2019 Acclaim Ultra down at DVT

[steingar]

One thing I really like about Fore Flight is it has a glide advisor.  I set mine very conservatively, but I can tell at a glance if there are fields within gliding distance.

[Davidv]

Yes, I actually didn't know about this feature until just recently when I saw it on someone else's screen but now I leave it on all the time.  You can tell that it takes into consideration topography and wind direction judging by the radius it paints.  However, I'm not sure how conservative it is since it uses my book glide ratio.  Have you measured the circle yourself to see if it's adding a buffer?  I've thought about the same thing so interested to hear your thoughts.

[steingar]

22 minutes ago, Davidv said:

Yes, I actually didn't know about this feature until just recently when I saw it on someone else's screen but now I leave it on all the time.  You can tell that it takes into consideration topography and wind direction judging by the radius it paints.  However, I'm not sure how conservative it is since it uses my book glide ratio.  Have you measured the circle yourself to see if it's adding a buffer?  I've thought about the same thing so interested to hear your thoughts.

I looked at the Mooney's numbers and subtracted 10%, so it is conservative.

[PTK]

First and foremost my thoughts and prayers are with our fellow Mooney pilot. Wishing him a speedy recovery.  

As far as learning from this unfortunate accident the lesson for me is: don’t be picky! If I declare an engine emx at 7500 msl and fortunate enough to have ATC  give me the option of a runway practically right under my nose, as P48 was to him, I will count my blessings and I’m going for it. I’m in no position to be picky.  

[Davidv]

15 minutes ago, steingar said:

I looked at the Mooney's numbers and subtracted 10%, so it is conservative.

Gotcha, I didn't realize you could change it to just now (as it had auto loaded from the M20M performance profile), I updated mine to be slightly more conservative as well.

[Vance Harral]

46 minutes ago, Davidv said:

Yes, I actually didn't know about this feature until just recently when I saw it on someone else's screen but now I leave it on all the time.  You can tell that it takes into consideration topography and wind direction judging by the radius it paints.

It's definitely beneficial and I'm not knocking it.  That said, while I trust its terrain modeling pretty well, I'm less trusting of its wind model, and think it could be misleading.  Foreflight has no way to actually measure the wind around you.  So it's just using some forecast model, the granularity of which is much coarser than the actual distance you can glide at piston altitudes.  Anecdotally, I've flown around the pattern many times in surface winds that should have made the glide circle quite oblong, and yet it was portrayed as generally symmetric.  Bottom line, even with the glide circle, you need more than a quick glance at Foreflight to know how far you can glide in any particular direction.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Vance Harral

[ilovecornfields]

3 hours ago, gsxrpilot said:

I'm afraid that if I was in this situation, that I would be slow to "declare and emergency". Now if I get a loud bang and the prop stops, or departs the airplane, or if my windshield is covered in oil, then I'd probably be quick. But if the engine was stumbling, surging, unable to make full power, etc... I'm afraid I'd be slow to declare and would spend too much time troubleshooting and not leave myself enough time to find a good spot. 

I can imagine if this were me... I'd have said, yeah DVT is busy, I'll head to Glendale, completely overconfident in my ability to nurse the engine along and get where I want to go...

I'm not proud of this, just humbled by it...

I can’t really think of the down side to declaring an emergency. I had the engine run rough once just as I was about to cross over the mountains. I was IFR in VMC. Immediately started a climb to best glide and turned toward the general direction of the nearest airport. I declared an emergency, told them I was climbing, one person, 4 hours fuel  and the airport I was headed to, then ignored ATC for a while to fly the airplane. It ended up being a clogged injector and everything worked out fine, but the moment I declared an emergency (within seconds of the engine running rough and the egt dropping) I was headed toward the airport at best glide and was comforted by the fact that I could now deviate from any rule in part 91 to the extent required during my emergency. It immediately took the decision away about what I was going to do and gave me permission to do what I needed without worrying about anyone else.

I work in emergency medicine so I often have to make rapid decision with limited information that can have catastrophic consequences if I’m wrong. One of the problems I often see is that people are very poor at picking between two undesirable outcomes. They cling to the desired outcome that too often isn’t possible at that time. My desired outcome for the day was to fly up to the Bay Area and visit my brother. As soon as the engine ran rough I had to throw that out the window and make the decision that was most likely to keep me alive. I think this is where we screw up and decide that it sure would be nice if the roughness went away, or we could find some nice long paved runway within gliding distance, etc.. What we really should be thinking is “what choice right now will give me the highest probability of walking away from this?” 

This brings up another issue I see people struggle with which is how we make choices with asymmetric consequences. Often, in critical situations you can choose between several options, but the outcome if you’re wrong can be very different. If the engine is rough, you make a precautionary landing and it turns out your engine is fine the consequence of being wrong is that your trip is delayed. If the engine is rough, you decide to mess around with it for a while and it turns out you have a catastrophic engine failure, the consequence of being wrong is you might die. I’m not lucky enough to be right all the time, so I think about what might happen if I’m wrong and try to minimize the harm if that’s the case.

In my particular situation, I made a precautionary landing and everything worked fine and in retrospect I probably would have survived that experience no matter what I did. 

Lessons learned:

1. On the GTN 750, at first sign of trouble, press direct,  nearest airport, direct to. I knew the general direction but it took some fumbling to get this dialed in. Sometimes during cruise I’ll even practice doing it so it becomes muscle memory.

2 Use ATC, but don’t let them make the choices for you. The very first thing ATC told me after I declared the emergency was that I was cleared to descend. I started a climb and told them I would do the opposite and would climb as high as I could while the engine was still running. A descent to the altitude they suggested would have taken me out of glide range to the closest airport.

My hope is that if this ever happens again, I’ll be conditioned to respond appropriately and make the right choice. The only consequence to declaring an emergency was that I had to talk to the fire Captain at the airport who was extremely friendly and offered to give me a ride home.

Sorry if this has all been said before. Hopefully at least something I wrote can add to the discussion. 

[Davidv]

2 minutes ago, Vance Harral said:

It's definitely beneficial and I'm not knocking it.  That said, while I trust its terrain modeling pretty well, I'm less trusting of its wind model, and think it could be misleading.  Foreflight has no way to actually measure the wind around you.  So it's just using some forecast model, the granularity of which is much coarser than the actual distance you can glide at piston altitudes.  Anecdotally, I've flown around the pattern many times in surface winds that should have made the glide circle quite oblong, and yet it was portrayed as generally symmetric.  Bottom line, even with the glide circle, you need more than a quick glance at Foreflight to know how far you can glide in any particular direction.

I agree, I'm mostly flying in a very flat part of U.S. (south Florida) and just use it as another piece of backup information.  I only got to see the terrain part when I flew up to Nashville several weeks ago.

[exM20K]

@ilovecornfields great stuff.  

In addition to knowing what fields are reachable via FF glide adviser there is one thing I do religiously before IFR (actual IMC) departures from my home drome:

field is short, so if something goes wrong on departure, return to field is a not-great idea. I do put the LPV approach for a field that is a straight-in 10 miles or so from home drome into the G1000 flight plan.  I don't activate it, but if needed, it's a couple button presses away from steering me to a big rwy with a great approach.  En-route, I delete it from the flight plan and continue normally.  loading a departure alternate in a stressful situation is not something I'd want to do.

-dan 

[DXB]

That glide distance ring on Foreflight seems darn useful in an engine out. Another tool is to add Nearest airport as a continuous display on Foreflight "instrument" display at the bottom.  I keep this field displayed on my second ipad, which is mounted to the right panel.  The field also gives you direction and distance to the airport. 

 

[mike_elliott]

I have been in contact with Jenny Brandemuehl. Today, Mark will undergo amputation of both his legs and partial amputation of his hands. He will remain in the burn center ICU for 3 to 4 months. 

Mark also apparently pulled up his plane to avoid hitting 3 cars on the road.  One of the women wrote Mark and I a letter saying she thought she was going to die and thanked him for saving her life. 

Marks family is in NY, MI, CA, and IL. 

If anyone wants to help the family in their transportation costs consider making a donation to Jenny by zelle or paypal iwannadonate@mooneysummit.com and in remarks say it is for Jenny. I will make sure she gets these funds to help.

Now is the time for us to come together as a community for Marks family.

Mike

 

[Skates97]

25 minutes ago, mike_elliott said:

I have been in contact with Jenny Brandemuehl. Today, Mark will undergo amputation of both his legs and partial amputation of his hands. He will remain in the burn center ICU for 3 to 4 months. 

Mark also apparently pulled up his plane to avoid hitting 3 cars on the road.  One of the women wrote Mark and I a letter saying she thought she was going to die and thanked him for saving her life. 

Marks family is in NY, MI, CA, and IL. 

If anyone wants to help the family in their transportation costs consider making a donation to Jenny by zelle or paypal iwannadonate@mooneysummit.com and in remarks say it is for Jenny. I will make sure she gets these funds to help.

Now is the time for us to come together as a community for Marks family.

Mike

 

Mike, thank you for the update and all that you do.

I also appreciate much of the discussion that has taken place in this thread, it has given me many more things to think about to try and be prepared in the event of an emergency.

[ilovecornfields]

@mike_elliott, thank you for all that you do. Sounds like a life-changing event for all involved. Hopefully there will be counseling for those affected by this tragedy.

[mike_elliott]

25 minutes ago, Skates97 said:

Mike, thank you for the update and all that you do.

I also appreciate much of the discussion that has taken place in this thread, it has given me many more things to think about to try and be prepared in the event of an emergency.

Thanks for your very kind donation Richard. This will help Jenny's family for sure.

[bonal]

Reading of the extent of his injuries was like a punch in the gut. Thank you Mike for your efforts in helping the families.

[mike_elliott]

11 minutes ago, bonal said:

Reading of the extent of his injuries was like a punch in the gut. Thank you Mike for your efforts in helping the families.

Thanks for helping John.

[Danb]

oh my god Mike that's terrible, I'm going to shoot you over a donation in a few minutes

 

Dan

[donkaye]

Mike, thanks for helping.  Donation sent.

[mike_elliott]

Please keep the donations coming

I want to publicly thank the following people for their generosity so far (in no particular order)

Mooney Pros, Inc.

Dan Bass

Richard Brown

Bob Bellville

Dan Brousseau

Kris Adams

Fred Ogden

Dan Eldridge

Michael Freeman

Carr Burgyone

my wife Alice Elliott

Kevin Paul

Don Kaye

Michael Golden

Anthony Caruso

Joe Allman

Ross Vodoni

David Vingiano

Steven Leary

Walt Burger

Ken McLauchlan

Thomas Folkerts

Erik Bolt

Gerald Corun

Michael Mitchener

Jim Toth

Terrence and Melinda McCall

Urs Wildermuth

Alan Glickson

Eli Mansour

Marcus Kuhn

Peter Kousoulis

Mary Culley

Clarence Beintema

David Lincoln

Dustin Clark

Skip Forster

John Breda

Tony Armour

Simon Cail

Thomas Gade

Alan Millet

Ryan Riley

Hector Perez

Anonymous

Paul Stoute

John Fallis

Russell Gill

Carson Kupiec

Anonymous #2

Patrick Larreautegui

Jason Brady

Alex Levin

Cliff Biggs

Terrence and Melinda McCall

John Liskey

Benjamin Eldridge

Ben Showman

Thomas Gade

 

 

And  Non Mooney Owners

Tom Hague of Wings Insurance (my agent for my 2M smooth non owned, and I believe Mark B's agent)

Mark Musser, a C182 owner in Peoria AZ

Matt Waggoner

Ken Reed

Neil Cohen

Vinton Land

Trygve Inda

Bruce Spencer

Tom Russo

Bruce Spencer

Laura Pollard

Jan Madsen

 

I know none of you did this for the recognition, but what the hey, you all deserve a big thank you from all of us. You are helping make a difference in the life of a fellow Mooney brother when he really really needs it.

Let me know if I have anyone "mis-classified" 

 

 

 

[EricJ]

Ouch.   Thanks for the update.

 

[Guitarmaster]

Hopefully, eventually, we will all learn what exactly happened with this horrible accident. Being a brand new airplane, It might very well be that it suffered infant mortality.

I cannot imagine the physical emotional pain that Mark and his family are going through right now. My family's prayers are with you guys if you read this forum... And if you don't, they still are!

The Man / family that dragged him out of the burning airplane definitely needs to be held up as a hero! So many simply get their phones out and are hoping for the next viral video.

Finally... It pains me to see somebody get on this forum and talk about lawsuits and insurance costs. Seriously?

My donation is sent. I hope that it helps in some small way!

 

 

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

 

 

 

 

[KLRDMD]

Flying an S35 Bonanza now, I should be listed under non-Mooney owners.

[mike_elliott]

1 minute ago, KLRDMD said:

Flying an S35 Bonanza now, I should be listed under non-Mooney owners.

wilco

[mike_elliott]

Ken asked that I post the contributions so far and it has been 1930 less the 22 of paypal vigs. in addition to the funds sent to Jenny previously by the Mooney Summit, Inc.

Again, I wish to personally thank those that gave up a few gallons of 100 LL to help the Brandemuehls. A dynamic list of these kind people is being kept here a few posts up. Those that are on the fence about helping, consider the wonderful karma you acquire and pull the trigger.

zellepay to Iwannadonate@mooneysummit.com (no vig)

paypal to iwannadonate@mooneysummit.com (if selected as gift to family, no vig otherwise paypal takes a cut)

 

[StevenL757]

Hi Mike,

I'm trying to donate, but that e-mail address is not resolving in PayPal for me.  Has it been removed, or is it still valid?

Thanks, Steve