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mooney mishap at Granby, Co

peevee

By peevee
in Miscellaneous Aviation Talk

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peevee Grand Master

peevee

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5 minutes ago, gsxrpilot said:

Seems like you'd almost have to add power to run off the end of that one.  But of course, it all depends on how much of that completely useless commodity, runway behind, there is when you touch down.

only goofy thing about it is right pattern to 27, if you didn't notice that on the chart and flew LP to 27 there's a big hill in the way, perhaps he flew left traffic and ended up high/fast/pushed the nose over and bounced. Never know but they mentioned runway damage. Prop strike maybe?

What's funny about GNB is it's about 38NM from my home airport but about a 3 hour drive around the rocks to get there. It blows people's minds when you take them there for breakfast and back in an hour.

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kortopates Grand Master

kortopates

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1 hour ago, MB65E said:

Only 2 blades were bent. Strange. 

-Matt

Except for reading runway damage above, looking at the prop I wondered if it was a power off landing and the pilot miss-judged it in the dark or twilight. 

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AndyFromCB Veteran

AndyFromCB

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1 hour ago, peevee said:

only goofy thing about it is right pattern to 27, if you didn't notice that on the chart and flew LP to 27 there's a big hill in the way, perhaps he flew left traffic and ended up high/fast/pushed the nose over and bounced. Never know but they mentioned runway damage. Prop strike maybe?

What's funny about GNB is it's about 38NM from my home airport but about a 3 hour drive around the rocks to get there. It blows people's minds when you take them there for breakfast and back in an hour.

Where do you got for breakfast? Ever go to Fat Cat Cafe in Grand Lake. My favorite weekend place, she seriously bakes like 30 pies for the buffet the night before.

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peevee Grand Master

peevee

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51 minutes ago, AndyFromCB said:

Where do you got for breakfast? Ever go to Fat Cat Cafe in Grand Lake. My favorite weekend place, she seriously bakes like 30 pies for the buffet the night before.

Never been to fat cat, I always take the beat up loaner SUV to lava java cafe. It's a pretty good drive out to grand lake from the airport, and I like lava java for no real reason. The food isn't anything special.

Reminds me I haven't had the new plane up there yet. I'll have to fix that ASAP.

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midlifeflyer Grand Master

midlifeflyer

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On 5/15/2017 at 5:49 PM, EricJ said:

I only just noticed that the field elevation there is 8207 ft.   May be a contributing factor to issues there sometimes.

Like many airports in the mountains, Granby has some challenges, including rapidly riding terrain to the east.  But it's also a very average airport for that area and not especially difficult. A pilot from Wyoming shouldn't have any special difficulty, so will have to see what the NTSB ultimately has to say. Might just be your typical Mooney "forced the landing" accident rather than anything having to do with the airport,

Edited by midlifeflyer
Not knowing my Left from mybright
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midlifeflyer Grand Master

midlifeflyer

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3 hours ago, peevee said:

I feel like terrain at gnb is closer departing east. There used to be a sign advising pilots to depart west

Either way in normal conditions that airport poses no challenge to a turbo Mooney.

You are right. It's been a few years and I never had a good sense of direction :) There's even a note in the Chart Supplement.

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MyNameIsNobody Grand Master

MyNameIsNobody

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I like the optimism.  This was a horrible day for what sounds like a relatively new owner.  I look forward to hearing what happened on this one.  I feel badly for the pilot.  Bending such a beautiful plane, if it was pilot induced, is a feeling that is NOT fun.

Been there.  Done that.  (Bird on the belly).  Hope it flys again and is better than pre-incident.  I to am pleased there were no human physical injuries.  Mental anguish?  That is another area entirely.

Edited by MyNameIsNobody
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kortopates Grand Master

kortopates

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And now for the full story, the NTSB final report is out. Kathryn's website includes some picture and report here http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2018/08/mooney-m20tn-acclaim-n9306-accident.html

Excerpts in the report:

The pilot reported that during landing, the airplane bounced and that he added engine power to abort the landing but the engine lost all power. He stated that the propeller was still windmilling and he thought the power loss was due to the high altitude and full rich mixture used on approach. He leaned the fuel mixture thinking that the engine would restart but when it didn't, he applied brakes and attempted to stop on the remaining runway. The airplane overran the end of the runway and was damaged.

The pilot had recently purchased and received flight training in the accident airplane during the previous 2 days. He said that he knew he would be operating the airplane from high altitude airports, including GNB (elevation 8,207 ft), and questioned his flight instructor regarding leaning procedures during approach at high altitude airports. He said that the flight instructor told him to adhere to the procedures in the Pilot's Operating Handbook, which instruct pilots to apply full rich mixture on final approach. The pilot reported that he did so on the accident landing approach, but in retrospect believed that the full rich mixture may have created a situation where the engine was not able to respond to throttle input with the combined high density altitude (8,441 ft), and full rich mixture.

A representative of the airplane manufacturer was queried about the possibility of the engine not responding to throttle input, or the spark plugs fouling, during high altitude approaches due to full rich mixture. The manufacturer did not believe this was possible if the fuel control adjustments were properly set up.

---------------------------------------

We've talked about mixture on final many times here with a number of people saying they need to avoid going full rich mixture because of the very thing this pilot confronted. That is fine for those of you experienced enough and well practiced to go rich on the go. But I've also tried to make the point in a few of these discussions that if one really needs to do this that this means the fuel system is not set up properly with respect to the idle mixture adjustment and should be addressed. Although the NTSB didn't get to follow through and verify this, I bet they would have found an overly rich idle mixture is what got this pilot into trouble.

It also seems that the majority of new Mooney acquisitions need to have their fuel setup gone through immediately after purchase. Prior owners where overly compensating for an out of spec fuel set up for some time whether it be aggressively leaning at idle for an overly rich mixture or avoiding full power climb with insufficient max fuel FF.

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