Mooney M20E down near Covey Trails, X09, 10/8/24

[Benjamin Gault]

Not far from my house. Details unknown, both occupants were okay according to preliminary report. N9151V

Edited October 9 by Benjamin Gault

[zaitcev]

ADSBexchange track that I picked at Beechtalk (Filightaware tarck is terminated short):

[Hank]

He almost made it back! Glad everyone is alright.

Wonder why he was climbing so slow? On initial climb I'm generally at least at Vx 85-90 mph (73-78 knots) to clear obstacles, and generally transition to Vy (100 mph initially, 87 knots).

Sure, the numbers shown are groundspeed, but he was mostly in the 60s, and best glide is 105 mph = 90 knots . . . .

I would expect these speeds to be slightly higher in an E than in my C, which is what I reported abive.

[Ragsf15e]

Since they survived, great job! It’s easy to second guess, but a more direct route to the end of the runway might’ve made it instead of making a perfect 90° base. It also seems very low to turn around. 700 feet or less. Maybe there was nowhere else to land around the airport in an urban environment?

[Benjamin Gault]

21 hours ago, Ragsf15e said:

Since they survived, great job! It’s easy to second guess, but a more direct route to the end of the runway might’ve made it instead of making a perfect 90° base. It also seems very low to turn around. 700 feet or less. Maybe there was nowhere else to land around the airport in an urban environment?

 

Reported that it was an engine failure on takeoff Rwy35 and that he made the impossible turn back but with a tailwind and a little speed he over ran landing 17. North out of Covey there are just houses and a Wal Mart, definitely some good piloting here. I am not going to second guess anything here. Read that they walked away without a scratch.

[Ragsf15e]

2 hours ago, Benjamin Gault said:

 

Reported that it was an engine failure on takeoff Rwy35 and that he made the impossible turn back but with a tailwind and a little speed he over ran landing 17. North out of Covey there are just houses and a Wal Mart, definitely some good piloting here. I am not going to second guess anything here. Read that they walked away without a scratch.

Interesting, my comment of ending up short was based on the adsb track ending short (see the initial post above), but that could just be the last data point, not where the flight actually ended.  Impossible turn is tough for so many reasons.  If you actually make the turn, then you have to make additional turns to line up with a runway and potentially land downwind which ends in much more groundspeed to dissipate.  It’s not easy.  My home airport also has nowhere to land after takeoff (industrial area).  If I turn around (~1000’ min), Im just planning to get it somewhere on the airfield.  Grass would be fine.

 

[Rick Junkin]

On 10/10/2024 at 1:27 PM, Ragsf15e said:

Grass would be fine.

In lieu of making the runway, land/crash on something relatively soft and forgiving on the field. That's my plan at home too.

[toto]

The key is having no obstructions. Landing on a hard surface is fine - you just want to lengthen your time to a complete stop.

It looks like the pilot here found a spot with at least a couple hundred feet to go from 60 to 0, which is an abrupt landing we can walk away from.

[Ragsf15e]

16 minutes ago, toto said:

The key is having no obstructions. Landing on a hard surface is fine - you just want to lengthen your time to a complete stop.

It looks like the pilot here found a spot with at least a couple hundred feet to go from 60 to 0, which is an abrupt landing we can walk away from.

Yeah, agreed.  When i was saying “grass” I just meant that if I turned around, Im not super concerned about getting on a runway.  Im just trying to put it somewhere on the airfield “grass” as there’s not many obstructions there by design.

[redbaron1982]

On 10/10/2024 at 10:12 AM, Benjamin Gault said:

 

Reported that it was an engine failure on takeoff Rwy35 and that he made the impossible turn back but with a tailwind and a little speed he over ran landing 17. North out of Covey there are just houses and a Wal Mart, definitely some good piloting here. I am not going to second guess anything here. Read that they walked away without a scratch.

I live literally 2 minutes from the airport. By the picture of airplane I'm he landed south of the airport. So for me it makes sense that he overran the runway. 

Also, ADSBExchange shows 350ft over the Walmart, which is way to high to land 17. 

I always think "hey, this airport should move somewhere" but then I remember that the airpor was here before all the urbanization around it. 

Anyway, the airport property is too small around the runway. The threshold of 17 is literally on the perimeter of the airport. The airplanes landing 17 fly over the Westpark tollway at around 25ft. The powerlines (the regular, small ones) that are on the other side of the westpark tollway (1093) need to go underground to clear the path of landing aircrafts. 

To the north there is literally nowhere to go if you have an engine failure at say 200ft. 

[kortopates]

@redbaron1982 did you happen look up the winds at the time of the incident?

That worked out extremely well. i am guessing he had over 10kts of headwind on takeoff providing a good tailwind on return to pull this off with just over 600 agl. I’ve done the emergency turn back a number of times in different Mooney’s and wouldn’t attempt it at that altitude with calm winds but with winds over 20 kts you’d still be struggling to get it down in time without a long runway as apparently this pilot did. good job!
Unfortunate it got some damage but in the end all we really care about is the occupants.

Great to see such a good outcome. Just a couple days ago we lost 5 people in a Baron departing from Catalina in the dark


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[redbaron1982]

15 hours ago, kortopates said:

@redbaron1982 did you happen look up the winds at the time of the incident?

That worked out extremely well. i am guessing he had over 10kts of headwind on takeoff providing a good tailwind on return to pull this off with just over 600 agl. I’ve done the emergency turn back a number of times in different Mooney’s and wouldn’t attempt it at that altitude with calm winds but with winds over 20 kts you’d still be struggling to get it down in time without a long runway as apparently this pilot did. good job!
Unfortunate it got some damage but in the end all we really care about is the occupants.

Great to see such a good outcome. Just a couple days ago we lost 5 people in a Baron departing from Catalina in the dark


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METAR in KTME (8NM NW) and KSGR (10NM SE) indicated winds at ~8Kt NNE. For 17 it would be a ~6KT tailwind, not much. Although on his way back to the airport he would have the wind almost 100% from the tail.

Edited Sunday at 04:17 PM by redbaron1982

[redbaron1982]

I drove to the place of the crash and the airplane is still there. It clearly landed on 17 and overran the runway. You can tell from the damage in the wings' leading edge that it hit the airport's wood fence. 

Landing gear was down. 

[exM20K]

22 hours ago, kortopates said:

@redbaron1982 did you happen look up the winds at the time of the incident?

That worked out extremely well. i am guessing he had over 10kts of headwind on takeoff providing a good tailwind on return to pull this off with just over 600 agl. I’ve done the emergency turn back a number of times in different Mooney’s and wouldn’t attempt it at that altitude with calm winds but with winds over 20 kts you’d still be struggling to get it down in time without a long runway as apparently this pilot did. good job!
Unfortunate it got some damage but in the end all we really care about is the occupants.

Great to see such a good outcome. Just a couple days ago we lost 5 people in a Baron departing from Catalina in the dark


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

At my Illinois home drome, an impossible turn is *not* part of the takeoff brief for this reason. Departing a short field, usually with a full bag of gas, into the wind means a heavy, downwind landing attempt. There are better options.

-dan

[kortopates]

2 hours ago, exM20K said:

At my Illinois home drome, an impossible turn is *not* part of the takeoff brief for this reason. Departing a short field, usually with a full bag of gas, into the wind means a heavy, downwind landing attempt. There are better options.

-dan

Thanks for reminding us all that the most important step is the first step to brief the emergency plan, such as if you don't have enough speed before the halfway point to continue (vs run off the end) and if you should loose the engine what you'll do and at what min altitude.  Its not having any plan that often leads to things going very bad including a stall spin. We all have to be mentally prepared to do what's necessary. Many fields don't have any good options, but nothing is worse than stall spinning in from not pushing at the loss of engine power.  

[exM20K]

24 minutes ago, kortopates said:

nothing is worse than stall spinning in from not pushing at the loss of engine power.  

Maybe that would be a useful drill or demonstration at altitude: power off in t/o configuration and 50’ speed. How fast on the push is fast enough? How quickly does airspeed bleed off if you do nothing?  
 

and on a long body with rudder set for t/o, “push” also means left rudder.
-dan

[kortopates]

Good point, I do practice with students at safe altitude to determine what their altitude loss is doing a power off 360 turn at a 45 degree bank. We wait till 5K AGL pull power and then count for 4-5 seconds to allow for the startle effect, But instruct them climb out at Vy to Vy+10 to 15 kts. Never Vx, I think its real clear that you don't have 4-5 seconds to push at Vx since at Vy 4-5 seconds is on the edge (hence why using 5000 agl to practice this). 
Then we double the pilots altitude loss and add another 50% . After practicing this 3 times, with typically each try improving, we usually arrive at  800-900' minimum altitude.
Then we'll test it out, climbing out into the wind, wait to the minimum altitude, retard the power, count 4-5 sec and start the turn. Almost always its successful with a little wind. A lot of wind the challenge flips to  getting down without building up excessive speed, so I encourage slipping at best glide (min of 85+ kts) and adding drag once the pavement is guaranteed. 
We discuss landing gear up if we don't have adequate room to rollout to a stop or landing on a rough surface that we don't expect to be able to control direction and safely rollout. 

[Mooney in Oz]

5 hours ago, kortopates said:

so I encourage slipping at best glide (min of 85+ kts)

Hello Paul. Do you recommend the same min speed in a J?.

[kortopates]

7 hours ago, Mooney in Oz said:

Hello Paul. Do you recommend the same min speed in a J?.

85+ is also going to work out great for the J since Vg is above that till its lighter than 2300lbs, but in the J not really concerned about a minimum slipping speed like the K's and up.

[Pinecone]

20 hours ago, kortopates said:

but in the J not really concerned about a minimum slipping speed like the K's and up.

What is that different between J and K?  I can see the L and up as they are long bodies.

[Fly Boomer]

56 minutes ago, Pinecone said:

What is that different between J and K?  I can see the L and up as they are long bodies.

Here is what Bob says

Bob Kromer - Slipping a Mooney Part 1.pdf

 

[Echo]

That was a beautiful E.  Glad they made it.  Hope it is able to fly again, but looks like a "new" wing is going to be needed.  That is realy surprising to me that he had that much atitude after losing engine at 700'.  Staying "with it" when the plan goes wrong would be tough.  he did a nice job of flying the airplane and living to fight another day.

[Hank]

1 hour ago, Echo said:

he did a nice job of flying the airplane and living to fight another day.

Any landing you can walk away from . . . .

[Pinecone]

On 10/15/2024 at 8:48 AM, Fly Boomer said:

Here is what Bob says

Bob Kromer - Slipping a Mooney Part 1.pdf 50.34 kB · 19 downloads

 

Thanks

[Benjamin Gault]

On 10/12/2024 at 3:58 PM, redbaron1982 said:

I live literally 2 minutes from the airport. By the picture of airplane I'm he landed south of the airport. So for me it makes sense that he overran the runway. 

Also, ADSBExchange shows 350ft over the Walmart, which is way to high to land 17. 

I always think "hey, this airport should move somewhere" but then I remember that the airpor was here before all the urbanization around it. 

Anyway, the airport property is too small around the runway. The threshold of 17 is literally on the perimeter of the airport. The airplanes landing 17 fly over the Westpark tollway at around 25ft. The powerlines (the regular, small ones) that are on the other side of the westpark tollway (1093) need to go underground to clear the path of landing aircrafts. 

To the north there is literally nowhere to go if you have an engine failure at say 200ft. 

I grew up in Katy, my dad was first based at Andrau, and then we moved to Westheimer Airpark, O07, from 1992-2014 when Bill Reid passed away. Westheimer was just east of Covey off of 1093. I used to leave straight from school and dove hunt there in the evenings. One winter Bill let me set up decoys in the waterway next to the runway and I duck hunted. There were no houses out in those parts, and Covey Trails was considered country. Now its nothing but houses. Lakes of Bella Terra is now where Westheimer was.