Holy Yikes!

[aviatoreb]

1 hour ago, Yooper Rocketman said:

Great job Erik.   Welcome to the club.  Mine ended up being a turbo.  I can surely relate to the adrenaline rush after the event.  Probably going on the whole time but too busy to notice until out of the plane and the event is over.

Tom

Oh boy?! Not a club I was wanting to join but hey here’s a toast to those who did it and to those I hope who won’t need to.

[bonal]

Just to add to everyone's comments, what a great job you did to fly the plane and get to a safe outcome. Sorry TV news types no story here accept for us aviators that love a happy ending.  Good luck on repairs, nice job pilot.

[bradp]

Erik Fantastic news on the safe recovery. I live about two miles from IGX. Sent a PM. 

Brad 

[BradB]

59 minutes ago, aviatoreb said:

Wow a jet burner?!! What are you doing fri or sat? :-)

Sorry, I’m in Boston Friday to Sunday with my daughter.  I have to be there Friday by 2:30 to pick her up from school.  If you ever want to just go for a ride, I’d be happy to swing by on one of my Boston treks.   But, as @Yooper Rocketman indicated, it could be a very expensive mistake on your part.   

Safe travels,

Brad

[carqwik]

Wow...that's some story you never really want to relive!  Definitely a concern for us out west where runways can be far and few between...and the desert isn't flat! 

Question though...how many hours on the turbo?  What was the point of failure? Bearings seized? 

[DanM20C]

Was the loss of oil pressure the cause or effect of the turbo failure? 

Cheers, 

Dan

[aviatoreb]

5 hours ago, BradB said:

Sorry, I’m in Boston Friday to Sunday with my daughter.  I have to be there Friday by 2:30 to pick her up from school.  If you ever want to just go for a ride, I’d be happy to swing by on one of my Boston treks.   But, as @Yooper Rocketman indicated, it could be a very expensive mistake on your part.   

Safe travels,

Brad

Hi Brad, ...Im not sure I can afford to take you up on that most generous offer for a ride someday!  But I am not sure if I am strong enough of will to turn you down.  :-?

[aviatoreb]

13 hours ago, skyflyer8 said:

It definitely wasn’t a last minute evasive maneuver, just a normal turn. ATC turned us, pointing out the traffic and saying “I don’t know what he’s doing,” but two seconds later he did know what you were doing, because you declared the emergency. Nope I’m not a Mooney pilot but am a flight instructor who knows someone who just purchased a Mooney. Looked your N-number up to find the airplane owner and a Google search pointed me in this direction. Creepy, yes but not as creepy as seeing your plane descending under us and having that helpless feeling wondering if you made it! I’m in PA for a few more hours sending you a virtual wave!

Well thank you for checking in with me and worrying for me. Truth is I would have felt the same.  Its heart warming.  I am sorry to have created such a scary scene.

Hey since you saw me - I have a question - I burned up 5 qts of oil so it seems in about 15 minutes - it all burned up in the exhaust and made a bunch of black soot.  Did you see maybe a stream of black trailing smoke?

[aviatoreb]

9 hours ago, Skates97 said:

This is just another tangent to the great outcome of Erik's flight, the camaraderie shared among not only those who fly but those at ATC watching out for them as well as the people on the ground associated with them.

• Airport manager who dropped what he was doing to return to the airport.
• ATC making a follow up phone call to check up on him.
• A pilot who heard, the situation on the radio and searched online to find that all was well.

I remember as a kid living on the Air Force Academy and singing the Air Force Song at the top of my 5-7yo voice. From the 3rd verse:

"Here's a toast to the host
Of those who love the vastness of the sky,
To a friend we send a message of his brother men who fly."

So well said.  It was heart warming all the outreach here, at the airport with everyone helping, the fire brigade, the ATC calling me on the phone, the airline pilot digging late at night to find out what happened....

[aviatoreb]

5 hours ago, bradp said:

Erik Fantastic news on the safe recovery. I live about two miles from IGX. Sent a PM. 

Brad 

Hi Brad, After a loooong day at the airport trying to sort out a fix, and Seth came to lend moral support - and as it turns out I somehow forgot to eat or drink all day I was so intense in the problem of trying to help diagnose the problem and order parts,...I was totally wiped out by 5 or so and decided I would rather go home North than to work South.  I cancelled my business trip to UNC, rather postponed it for about a week - I will be down soon - before that airport closes!  See you then?

Thanks all. Im home!!

[aviatoreb]

4 hours ago, carqwik said:

Wow...that's some story you never really want to relive!  Definitely a concern for us out west where runways can be far and few between...and the desert isn't flat! 

Question though...how many hours on the turbo?  What was the point of failure? Bearings seized? 

800 hours - after talking to people today - that was probably too long.  I would love to hear the colllective wisdom - are folks premptively replacing them on hours?  If so at how many hours?

I have flown hostile territory by either staying very high, or following roads.  Yesterday that strategy was pretty much validated.  One could follow roads even in the west.

[Jim Peace]

1 minute ago, aviatoreb said:

I have flown hostile territory by either staying very high, or following roads. 

Also sticking with daytime flights....curious how you feel this would have ended had it been dark.

[N601RX]

Glad you are ok. In reading your description of what happened it seems like the oil pressure was at zero or near zero for some amount of time.  You may want to get your engine monitor data and verify how low it went and for how long. If it really went to zero for any length of time you may have other very serious damage. 

Edited May 2, 2018 by N601RX

[aviatoreb]

20 minutes ago, Jim Peace said:

Also sticking with daytime flights....curious how you feel this would have ended had it been dark.

I do make a point of sticking with daylight flights.  And also my IFR flights are always in only MVFR conditions below - with he idea of having a chance to spot a landing site if needed.

To your specific question - Not having looked this up - I think I could've landed on a lit runway. assuming this one has lights - and anyway lit runway can be ok to find - but it would have definitely increased the difficulty a bit.  But without sunlight it mostly erases the backup plan of an off field landing in a nice soft field.  I was in range of Haggerstown, and in lights out, I should have chosen that airport instead.

[DonMuncy]

Great job Erik.

In  no way is this accusatory, but do you fly in such a manner that you have to watch out for your TIT maximums. Are Rockets known for higher TITs than ordinary Ks. I would suppose that if your inlet temperatures were consistently up around 1600 dF, a TC could have a shorter life than if you putter down in the lower altitudes with lower power settings. I don't think I have ever seen my TITs approach 1600.

[DXB]

Wow what a thread! I'm so glad it's one of the cool ones and not one of the sad ones.  Sorry I missed it, or I would have offered my congratulations sooner to Erik for a job well done! 

[carusoam]

Look up turbo OH...  There has been a discussion around here before...

The last one I recall was our Turbo guy out in CO?  He bought into TN’d Cirrus...  (See if @peevee has some insight)

The oil seals have a tendency to wear out.  Not catastrophically as in this case...

quarts of oil leaving through the hot exhaust...  that could leave a smoke show. Depending on how much free O2 was available in the exhaust, it could have burned up quite a bit...  were you LOP at the time?  Excess O2 in the exhaust stream would be normal...

It would be interesting to review the engine drawing for the oil system... is there a provision for a turbo failure to protect the engine from running out of oil completely? (Probably wishful thinking on my part)

It will be interesting to see how damaged the turbo really is... If it got bogged down in its own crusting oil, or it ran out of oil and ceased...

 

i had difficulty searching for both words... turbo + failure...  I got thousands of turbo and thousands of failure...

 

I did come across one thread recently...

 

The other reference I had was when reman of a turbo engine... the turbo gets OHd as well... if desired...

An interesting resource we can invite to the discussion... @tomgo2 a new MSer with a turbo business supporting Mooney TNs...

Best regards,

-a-

 

[Warren]

1 hour ago, DonMuncy said:

Great job Erik.

In  no way is this accusatory, but do you fly in such a manner that you have to watch out for your TIT maximums. Are Rockets known for higher TITs than ordinary Ks. I would suppose that if your inlet temperatures were consistently up around 1600 dF, a TC could have a shorter life than if you putter down in the lower altitudes with lower power settings. I don't think I have ever seen my TITs approach 1600.

@DonMuncy Do you run ROP or LOP?  I run LOP and am almost always limited by TIT.  Generally cylinder temps are 330-360 but EGT is approx. 1550 and TIT gets to 1650 as I approach 75%.  I usually have to back off a little to keep TIT 1630 or lower with a minimal speed impact.  Note:  I do have a JPI as the primary, and only TIT.  In the discussions it seems they indicate higher temps than the factory gage.

[skyflyer8]

4 hours ago, aviatoreb said:

Did you see maybe a stream of black trailing smoke?

No, I couldn’t see any. That’s the first thing I said to my captain as we flew past you. In hindsight maybe I should have said that to ATC as well so you could hear it too and be reassured.

[PTK]

So happy you are well Erik. Very well done. Hope your engine is ok and the issue is an easy one to resolve.

[DualRatedFlyer]

10 hours ago, aviatoreb said:

I do make a point of sticking with daylight flights.  And also my IFR flights are always in only MVFR conditions below - with he idea of having a chance to spot a landing site if needed.

To your specific question - Not having looked this up - I think I could've landed on a lit runway. assuming this one has lights - and anyway lit runway can be ok to find - but it would have definitely increased the difficulty a bit.  But without sunlight it mostly erases the backup plan of an off field landing in a nice soft field.  I was in range of Haggerstown, and in lights out, I should have chosen that airport instead.

For what its worth, I recently started loading (cacheing) satellite imagery in Foreflight on my night XCs to better my odds of finding a field to put her down in the event of an engine failure outside of glide range to a runway.  The only downside is that if your route changes too much from your planned route then you wont have cached that imagery.   

[aviatoreb]

6 hours ago, skyflyer8 said:

No, I couldn’t see any. That’s the first thing I said to my captain as we flew past you. In hindsight maybe I should have said that to ATC as well so you could hear it too and be reassured.

Huh - its a mystery where all that oil went. Well the tail pipe is just coked in soot so it clearly burned in the exhaust system but I would have guessed a plume of trailing smoke.  But then again the belly of my plane is still clean - which is a nice time saver since its sporting a new paint job...that yay...is not scratched at all despite the excitement.

No worry in the least - I was plenty busy handling my problems and by descending through 12k maybe I had some (minor) smoke in the cockpit and smell of burning, oil as it turned out but I was not sure what it was during flight, so I was handling it as if I had an inflight fire no matter if I knew if I was trailing smoke or not. 

I am still just really touched and pleased to know you stayed up late that night looking for my outcome and I am tickled to tell you outcome was great!

[gsxrpilot]

7 hours ago, Warren said:

@DonMuncy Do you run ROP or LOP?  I run LOP and am almost always limited by TIT.  Generally cylinder temps are 330-360 but EGT is approx. 1550 and TIT gets to 1650 as I approach 75%.  I usually have to back off a little to keep TIT 1630 or lower with a minimal speed impact.  Note:  I do have a JPI as the primary, and only TIT.  In the discussions it seems they indicate higher temps than the factory gage.

I run my 252 LOP regularly, but never at more than 65% power. Consequently I'm never running with TIT's in the 1600's. 

[aviatoreb]

35 minutes ago, DualRatedFlyer said:

For what its worth, I recently started loading (cacheing) satellite imagery in Foreflight on my night XCs to better my odds of finding a field to put her down in the event of an engine failure outside of glide range to a runway.  The only downside is that if your route changes too much from your planned route then you wont have cached that imagery.   

I have thought about if I were to get into night flying, getting one of those night vision systems, either in the panel, or even hunter's night vision googles - but there's threads about that here, and then some actual military trained pilots have come on and pointed out that using night vision equipment in aviation is a skill set one must train for and maintain currency just like any of the other myriad of aviation skills.  Still I figure if I were flying night I would want night vision.

[carusoam]

Erik,  how LOP were you running?

Could be enough to oxidize a single drip at a time...

Burning the drips, would make it a real challenge to have smoke be seen from afar...

I have studied 100LL drips before... they add up to gallons pretty quickly...over not much time...

Just some added PP thoughts, not a mechanic...

Best regards,

-a-