Emergency Procedure Practice

[MooneyBob]

I was about to ask how often do you practice the Engine out emergency but I will be more general.

What emergency procedures and unusual situations ( including stalls, unusual attitude, spins, take off power loss or whatever) do you practice and how often?

[drake15d]

Every once in a while I will practice the power off 180 that is required for the Comm check ride when I am in the pattern by myself. Good refresher that takes some coordination, visualization, and skill (if there is a nice crosswind).

[Cruiser]

This is an excellent question and one most of us cannot answer satisfactory.

 

We should practice necessary (emergency) procedures on a regular basis. All professional pilots are required to do so. We should be doing basic flight reviews (honest, demanding through reviews not the fly around the patch and land kind) at least ever six months.

 

For most of us, this will be a waste of time because in our lifetime of flying they will never be needed in actual flight. For the one or two of us that will actually benefit from them, the time will be worth its seconds in gold........

[N201MKTurbo]

I have a good friend who is a flight instructor. Every time he does his refresher course he decides to practice on me. He gives me the BFR from hell (even if I'm not due). This includes randomly pulling the power to idle in the pattern and telling me where he wants the wheels to touch down. (I know some of you say to NEVER NEVER NEVER EVER do this, but I think it is fun). He makes me crank my wheels down and land, every stall known to man, chandelles, lazy eights ETC.

 

I don't mind, he enjoys abusing me and I can always use the practice. The last time we did this was in March.

 

FWIW:

 

I passed my ATP 121 written yesterday.

 

Now what am I going to do?

 

Anybody got a twin I can borrow for a couple of weeks?

[jlunseth]

I also think the Power Off 180 is excellent practice, although I only will do it at uncontrolled airports where there is no other traffic.  You don't want any distractions or reasons why you have to cut your base-to-final for traffic or anything of that nature.  When I was getting ready for my commercial I found, though, that any of the power off maneuvers that take some time, like the steep spiral, let the engine cool too much.  If the CHT falls below 250, the max MP that can be applied until the engine warms up again is 20", which rules out a go around if you miss your power off landing.

[N201MKTurbo]

If I know that I'm going to be doing power off practice, I cut the power way back to let the engine cool before pulling the power.

 

The practice isn't quite as good if you know it is coming.....

[DS1980]

every stall known to man,

Have you experienced anything odd about the power on stall in your Mooney?

[N201MKTurbo]

No, not really. It breaks kind of hard.

 

When I first bought this plane it was way out of rig. I did a BFR at night and the power on stall caused a snap roll. I recovered with a split S and told my instructor that we weren’t doing any more stalls. He agreed! I wasn't planning on night aerobatic practice!

[jlunseth]

Its not the cooling that is the problem.  Not talking about shock cooling.  The problem is letting the engine cool down and then powering up quickly, especially in a turbo.  There are a couple of sections of the 231 manual that warn about that.  It appears that oil temp cooling is the primary problem.  The moral of the story is to be careful with the go around, if the engine is allowed to get too cool you cannot apply much power. 

[Andy95W]

 

I passed my ATP 121 written yesterday.

 

Now what am I going to do?

 

Anybody got a twin I can borrow for a couple of weeks?

Take it in your Mooney. If you can make it through your BFR from hell, you won't have a problem.

You can later add the ATP multi and you won't have to worry about your written running out.