N201HH Off field Deer Valley this morning

[mike_elliott]

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N201HH

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/phoenix-fire-crews-respond-to-downed-plane-near-deer-valley-airport

 

2 occupants, both refused to be taken to hospital

 

[MooneyMitch]

Appears as a gear up....... excellent choice for this situation.

Congratulations to pilot.  

[aviatoreb]

Well done pilot for flying that baby to a safe top.  Congratulations to a safe outcome.  And thank goodness and the stars of luck that the possibility existed for a safe outcome and also the safe execution of the outcome.

OK - everyone knock on wood.

[ragedracer1977]

1 hour ago, MooneyMitch said:

Appears as a gear up....... excellent choice for this situation.

Congratulations to pilot.  

Looked gear down to me.

[MooneyMitch]

44 minutes ago, ragedracer1977 said:

Looked gear down to me.

Oh, ok.   I’ll look closer.  A good landing regardless.  Looks successful and might be able to use the Mooney again.

[Ross Taylor]

And that (the police motorcycle in the shot) is why we used to ride around in the City of Phoenix parks and the desert and justify it as practice...you never know when you might need to go off-roading.  And it was fun, of course. 

7th St/Deer Valley...almost made it back to DVT...glad it ended up injury free.

[EricJ]

That's another DVT north hangar resident, it's a 77 J just like mine with a very similar paint job.   He was taxiing to his hangar from the fuel pump as I was pulling in in my truck once and I thought it was my airplane.   The guy that owns it has had it for something like thirty years, so I hope it is repairable.  That one is S/N 24-0053, mine is 24-0077.    Word is that both occupants are ok.

I'm in the middle of my annual and went to the hangar today and passed the location.   They were probably 1/3 mile to the threshold and maybe 1/4 mile to runway pavement, so almost made it.    There was a crane and a bunch of LEO vehicles there when I went by at about 12:30, and it was all cleaned up by the time I was headed home at about 4pm.   No word yet what happened, but they were headed NE and turned around and came back.

[Flash]

The LiveATC.net recording shows what happened. The pilot declared an emergency, reported a propeller governor failure, then later reported he lost the engine. Looks like a good off-field landing. You can hear the controller say "check gear down"; I would think the pilot decided against using the gear, given the terrain.

[Flash]

By the way, if you want to hear it yourself, it's about 10 minutes into the 15:30 Zulu DVT tower recording for May 13.

[jetdriven]

Propeller.governor failure really often means oil quantity failure.  

[mike_elliott]

This one at Glendale AZ had a propeller governor failure also  

[MB65E]

1 hour ago, mike_elliott said:

This one at Glendale AZ had a propeller governor failure also  

Overspeed?  Fast airplanes need Counterweight props! 
-Matt

[mike_elliott]

Overspeed?  Fast airplanes need Counterweight props! 
-Matt

Nope, that was the effect of additional crankcase ventilation

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[EricJ]

12 hours ago, Flash said:

The LiveATC.net recording shows what happened. The pilot declared an emergency, reported a propeller governor failure, then later reported he lost the engine. Looks like a good off-field landing. You can hear the controller say "check gear down"; I would think the pilot decided against using the gear, given the terrain.

There were some local news feed pics that showed the gear was down, but maybe partially collapsed.

 

[kortopates]

@EricJ is right of course, according to the FAA report , the gear was "Sheared off", and unfortunately with wing damage too.

https://www.asias.faa.gov/apex/f?p=100:96:5096540439126::::P96_ENTRY_DATE,P96_MAKE_NAME,P96_FATAL_FLG:14-MAY-20,MOONEY

Did anyone get to talk to the pilot to learn about what the pilot had to deal with during the prop overspeed emergency event? I bet there is quite an informative story to learn  from here. The flightaware track shows the plane make the 180 back more or less level and then airspeed rise from 130 kts to 170 kts during the first 2K of descent from 6 to 4K , then stabilize in the 120's till 3200' then slows down a bit mostly above 110 kts ground speeds. No idea what the winds aloft where no where in the sequence the engine power was lost. 

[Flash]

1 hour ago, kortopates said:

The flightaware track shows the plane make the 180 back more or less level and then airspeed rise from 130 kts to 170 kts during the first 2K of descent from 6 to 4K , then stabilize in the 120's till 3200' then slows down a bit mostly above 110 kts ground speeds. No idea what the winds aloft where no where in the sequence the engine power was lost. 

The Flightaware track also shows the plane flew past a private airport with a 4000-foot runway after making the 180. I don't know if there was a reason it was not usable, but it's likely that if the pilot had fully appreciated the seriousness of the problem he could have made an uneventful landing there. I type that not to second-guess the pilot's handling of a difficult situation from my comfortable seat in front of my computer (he made a landing from which everybody walked away), but to remind myself and maybe others that if something is wrong and you don't know how bad it is then getting on the ground quickly and figuring it out there might be the best idea.

[Gary0747]

How would a person keep a plane in the air with out over speed damage to the engine if the governor failed to the flattest pitch position?

[MB65E]

5 hours ago, mike_elliott said:

Nope, that was the effect of additional crankcase ventilation

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk
 

Well his crankcase has additional ventilation for sure now. I don’t understand the correlation, unless it sucked the engine dry of oil and the engine lost a rod due to oil starvation. How does a failed gov. Blow a hole in the case unless it overspeeds? 
-Matt

[mike_elliott]

1) Rod bearing starved of oil, perhaps due to blockage, decides to die

2) Rod exits to find its way to earth

3) Oil exits to find earth

4) Prop governor is starved for oil, but doesnt over speed because the frickin engine is locked up...

 

[kortopates]

1 hour ago, Gary0747 said:

How would a person keep a plane in the air with out over speed damage to the engine if the governor failed to the flattest pitch position?

Not sure I understand. With a large overspeed, often accompanied with significant vibration, all we can do is pull back throttle. In some cases that may even correct it, but the overspeed may also be due to a more serious lack of oil to the governor and just the first sign before a full engine failure. Sounds like that may have been the case here.  

[N201MKTurbo]

I can tell you from experience that the governor will loose control at about 2 QTs of oil. The first thing that happens is the oil system will start sucking in air. This will cause the prop to start surging. It will get your attention fast. If you throttle back the engine will smooth out, but you better have a landing spot picked out.

I would suggest pulling the throttle back to idle and save as much engine as possible to fix the landing.

Luckily, when this happened to me back in '84 I was 5000 feet above an abandoned dirt strip, which I made easily. 

[Gary0747]

I see no signs of oil loss in the video..sometimes a governor can just fail with out an oil loss.  Over speed can toss a rod. 

[carusoam]

My O360 lost it’s gov to an internal shaft seal leak...

No oil pressure to the prop...

The prop goes immediately to the stops... wherever they are set... which is a bit more than 2700rpm...

Pulling back the throttle was the way to manage the RPM... unfortunately, that was barely enough energy to keep me and the M20C aloft for very long...

With an internal leak of oil... and enough power... you get time to decide the next course of action...

With an external leak... This Pilot did a great job of keeping the clean side up... that looks like tough terrain to keep all the parts attached...

Nose wheels don’t like to stay in place plowing through ditches... as MS has seen recently...

Best regards,

-a-

[Gagarin]

5 hours ago, Flash said:

The Flightaware track also shows the plane flew past a private airport with a 4000-foot runway after making the 180. I don't know if there was a reason it was not usable, but it's likely that if the pilot had fully appreciated the seriousness of the problem he could have made an uneventful landing there. I type that not to second-guess the pilot's handling of a difficult situation from my comfortable seat in front of my computer (he made a landing from which everybody walked away), but to remind myself and maybe others that if something is wrong and you don't know how bad it is then getting on the ground quickly and figuring it out there might be the best idea.

The airport was 18AZ Sky Ranch at Carefree, well within range with a suitable runway. Wonder if the plane had a moving map GPS depicting all nearby airports.

[Ibra]

On 5/14/2020 at 11:54 PM, Gary0747 said:

How would a person keep a plane in the air with out over speed damage to the engine if the governor failed to the flattest pitch position?

Throttle idle and slow to about 80kts then add MP to stay level, if you can’t avoid propeller overspeed flying level at 80kts (close to min power speed for level flight) by action on prop lever, pick a field and assume spinner & engine are losing oil 

The aircraft needs 100% power to stay level at fast cruise or near the stall, at about 80kts it can stay level with barely 30%-50% power which may fit the bill for prop max rpm 

Edited May 16, 2020 by Ibra