I will try to start a thread to see if I can stop thread drift in "dead stick landing practice", I have had only one dead stick.

I threw a rod a couple of years ago at 2,000 feet or so climbing out of an Alaskan native village in a 206 with 5 pax and a lap. It was the kind of day you would want for this 'excercise'. Bang went the engine and it got quiet, well, except for my screams which was apparently (I found out later) unsettling for the passengers.

I have flown that particular route thousands of times and knew exactly where I was going to put down. In this case a beach right below me. But then I looked around and knew that I could make it back to the airport, no problem...lots of altitude, no wind.. perfect. Well, it wasn't really necessary to explain that we were going back to the village instead of going on to Homer because the windscreen was filled with oil, and there was no noise (except for my piercing screeches of course). I ran through my emergency flow, pretty much the only thing useful was "glide speed attitude".

It actually takes a while to glide down from 2000 feet, which left me with time to think about the situation. I knew that I had the runway made, and I knew that everyone in the village has a scanner, so I am having this internal debate, much like you see on Cspan of the British Parliament, in fact my internal voice took on a Winstonian accent: "Sir, I propose that we call mayday" - "Hear him! Here, Here! (I am not sure where the rest of Parliament came from) and then: "Sir, I must, for the record, state the honorable gentleman from Homer is a milksop, and vehemently challenge the assertion that this rather mundane occurrence necessitates a needless cry for help which cannot change the outcome of this rather minor inconvenience, and shall only serve to unnecessarily cause an uproar in the village" (Here, Here, table slapping, etc). I won the debate..did you doubt that I would? No mayday call.

So I continued on, going through my emergency flow, and checklist (yes, I did bring it out). I actually had to slip just a bit to land, which was okay because by this time the windscreen had no viewable space due to the oil, and the slip allowed me to see. I touched down, taxiied out and pulled off the side of the runway.

Now realize, that up until now, the passengers hadn't said a single thing, nothing (or maybe they did but my incessant squealing drowned them out). As we stopped, the girl with the lap child, asks me if I needed her phone to call someone...I actually think she was just showing off to the others 'cause the village just got cel service.

This whole thing was my fault, not that I am superstitious or nothing, but two weeks earlier I was flying along thinking to myself "Wow, I have almost 7,000 hours and had never had an engine out, that is kinda cool" and never knocked wood....like I am doing right now, repeatedly, not that I am superstitious.

I tried to imbed a photo but it didn't work, you can see the engine case in my photos here on BCP

Ha Ha, and then you sit there and go, "I can't believe that shit just happened" and then just go about your day pissed off that you're getting cheated out of flying hours for the day.

Gump

Sounds like you're good pilot and I like your writing style too!!

Went to Austin,NV flyin several years ago - Pop's Dory does it with precision in his cub.

Headoutdaplane,

You're a poet and don't know it.

Contact

My dead stick landing happened at less then 150' AGL. Maybe 5 seconds max. We were working on the alignment of the plane. I was just doing a high speed taxi. It felt good so I poured the coal to it. By doing so I had already eaten up a good bit of usable runway. Lifting off about half way down the runway and climbing to just about 150' the engine just quit. The first thing you think is this is not happening. Subconsciously you want to start pulling back as all you want is some more altitude so you can have some options. Then reality sets in don't stall it dummy, find a place. Looking for options, to the right was nothing but piles of metal junk. In front of me just beyond the runway threshold was a road causeway that was built up to gain elevation for a train bridge. Beyond that was a nice LZ. I didn't know if I could stretch my glide enough to get over it, and the guard rails on top looked unforgiving. On the left there was a stand of silage corn not very big, and just about straight down but defiantly the softest thing available. So i slowed it up, and slipped it so hard I think I dented the firewall. I kicked it out of the slip right on top of the corn. After we entered the corn it destroyed all the lift we had and we dropped the last 6'. Still my shortest landing to date maybe 50'.

I got out and made my way out of the corn. Here comes the fire dept., the police, the news crew, and about fifty cell phone wielding facebook reporters. Having all that attention made my adrenaline rush more then my off airport landing. Doing like any good pilot would do I went back in the corn to protect the plane from the volunteer fire fighters, and to hide from the paparazzi. The firefighters are a great bunch of guys, don't get me wrong, but they can be hard on things.

After shaking hands with the FAA and trading names and numbers. The Faa determined that since there was no substantial damage it was not considered an accident, so no Ntsb necessary. We pulled the plane out put some fabric patches on. Paid the amish farmer for the corn we damaged, and we all lived happily ever after.

Before this I read a lot of NTSB reports trying to glean anything I could. I think the most important thing in this type of situation is do as Bob Hoover said "fly the plane all the way to the scene of the crash." Fight the urge to pull back on the stick. It is a natural reaction, but it won't prevent you meeting up with the ground.

A month before my "off airport landing" a fellow in a Kolb had a similar engine out. He had more altitude then me. I don't know what happened if he just slowed it to much or tried to turn back, but he ended up meeting the ground like a lawn dart 200' to the right of were I landed. Either way he stalled it.

I've had two engine outs, but only one in which I landed--the other I was able to restart. My landing version came all of 15 hours after I'd bought my airplane. I had been out doing some commercial maneuvers to get better acquainted with my airplane, finishing with a series of 8s on pylons, so I was already relatively low. I noticed I had to head back to meet a 2 o'clock appointment, so I climbed only to 1000' AGL. I saw that the oil pressure was going down and had the usual denial thoughts--either the gauge is bad or I got the engine a little warm in the maneuvers--but decided to baby it by reducing power, as I was only 7 miles from the airport. In the process, I lost a couple hundred feet, so when the engine gave up, I was at roughly 800' AGL.

I had just crossed a country road, which looked like a reasonable place to land, when the engine blew. First it sped up when the prop lost oil pressure, so I pulled the prop back, but immediately it started clanking and shaking as it threw a rod, so I pulled the throttle and mixture to try to stop the engine--I had a fleeting thought of the engine shaking itself loose. I know somewhere in there I uttered (shouted?) the time-honored pilot prayer (OH SH-T!).

I set up on a tight downwind for the road and dropped 20 flaps when I realized that there was a power line paralleling the road, with the poles close enough that I'd likely strike a wingtip. I looked to the right, and that field looked pretty rough. But the field to the left looked OK, so I turned toward it--but now I had to get over the power lines. So I brought the flaps back up, dropped the nose to speed up, popped over the power line, pulled on full flaps, and landed--best soft field landing I'd ever done, I think. Some minor cracking of the wheel pants was the only damage, other than the blown engine. All that engine-out practice that my first instructor had required some 30+ years earlier had paid off.

Somehow, in the midst of all of that, I used the radio. It was set on the airport's unicom frequency, so I just made what I was told later was an amazingly calm mayday call and announced that I'd lost my engine northeast of Fort Collins and was setting down in a field. A pilot flying directly overhead asked if I was the Cessna with the red nose, and I said I was. He said he'd orbit overhead until I got down, and I think I was touching down as he said that. When I got out, I called him on my handheld, and he said he would go get his pickup and come back to get me.

Oh, I missed the appointment.

Cary

I have been called a lot of things (usually ending in ..cker), however, "Poet" has never been one of them....

1989, flameout on takeoff Bellanca Decathalon. Long runway, healthy forward shove on the elevator and set her right back down. Rolled out in the weeds off the edge of the runway, called the tower and told them they could let the FBO know where his POS airplane is. Walked to the car and went home.

That was 2 days after the tailwheel tire blew out on landing. Same airport same drill.

I was shot down in a Cobra in Vietnam on my area checkout. I don't count that one because Bloody Bart was flying.

My first, the only engine failure at altitude, was coming out of Santa Fe in a C-175. I landed on the road just south of Santa Domingo Pueblo and the Governor of the Pueblo pulled me back to his yard, where Buddy Robertson and I removed the engine. After rebuild we put it back in and I had an engine failure taking off from the same road. I think I forgot that one in the count. Put it back down on the road. Bad new plugs. Buddy said the rebuilder had probably dropped them on the shop floor. Ran good before takeoff. Ran good after we put new plugs in and I took off again.

My next five were in a lease Pawnee with an engine heating problem that the owner/mechanic was having trouble fixing. They all happened while spraying. Energy management turn to roads twice, energy management turn to Rio Grande levee, straight in to airport, and finally turned it over in cotton field after energy management turn to the cotton.

The eighth was spraying an onion field on the Rio Grande near Fabens, Texas. I had worked all day getting a spray pump replaced on my Callair. I was spraying pyrethrins on vegetables and didn't realize the three used pumps I tried had been spraying Parathion. I had used my reserve wing tank to calibrate the last time and had not changed back to my working tank. The loader brought my reserve tank back to five gal and ten in my working tank. Five gallons on the reserve later, I ran out of gas over the Rio Grande in a left turn to the onion patch. I was fat and happy with my immediate right turn to line up with the rows of the cotton patch I was near, until I cart wheeled it. According to the Border Patrol guy on the levee, the engine quit in the left turn and I turned right and flew the right wing into the ground. That's not the way I remembered it, but the forensic evidence (right wing spar broke in two places, left wing intact, engine knocked off and hanging by the cables) confirmed his version.

The ninth was at 200' AGL in a Cardinal on a TEPCO pipeline between Wichita Falls and Gainsville, Texas. An energy management turn from south to east lined me up well with an E-W eighty acre pasture with only small, scattered mesquite trees. Having time to check mags and apply carb heat, I thought why not try the boost pump? Why is there a boost pump in a high wing airplane? The engine started and gave me full power. I headed back to my line and got far enough to mess up my excellent forced landing before quitting again. Immediate steep right turn allowing the nose to go down and applied full flaps and full left rudder to get down in the beginning of the quarter mile available going the wrong way, south, across the same eighty acre pasture. Put it down short of the barbed wire fence, jumped the fence, and landed again in the pasture. The only damage was torn stabilater skin where I scraped a metal pole in the jump.

The tenth was when a C-152 ate a valve on pipeline between Wichita Falls and Duncan, Oklahoma. I made it to the Duncan Airport with some power.

The eleventh was a takeoff failure at Lebanon, Missouri in a 172. I had helped put a used tank in at Brenco's maintenance facility in Sweetwater, Texas. It looked rough and had definitely not been professionally cleaned. The engine completely stopped on takeoff at Lebanon. I was still in low ground effect. I landed on the runway remaining. Justin came over from Aurora, Missouri and we removed a mouse from the tank. All of its hair, it was nude, ended up in the thimble strainer going into the carburetor. I had flown pipeline from Sweetwater to Jackson, Mississippi to Patoka, Illinois. to Lebanon.

The twelveth, was a homebuild biplane that looked like a small Stearman. The owner had a Suburu engine and a mechanical gear reduction from some part of a Ford. Bad omen: he asked me to take it around the patch before taking him up for a lesson. He said it would climb like a fighter. It flew so poorly that I never got higher than fifty feet. I slowly turned around and was about a half mile from the airport when the engine made loud noises and the prop stopped. I turned steeply left to a pasture while allowing the nose to go down as designed. There was still frost on the fescue hill sloping from my right to left. I snapped the right gear off on barbed wire going in and slid it on the lower right wing and left gear almost level. Worked out well with very light scratches on the right wing.

I can't remember any more, but I am old and senile.

You win contact.

Wow Contact that is a lot!!
How many hours do you have?

17,000 logged. At some point, when I could no longer find a log book, I lost interest. In logging, not flying.

note to self, never fly with contactflying.

Great writeup headoutaplane!!!

Wow Contact, I don't know if you are lucky you made it through all those or unlucky to have had them in the first place. Anyway damn good pilotage to keep under control like that.

Forgot the one in a Super Cub at the end of a practice spray run. I took the controls, continued the energy management turn to the adjoining field, and landed just as the student got the tank changed and the engine running again. At the end of a successful forced landing is a bad time to decide to go around.

Just one in a 207. Flying jumpers . Let everyone out and was on the way down with minimal fuel (always minimal fuel) says right in the book not to use prolonged uncoordinated / steep banks with minimal fuel in the 206 /207 . Well I was doing just that and it quit at about 1000ft on crosswind . Traded a bit of airspeed for altitude scratched my head for a second then hooked it left and cleared the fence . Made the taxiway

I had a "dead pedals" incident fortunately. Was instructing in an aerobatic Starduster (inverted fuel, oil) and the engine quit after run up. The fuel system had a "venting issue" I was told.

Very lucky the engine quit when it was on the ground. I stopped flying experimentals. Several people I know have died in them compared to certified due to mechanical failures.

Knock on wood... 40+ years and 19,000 hours and I've never flown myself to the ground with an engine stopped except for doing it on purpose.

I shut one down on a company C402 in cruise when it started puking. Non event.
And, I've had several IO-520's stick valves, bust pushrod tubes, and break exhaust parts in the air, but the prop kept turning until I was on the ground.

But... I've gone all the way to the dirt deadstick as a backseat passenger. My former co-worker and I were in our boss's Super Cub flying out of Barrow, somewhere between Point Lay and Icy Cape looking at bears. I was in the back taking pictures, and my buddy was flying when we found a sow and a couple cubs. He was doing a pretty good job of pissing her off with the Cub, and as we buzzed her and climbed up I said, "Do you think we'd be hosed if the engine quit right now? She's really pissed."

I no sooner said that when the engine quit. He'd run a tank dry, and when he reached down to switch tanks, the selector was jammed up and he couldn't move it. So down we went, with enough time to call our village agent in Point Lay on the VHF, and parked on the tundra.

Luckily Mama Bear and cubs didn't wander over to have us for dinner, and there we sat until one of the guys came out to get us.

To this day, this is why I run the fuel selectors full range the first few minutes after taking off no matter what I'm flying.

Gump

Gump,

I almost had one kinda like that with a PA-11 or PA-12. Anyway, it had only one tank in the nose with the wire on a cork. A guy from Thermal, California had bought it from an ex-airline pilot here in the Ozarks. I gave the new owner tailwheel training so he could fly it back. When I said he was good to go, he asked if I would fly it home to Thermal with him for $100 a day, food, and motel. I am always game for a trip.

I had told him about dry carburetor gaskets in the desert if he turned the fuel off. We left the fuel on and planned to leave the next morning after the seller brought the original airworthiness out. I think that guy was trying to keep it and I told the buyer, who insisted on having the original. The seller had said he would mail it. I pointed out that we were illegal without it. I know, we were training in an illegal plane because it wasn't in there at the time.

Anyway, the next day we pre-flighted and the seller flew his RV-7 over to Aurora and put the certificate in the plastic holder. After back taxi and runup, the engine quit. After turning the fuel on, I got out to prop it. The seller came running up grinning. "You guys didn't do a complete preflight, did you," he asked? I got in and we left. What we had there was a failure to communicate.

contact