checklist in the POH. I think it really only works if your engine settings are wrong, or your primary fuel pump is faulty (since turning on the auxiliary fuel pump is a part of the checklist). I ran through it just once before I decided I didn't have enough time, and there was no point doing it again, because my oil pressure was 0 and I don't think there was anything I could have done about that (not that we have an auxiliary oil pump or anything like that).
Landing was harder than I would have liked, and I landed perpendicular to the direction of till of the land. I started pulling up several hundred feet above the ground (I think subconsciously trying to slow the rate of descent). What I should have done was allow the aircraft to maintain some margin of airspeed which I could have used to flare closer to the field. Instead I landed on the field on the verge of stalling. In real life I think I would have been pretty badly banged up, but in the simulator it was a pretty smooth landing, with a really quick stop due to the higher friction values.
This was my first flight after updating X-Plane to 11.30 and the walkaround function didn't seem to work (I'm flying the REP Cessna 172 by SimCoders). I decided to carry on anyway and proceeded to do my pre-flight by really just panning around the exterior of the aircraft. This of course didn't allow me to check the amount of oil I had. I'm wondering if that's what caused the loss of oil pressure (insufficient oil) and subsequent engine failure. I think it might have had something to do with the weather as well, because I similarly had oil pressure drop to 0 other times trying to start up the engine in really cold weather.
Now this is pretty funny because just before this I was brushing up a bit on emergency procedures and the specific checklists listed in the Cessna 172 POH, and I was wondering if I would ever actually really practice them. So there I was, probably about 1000ft AGL with no way to make it to the airport (I was then under the glideslope according to the PAPI).
The way to deal with in-flight engine failures is ABC:
A - Airspeed (trim for best glide speed)
B - Best field (look for a suitable place to land)
C - Checklist (attempt to restart the engine / perform any other related checklists)
I knew that looking for a best field would be the best thing to do, more so than figuring out the problem due to the limited amount of time I still had in the air, and I tried to decide where I should put the plane down. But I forgot about the airspeed! I forgot to fly the plane. So there's a good lesson there.
Having pointed my plane towards the field I had picked, I turned my attention to trying to re-start the engine, following the checklist in the POH. I think it really only works if your engine settings are wrong, or your primary fuel pump is faulty (since turning on the auxiliary fuel pump is a part of the checklist). I ran through it just once before I decided I didn't have enough time, and there was no point doing it again, because my oil pressure was 0 and I don't think there was anything I could have done about that (not that we have an auxiliary oil pump or anything like that).
Landing was harder than I would have liked, and I landed perpendicular to the direction of till of the land. I started pulling up several hundred feet above the ground (I think subconsciously trying to slow the rate of descent). What I should have done was allow the aircraft to maintain some margin of airspeed which I could have used to flare closer to the field. Instead I landed on the field on the verge of stalling. In real life I think I would have been pretty badly banged up, but in the simulator it was a pretty smooth landing, with a really quick stop due to the higher friction values.
This was my first flight after updating X-Plane to 11.30 and the walkaround function didn't seem to work (I'm flying the REP Cessna 172 by SimCoders). I decided to carry on anyway and proceeded to do my pre-flight by really just panning around the exterior of the aircraft. This of course didn't allow me to check the amount of oil I had. I'm wondering if that's what caused the loss of oil pressure (insufficient oil) and subsequent engine failure. I think it might have had something to do with the weather as well, because I similarly had oil pressure drop to 0 other times trying to start up the engine in really cold weather.
Comments
Post a Comment