Not really sure this qualifies as "live to tell" but I was trying to get my last cross country done before my checkride next week. I was enroute from MHW to S97 and then the 16 miles back to Chelan.
The generator quit on me. It was really no big deal. I saw what was happening pretty early on and asked MWH tower for a frequency change, turned off the beacon and ran a a higher RPM. The radios were going black when I tried to transmit but I was able to get my friends on the ground at S10, sort of. The thing that bothered me is that I had been flying for about 3 hours in an airplane that has 5 hours of fuel a cruise. The gauges were all the way down on empty and I do not know how much power the gauges require to fuction. It seems like they wouldn't take much and if the radio can stay on (sort of) the gauges should too. I had also been concerned the last few flights that I seemed to use more fuel than 5 GPH, but I was doing touch and goes and I know that uses up the fuel.
So, instead of continuing on to S97, I went home to S10. It was the same distance at that point, but I figured I may as well get it back to where it can be fixed rather than take off again with a known problem.
The thing that pisses me off is I needed a 50 NM point to point cross country, and MWH to Chelan is 48 NM.
So, I guess I will have to fly to S97 and back to MWH. I am taking my check ride at MWH, so maybe I can get the last bit done on the way. I will ask my instructor. Too bad you don't get extra credit for prudent responses to in flight issues. I was told that another pilot with a 180 paniked and landed on HWY 2 last year, with an airport 5 miles away or less, because of a dead alternator 20 minutes into the flight with full fuel. I think I delt with it a bit better than that, but I won't fault someone for doing what they think is safest at the time.

D.

DavidB. wrote:
Too bad you don't get extra credit for prudent responses to in flight issues.

Ahhh, grasshopper... actually you do. But it's not the Examiner who gives you the credit, it's the Grim Reaper. And the reward is seeing your wife and kids later that night.

Read EZ Flap's response, and take it to heart. These are true words.
RangeFlyer

Thank EZ flap, wise words. And Jr. Cub Builder, yes, broken stuff does always seem to have multiple phases, I am glad I got back down on the ground. There are a ton of section roads out there, and I was in an area where I ride my KTM, so I am pretty familiar with the powerlines and road surfaces. I am glad I didn't need to use one.

I was just reading this http://flighttraining.aopa.org/students ... /fire.html
and the section on electrical failures. I did everything right, so thats good. I am glad I didn't have a fire, that would suck.No extinguisher in this aircraft either. I may change that, and I will have one in the Champ when it's done.

Fuel gauges are useless, and Cessna electric ones are particularly lame. Make a habit of dipping tanks and watching the clock and you'll never have to rely on an electrical system to know how long the go stick will continue turning.

I say chalk it up to good experience.

I had the same thing happen on my checkride. We were done with everything except turns around a point when my right tank drifted down to empty and electrical started to dim. We landed to check it out and top off the tanks but when we went to start it, it wouldn't start. The examiner was going to hand prop it, but I told her no. (Her plane, but I explained to her my check ride my rules. I wanted to have a mechanic look at it first.) We found one and he came over and saw that the battery connection was loose in addition to the generator being dead. We got just a few seconds out of the starter and were able to get it up again, but we couldn't go back to Lake Hood without a radio because we hadn't called from the ground first and sunset was coming. We followed the highway with no lights, no radio, no backup radio and headed for Birchwood in a hurry. The engine started to run a little rough about 2/3 of the way there and I was thinking I was getting a little carb icing so I pulled back the carb heat. Guess what? Nothing happened. It was so super duper when I got to do an emergency walkthrough with the examiner. I explained to her that my backup plan was that if the engine continued to run rough, I was going to land on the highway. I did try one more thing right after that, I increased to full throttle and it worked. When we got to Birchwood I tested how much juice we had to run a single call out, but no luck.

We circled twice, and no one was there so I went in for it. The best part about the entire thing was when I got to do a full throttle no flaps landing in the darn little plane. There was no juice to lower the flaps, and I didn't want to throttle back for fear of losing the engine to carb icing. It was and still is the only time I actually wished for a nice headwind.

Once we landed and got off the runway, I throttled back and it sputtered badly so we full-throttle taxi'd it off the taxi way over to a mechanic. I later heard that the carb heat didn't work because the cable came loose.

The checkride was an incomplete because we didn't do turns around a point. We did that a few days later on a 20-ish minute flight. It was a great experience and I couldn't be happier about how it happened. I am grateful that it happened while I was still in instruction rather than with pax.

907Pilot wrote: best part about the entire thing was when I got to do a full throttle no flaps landing in the darn little plane.

Whose advice was that???

Im sure you're leaving something out, because full throttle with no flaps = climbing or hauling ass. Neither of which make for a safer landing than just deadsticking in.

Anyway, glad you guys both survived your generator failures.

Zane wrote:

907Pilot wrote: best part about the entire thing was when I got to do a full throttle no flaps landing in the darn little plane.

Whose advice was that???

Im sure you're leaving something out, because full throttle with no flaps = climbing or hauling ass. Neither of which make for a safer landing than just deadsticking in.

Anyway, glad you guys both survived your generator failures.

It was hauling ass, scary as shit for me at the time. I felt like the plane was flying me instead of vice versa. We slipped to slow it as much as we could, but dead sticking was out of the question because if someone didn't see us and came out on the runway, we would have needed a way out.

Like I said, wouldn't have wanted to do it with anyone else. It was a great learning experience.

I left out the other 3 airplanes that we went through to get 1 freaking check ride... no joke. I was thinking of writing an article for AOPA and submitting it as a guest author to see if they were interested but there are parts of it I want to leave out for a few years or so... if not for legal reasons then for others...

I'd be happy to share the rest of the story over a cup of coffee if anyone is buying.

907Pilot wrote:I left out the other 3 airplanes that we went through to get 1 freaking check ride... no joke. I was thinking of writing an article for AOPA and submitting it as a guest author to see if they were interested but there are parts of it I want to leave out for a few years or so... if not for legal reasons then for others...

I'd be happy to share the rest of the story over a cup of coffee if anyone is buying.

Deal, next trip into Anchorage i would love to hear it

Chris

Zane wrote:Fuel gauges are useless, and Cessna electric ones are particularly lame. Make a habit of dipping tanks and watching the clock and you'll never have to rely on an electrical system to know how long the go stick will continue turning.

I always do that. I just got a little nervous because I had flown one hour the night before after topping off the tanks. When I checked the tanks in the morning it appeared I had used 10 gallons of fuel the night before, so I topped off again before leaving on a 3 hour flight. Even though it only took 5.5 to top it off I was a little bit concerned as to why the calibrated stick and the fuel I put in the tank didn't match. When I started having trouble with the power, and saw the gauges on empty, I just wanted to get back on the ground at my home airport.

I am really looking forwards to getting my Champ done. I would rather have to land the Champ on one of the dirt roads east of the river than the rental 150. Although I would be fine putting the 150 almost anywhere out there. It is fixed up pretty nice with vortex generators, wing tips, and some other stuff. Stalls around 40 ish clean,the roads out there are all straight and pretty flat, and a lot of the power lines are underground.

Zane wrote:Fuel gauges are useless, and Cessna electric ones are particularly lame. Make a habit of dipping tanks and watching the clock and you'll never have to rely on an electrical system to know how long the go stick will continue turning.

Exactly. Electric gauges are like some sort of Fisher-Price toy.

I don't even bother looking. If the needles are all the way to the right and not moving, then it means they are either stuck or I just finished topping them off. Any other indication simply means I have anything between 1 and 77 gallons left in the tanks.

It's easy to know within 1 gallon each side of the actual fuel on board by dipping, and to know within 3 gallons total after a 3-hour flight how much you have left by calculation during flight.

lesuther wrote:

Zane wrote:Fuel gauges are useless, and Cessna electric ones are particularly lame. Make a habit of dipping tanks and watching the clock and you'll never have to rely on an electrical system to know how long the go stick will continue turning.

Exactly. Electric gauges are like some sort of Fisher-Price toy.

I don't even bother looking. If the needles are all the way to the right and not moving, then it means they are either stuck or I just finished topping them off. Any other indication simply means I have anything between 1 and 77 gallons left in the tanks.

It's easy to know within 1 gallon each side of the actual fuel on board by dipping, and to know within 3 gallons total after a 3-hour flight how much you have left by calculation during flight.

I agree, next time I will trust my math. I am a student pilot a week away from a check ride and if I don't know for 100% sure, I am going home.

lesuther wrote:.....It's easy to know within 1 gallon each side of the actual fuel on board by dipping, and to know within 3 gallons total after a 3-hour flight how much you have left by calculation during flight.

You mean you don't have to have a fancy electronic gizmo with all the bells & whistles in the panel?

There is another concern with a generator/alternator failure o n the small continentals, and that is that the failure can be the gear/ cush drive breaking. This can turn into a engine failure in seconds flat since the mag drive gears are right there to catch the pieces when they come through.
I had this exact thing happen 20 years ago in a 150, and was lucky to just lose one mag, and was able to get back. This is something that is not talked about as a senario, but trust me, it can and did happen to me.
Any of the "smaller" continentals can potentially have this failure.

Yeah, and the pull starters on the small Continentals. A$k me about the $$$ when that gear fails and goes through the ass end of the engine, or what happens to the armature shaft on the generator when it gets bent from the above incident, and then that gear fails and goes through the ass end of the engine, again. It's a real fun way to spend your $$$$$$

As to the original post, generators, alternators, voltage regulators, and vacuum pumps all fail, all when you need them the most. As do ASI's and every other moving part in your airplane. That is why if I'm working at night, IMC, or especially night IMC single engine, I have a back-up means to navigate and communicate. A handheld Nav-Comm hooked up to an external antenna will boom out there about as far as your panel mount, and if nothing else, will at least let you click on runway lights.

Pretty dumb to make an emergency landing on a road in a perfectly fine running airplane because of a simple loss of electrical power.

Gump

So what I have learned from all this is that I did what I should have done.

1. turn everything off and let the battery build up some juice so maybe I can make a call out if needed
(this did work, the guys at Lake Aero heard me call out when entering the pattern, I did not recieve them)

2. Turn towards an airport. Even though I was closer to a crappy little ariport in the middle of nowhere, I was also just 10 miles to the west of my home airport. I saw no reason to land imeadiatly, but also didn't think it was wise to fly another 20 miles to my destination.

3. I climbed up another 1000 feet. At that point I was able to not only see my home airport, but also had several roads in site that I was familiar with and could use if things got worse.

4. Not panic, just fly the airplane.

I will have the Champ in the air soon. It has no radios or electrical so I have been shopping for a handheld and a GPS. I am also looking for an aircraft to start my instrument training in and plan to have both the handheld and the GPS with me as back up. My top choice right now for a handheld is that one Sporty's is always pushing with a rnav features. As far as GPS, it will come down to what I can afford, but if I could get whatever I want. the new 796 Aera looks awesome.

DavidB. wrote:
3. I climbed up another 1000 feet.

Yup, good thinking... As a general rule, when something isn't running right or goes AWOL, climb if ya can, while she's still running, your buying good time to start sorting it out, and enlarging your area you can glide to.