The report was just released of an unfortunate accident that happened last February. A Mooney 201 takes off from Furnace Creek Inn Airport in Death Valley and crashes 6 miles from the airport. The plane just came out of annual and the investigation finds the magneto is loose in its clamp, rotating freely. It appears the pilot tried to perform a wheels up landing on the benign desert floor and the aircraft is destroyed and the pilot perished. Sad story.

The curious thing to me is the rugged desert floor looks like no plane, even bush-wheeled could land here without a major event. And curious because friends of mine (and many of you) have flown over this area and have remarked that landing possibilities appear endless. This must look benign until your on the deck, though the Mooney didn't have a choice. What say you Death Valley visitors? Is it all this treacherous? Just curious, don't want to find out the hard way.

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief ... 3010&key=1

http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief ... 114&akey=1

http://dms.ntsb.gov/pubdms/search/docum ... mkey=78248

Damn he hit hard. Report states, "nose down, left wing low" initial impact. I'm betting he stalled it.

Gump

I've walked on that desert floor and it is anything but benign. That is salt and mud and is hard as rock and sharp as razor blades.

I think his best bet, on that stuff, might have been to land wheels up....?
(had he known the surface-and of course under control)

Always better under control....
lc

Not just airplanes....

Was just out there a few days ago.There are definitely a million places to land .There are positively 10 million places that will eat you up.Alot of it does look ok from the air but as glidergeek said when you walk around it is anything but smooth.The washouts have 3 foot deep holes in them, the lakebeds are probably mud and the roads are really bumpy with very tall berms on the sides. I guess it's called Death Valley for a reason.. Definitely not the place to have an emergency landing in a Mooney.

Better to snap the gear and have it absorb some energy?

Definitely not the place to have an emergency landing in a Mooney.

Doesn't sound like a place to have an emergency landing no matter what you're flying.

Cary

Better to snap the gear and have it absorb some energy?

Ok, MAYBE with a short geared plane like that Mooney, but I would think not with taller gear like a C210?
The taller the gear, the more likely to 'tumble'....

lc

So... Did they remove the wreckage, or is it still out there ?

I'd echo what Glidergeek and low rider said, when the lakes dry up in the valley center, the ground can be as harsh as lava.

The wreckage was removed during the investigation. There is just a trace of a scar visible on Google Earth, the light colored upside down Y in the center:

Yeah I guess from this other photo it looks like you'd be landing on a lava field that used to be a lake. Scary stuff.

Some of you have read about my recent engine failure in the Luscombe and then forced landing.
Earlier in my sordid career... I had a C-210 turbo catch fire in flight. That forced landing was on some pretty rough ground. The gear refused to go down for some unknown reason.... but that turned out to be a good thing. I slid it for a while upright... and then near the end it flipped over... but most of the energy was dissipated by that time. My old Mooney sat pretty low and I suspect a forced landing, gear up might be better as well. I think Gump may have seen the unseen though. The pilot probably did not fly it all the way to touch down. A stall.... and all bets are off. Sad but true. And we don't often get to practice right down to the last few moments...

Very sad story. I used to live in Beatty, Nevada just over the bumps from Furnace Creek and have flown in there at least a 100+ times. It is really tough, unforgiving country no doubt. This story about the Mooney also reminds me I sheered a crankshaft in half in my M20E in 1996 and glided 17 miles and landed w/o incident at Green River, Utah. I got darn lucky. So sorry to hear about this incident.

I think the first important part is to have control on the way down. This alone would have saved his life! But otherwise when I look at this I think I would have my gear down for sure. It'll easily absorb a lot of the impact better than having the engine take the impact and shove it back into the cockpit.

That should have been survivable. As Gump said, it looks like he quit flying the plane. The engine cowls on my Mooney, like most GA aircraft, are not structural. If the firewall digs in and plows with lots of energy remaining, that detracts markedly from survival chances. It's important to prevent digging in from happening, or at least dissapate as much energy as possible beforehand. That often means gear down and full flaps.

Slightly off topic, but if you are forced to do a water landing, you might consider that gear up would be good. But before mentally locking that in, try this simple experiment. Turn on the kitchen tap and hold a spoon by the very end of the handle so the spoon hangs down. Touch the curved part of the spoon gently into the water stream. The spoon gets sucked in. This is called "spooning-in" and is generally a bad thing. Most aircraft and darn near all gliders are susceptable to spooning-in which sucks the nose down causing the aircraft to submarine - - the resulting rapid deceleration and G-forces may not be survivable. To avoid spooning-in, with retractables it's wise to partially or fully extend the gear, depending on aircraft design, even though this may result in flipping over at lower speed.

Bumper - is "spooning in" AKA the coander effect? Or is that different again?

With regards to flying her in, rather than stalling -
I would have thought the lowest energy landing would be just like any other, glide all the way down, flare, and hold off until you run out of authority, the plane stops flying, and sinks that last foot (or two) onto terrafirma at the absolute lowest speed possible? IF that was a stall, for 2ft, I'd have guessed you'd be better off than flying it on 5-10kts faster??

Is that the best thing to do in FLWOP situation? As was mentioned, they don't really instruct the final moments.

I'm betting a subconscious pulling back as that ugly ground got close, with a loss of airspeed and final nose down, left wing dropping from about 20-50 feet.

That picture does not show touching the ground at minimal speed in ground effect, nose slightly high.

Gump

Sounds like a lot of us used to have Mooneys. Sad deal. How do you know for sure eh? My instincts tell me gear up on that terrain but how would I know. There is that steel tube cage around the cockpit. I've always heard that's supposed to help in these situations. I guess bottom line I can't think of an airplane better than a Mooney to be in in that situation. Other than the tail on the very early ones they just don't come apart.

EB

Battson wrote:Bumper - is "spooning in" AKA the coander effect? Or is that different again?

With regards to flying her in, rather than stalling -
I would have thought the lowest energy landing would be just like any other, glide all the way down, flare, and hold off until you run out of authority, the plane stops flying, and sinks that last foot (or two) onto terrafirma at the absolute lowest speed possible? IF that was a stall, for 2ft, I'd have guessed you'd be better off than flying it on 5-10kts faster??

Is that the best thing to do in FLWOP situation? As was mentioned, they don't really instruct the final moments.

According to wikipedia, it's not the same:

"The Coandă effect can be demonstrated by directing a small jet of air upwards at an angle over a ping pong ball. The jet is drawn to the upper surface and curves around, diverting the flow downwards over the back. This change in the momentum of the air flow is reacted out in the reduced pressure on the upper surface of the ball, this suction being sufficient to overcome the weight of the ball (when there is enough air flow). This demonstration can be performed using a vacuum cleaner if the outlet can be attached to the pipe and aimed upwards at an angle.

A common misconception is that Coandă effect is demonstrated when a stream of tap water flows over the back of a spoon held lightly in the stream and the spoon is pulled into the stream. While the flow looks very similar to the air flow over the ping pong ball above (if one could see the air flow), the cause is not really the Coandă effect. Here, because it is a flow of water into air, there is little entrainment of the surrounding fluid (the air) into the jet (the stream of water). This particular demonstration is dominated by surface tension."

Since kinetic energy increases with the square of speed, getting slowed up as much as possible is critical. Of course you don't want to do that at 20 feet or even 10 feet. This wants to be one of those times for a real minimum energy greaser where the aircraft settles gently.