I got myself into quite a sketchy situation yesterday. I was flying back at the Knik, just practicing gravel bar landings. I landed once, played with the dog a bit. Then, I set up my video camera to get a few landings on video. I went by the first time, no problem. I swung back around for another landing. Somewhere between late base to final, I went to put more pressure on the right rudder, the BAM I heard a snap. The right rudder pedal went straight to the firewall. I had no rudder. At the time, I thought the whole rudder system was broken, I didn't have time to really think it all through. I was more focused on the fact that I was not correctly aligned with my initial landing spot. I was too far left, on the very far left of the gravel bar. There was not much room at all. I thought for sure I was going to end up in the river or on my back somewhere. I pulled full flaps and tried to get as slow as I could. I had at most 150 feet!? of landing space. When I touched down, I think I hit water first, trying to use as much of the landing area as possible. Fortunately, before landing I had the quick thought to put full back trim. I was on the brakes the moment I touched down. I bounced a bit and kept going. I quickly saw the end of the allotted gravel bar disappearing in front of me. I was on the brakes as much as I reasonably could without prop striking. I saw about 10 feet of gravel bar left between me and the water. I jumped on the brakes even harder, full press. The tail rose higher than the nose, I must've been centimeters away from a prop strike. I remember saying "Oh $H!TTTTT" as I saw myself on the low end of the teeter totter. I thought it was game over. I released the brakes as fast as fast as I could, then the tail went back down onto the ground. I rolled a bit further, being slow enough, I hit my right brake to roll away from the water. I came to a complete stop. No prop strike. No damage.

Okay, so looking back at this. Here are my thoughts and facts of the matter. I didn't know exactly what had broken while I was flying, I just knew I had no rudder. I definitely wasn't going to test out hitting the left rudder, seeing that I was seconds away from landing and I was pointed too far left already. My thought was that I needed to get down as soon as possible, it felt like a full-fledged emergency. I had 5-10 knots of a left quartering headwind. I felt the airplane still wanting to weathervane to the left. At one point on short final, I briefly dropped the right wing trying to counteract some of the left turning tendency. If I had known exactly what had happened to my airplane or if I had more time to think, rather than right in the middle of landing, then I probably would've went around and attempted to realign better. That wasn't the case though, I had to go off of instinct. So that's how I'm defending not taking that option in my mind.

I called my mechanic and lucky enough he was able to fly out and fix me up. I flew the plane out no problems. He mentioned that the pin in there was not stainless steel. So they tend to weather overtime and can get brittle and break.

What blows my mind is that how does something like this not deserve some sort of AD. This could've killed me, I'd be surprised if I was the only one to have this happen to. If any of y'all have a PA-12, I'd recommend getting these pins checked out, make sure their stainless steel and strong. I'll be adding this to my pre-flight checklist.

Earned my stripes boys.

Here's a picture of the right rudder, note the rod completely off of the rudder.




Here's a picture of the left rudder, what that pin looked like:

Your survival instinct was good to get down with what you had. If slow and able to alight in an unobstructed area, getting up high enough to really hurt yourself in order to sort out control linkage problems would not be a good option, in my opinion.

That's one advantage to heel brakes.

Good work.

No way I’d land with a control failure till I had some time to figure out what happened first.

And, on a short, remote gravel bar, surrounded by water?

Holy Crap!

Go around, smoothly and gently, then figure out what you have and what you don’t, then take the plane somewhere there is a large landing surface AND assistance if it goes sideways. Practice with what you have enroute.

There are very few situations in flying where you really HAVE to make a split second decision. You could easily have wound up upside down in water and maybe unconscious…..

Very bad choices, but with luck, a good outcome.

MTV

contactflying wrote:Your survival instinct was good to get down with what you had. If slow and able to alight in an unobstructed area, getting up high enough to really hurt yourself in order to sort out control linkage problems would not be a good option, in my opinion.

mtv wrote:No way I’d land with a control failure till I had some time to figure out what happened first.
And, on a short, remote gravel bar, surrounded by water?
Holy Crap!
Go around, smoothly and gently, then figure out what you have and what you don’t, then take the plane somewhere there is a large landing surface AND assistance if it goes sideways. Practice with what you have enroute.
MTV

There are two sides to it, for sure. As you can see from above. First instinct was, I think I have enough control and area to land or at least to get down on the ground and not kill myself, but I need to do it now. When you're less than 100 feet off the deck, there's not much time to decide what to do or to look around and figure it out. Obviously there's a debate at hand, but to me that just means I was right in that 1 of those decisions had to be made and had to be made quick. In an alternate reality, say I did go-around, the issue could've compounded in countless ways. Who knows what might've happened. If it ever happens again, maybe my decision will be different, but I hope to never find out. I'm satisfied with the result of this experience either way.

"Very bad choices" may have saved my life.

On a side note, had I not had a seaplane door, I could've used the door to act as sort of a rudder.

High altitude orientation is to take time, settle down, sort it out... the climb, confess, communicate thing. Low altitude orientation is that most things are a done deal in six seconds. I only had one of the former when I went IMC in a Tri-Pacer from doing the school solution 180 on my first cross country as a Private Pilot. I couldn't find anyone to confess to on my five transmitter crystal Super-Homer radio with no whistle stop. Turned right back into the front coming out of Oklahoma and landed after my first hour PIC actual with needle, ball, and airspeed before getting to VMC on the other side. Could have just landed on the road, which became my normal solution later in my low altitude career.

Rudder comes off plane in flight: no worse off than having only left rudder. But time for a plan.

Time is your friend when things fail.

You’re lucky. Don’t confuse a little luck with skill and good decision making.

MTV

mtv wrote:You’re lucky. Don’t confuse a little luck with skill and good decision making.

MTV

It was a mildly traumatic event and I used my skill to land that plane without injury to myself, others, or my plane. I landed in a STOL fashion, on a gravel bar, with rudder failure. Successfully.

The fact that you comment on a post such as this condescendingly, shows your contrarian and narcissistic views on life, more than likely stemming from your superiority complex. I understand you are attempting to compensate for your microphallus, so I won't hold it against you. Must be a tough life.

Also Mike, on a side note, did you realize your family tree isn't supposed to be a circle?

Now, now boys!

Logan, I still think you did well. Mike usually has some valid points but they're from the perspective of thousands of hours and the luxury of Monday morning. Suspend your ego and process the data he's adding like any good machine learning project Getting personal with the insults might be a little over the top.

MTV, my friend, cut some slack. This fellow is sharing among his brethren and we should be thankful anymore shares at all anymore here. It's easy to offer suggestions on what would have been a better reaction to the incident without being negative. Logan is obviously an intelligent person receptive to feedback, perhaps pushed over the edge in his last post.

As for an AD...I'm no A&P so i don't know what precipitates one but common hardware work cycle failures will probably fall into the service bulletin category for stuff to keep an eye on. And since the PA-12 is what, 70+ years in the air, Piper probably isn't doing much for them. You could thread those rods (rolled of course) and put on a Heim joint style rod end and use a proper bolt.

After thinking about this I still am not sure which camp I subscribe to. I can see wanting to get it on the ground if you were really low and slow and suspected a catastrophic control failure. But then again if it was flyable I'd rather land in front of my hangar and push the remains in.

You might want to read Mike's debrief points again without letting it get to your ego this time. I think you're getting the wrong lesson learned from the outcome as well. If your only options were land or crash then I get it. "Winding the clock" a bit and buying some time to think about things is all he's recommending. If that's an option in an emergency, I'll choose it 100% of the time.

I was a bird in the hand guy. If we survive, the argument is good for either solution. Bird in the hand is acceptance of incident or accident. Without after the fact information (long time to sort it out ie. altitude) the let's extend and fix this altogether leads to fewer incidents and accidents...and the same number of fatalities. There is no way to compare results except that we who have had many incidents and accidents have little, other than we are alive, to celebrate. Those with no incidents or accidents and are alive do. The more major problem, in my opinion, is how often very well trained pilots with perfect records have fatal aircraft accidents. More than we screw ups? I don't know. They haven't run stats on that yet, nor will they I expect. In many individual accident reports, however, it seems common that flight was continued to try to make it back to the airport. In this case, that option would have likely worked out as Mike says. CompSciAndFly would not have known this, however, until after making the decision to climb, communicate, confess, etc. Oh yeh, that works is great after it actually works.

TXWagon wrote:You might want to read Mike's debrief points again without letting it get to your ego this time. I think you're getting the wrong lesson learned from the outcome as well. If your only options were land or crash then I get it. "Winding the clock" a bit and buying some time to think about things is all he's recommending. If that's an option in an emergency, I'll choose it 100% of the time.

If you read the original post, you would have seen this:

If I had known exactly what had happened to my airplane or if I had more time to think, rather than right in the middle of landing, then I probably would've went around and attempted to realign better. That wasn't the case though, I had to go off of instinct. So that's how I'm defending not taking that option in my mind.

As such, there was no need for the uppity and condemning nature of the comment stating the same thing I had already indicated. His "debrief points" weren't his own. Stating the same thing I already mentioned and then telling me it took no skill and that I made very bad choices, is unambiguously belittling and non-constructive. There's no ego involved and there never was. It's a forum, I was literally looking for feedback. I'm simply just not gonna let someone talk down on me without basis. All thoughts are welcome, but dumb one's will be called out.

Logan, seriously, “there’s no ego involved, and there never was”??? Holy cats!

Sorry if I pissed you off, but if you are going to survive in aviation, you need to at least CONSIDER different points of view than your own.

Here’s what I read, just now quoted from your initial post:
“ Somewhere between late base to final, I went to put more pressure on the right rudder, the BAM I heard a snap.”

Somewhere between base and final is nowhere near being in the middle of landing.

Continuing that approach without knowing what was going on was risky. My point was it would have been better to continue to fly, figure out what was going on, like what you atill had and what you didn’t, and maybe could it be FIXED.

I DID NOT question or doubt your skills in any way. I questioned your JUDGEMENT.

Both of those are necessary to survive in flying.

And, here’s one more point, and I’ll leave you to it:

You stated in your initial post that the bar you landed on was small. You successfully landed there, so obviously, if it was a tight bar, your skills were good.

But, now you call your mechanic and ask HIM to come out to a small bar to rescue you.

Had you simply flown it home, your mechanic wouldn’t have had to demonstrate HIS superior skills.

There’s a function on this site to block seeing a members posts, I believe. Feel free to block my posts from view. You’ve obviously already blocked any critique, so this is for others to think about.

And accept or reject at will, neither hurts my feelings at all. Neither does name calling, but that also says something about judgement.

MTV

CompSciAndFly,

First of all I commend you for sharing your fight adventures on this forum. It's fun to watch as of pilot who lives in the lower 48.

I commend you for sharing your experience with the loss of a flight control on this forum or any forum for that manner. I've learned over the years we can only we get better if we look back critically and analytically at any "unique" experience in the air. I spent a lot of time in the "pointy nose" world of aviation and the debrief was sacrosanct.

That being said I'm glad to see you had a successful outcome. One of the things I've learned over thousands of hours of flying is time is your friend. If you ever have the opportunity to build time take it. Sometimes the situation at hand may seem like there is no time. I like to asses the "time" bucket as simply- is the plane flyable, do I have gas, can I make time via go-around, vectors, holding etc. If the plane will fly I might be able to better ascertain what options I have. I always try to opt to building time if at all able. Sometimes I can't and I do understand that as well.

I also was brought up understanding in the world of aviation you have a bag of luck and a bag of tricks. Much like the scales of justice. I've been fortunate to have those balance out over the years. When I've needed a little of either the other fills up up a bit more.

Well done in a tough situation. I'm sure you have some good lessons learned and I'm grateful you shared your experience with the rest of us on BCP.

MW

MTV-

I'm sure you have been told at some point but BOLD is equal to yelling in an email.

MW

I'll try to cover your points one at a time, so you can keep up. Especially now that you're expanding on your initial thought process rather than slinging insults. Having reflection time is wonderful, it's how you get better. Now that you're learning that concept, let's move on.

mtv wrote:Sorry if I pissed you off, but if you are going to survive in aviation, you need to at least CONSIDER different points of view than your own.

This is NOT about considering other points of view, this is about you commenting derogatively. My consideration for the "point of view" you had, was aforementioned in the original post. The negative, extraneous and non-constructive aspects of your post is the issue here.

mtv wrote:I DID NOT question or doubt your skills in any way. I questioned your JUDGEMENT.

Haha. Okay, what do you call this?

mtv wrote:You’re lucky. Don’t confuse a little luck with skill and good decision making.

Moving on,

mtv wrote:You stated in your initial post that the bar you landed on was small. You successfully landed there, so obviously, if it was a tight bar, your skills were good.But, now you call your mechanic and ask HIM to come out to a small bar to rescue you. Had you simply flown it home, your mechanic wouldn’t have had to demonstrate HIS superior skills.

Here is exactly what I had stated,

I was too far left, on the very far left of the gravel bar. There was not much room at all.

No where did I state, "the bar I landed on was small." It's actually a decently sized gravel bar, plenty of room, over 1500+ feet in length. It was going to be no problem for even a 182 to land on the gravel bar if needed, as I had previously seen done more than once. The area where I was landing, because I was offset to the left, was much smaller. The gravel bar edge contours with the water, which was curved. I didn't require rescuing, after the plane was on the ground and the issue was diagnosed, I realized I had multiple options. One was to fly from the backseat, two was to stick the rod back in and bend the tip with my pliers to keep it in. I stayed on the safe side of the judgement. So, you're making assumptions here that are just way too farfetched, you're painting a picture in your head of the event and it's just not the reality of the situation. I hope it's becoming clear.

Lastly,

mtv wrote:There’s a function on this site to block seeing a members posts, I believe. Feel free to block my posts from view. You’ve obviously already blocked any critique, so this is for others to think about.

Oh no worries MTV, I know how computer's work. If I wanted to block you I would've already have done that. Your critique is more than welcome, as always, but your negativity and lack of social understanding is frightening.

Glad to hear you made it down safely. When you start getting near the end of a strip, you can always consider an intentional ground loop. I did some practice at Willow and a 15 MPH was not that bad. Get close to 20 and it gets scary. One trick to finding small stuff like that is to do a post flight inspection. You tend to be more relaxed and not thinking of trying to get in the air. Just pick a single wing, or other part of the plane and look at everything with a flashlight. A few weeks of flying and you will have everything looked at. Start now winter is just around the corner.
DENNY

. Your critique is more than welcome, as always, but your negativity and lack of social understanding is frightening.[/quote]

Interesting comment from the guy who seemed focused earlier on relative Dick sizes. Good grief!

Done with this useless “conversation”.

MTV

mtv wrote: Interesting comment from the guy who seemed focused earlier on relative Dick sizes. Good grief!
Done with this useless “conversation”.
MTV

Oh wow, I'm no clinical psychologist, but it seems I pegged you pretty well. That one in particular evidently hit home for ya, huh bud.

DENNY wrote:Glad to hear you made it down safely. When you start getting near the end of a strip, you can always consider an intentional ground loop. I did some practice at Willow and a 15 MPH was not that bad. Get close to 20 and it gets scary. One trick to finding small stuff like that is to do a post flight inspection. You tend to be more relaxed and not thinking of trying to get in the air. Just pick a single wing, or other part of the plane and look at everything with a flashlight. A few weeks of flying and you will have everything looked at. Start now winter is just around the corner.
DENNY

Thank you Denny! That's a good call on the intentional ground loop, I hadn't thought about that.

I hear ya on the post-flight inspection, that's a good idea. It definitely makes me curious if that pin had snapped that day or if it had been snapped for a while and the bar just happened to come out. It wasn't something I had ever thought about checking regularly, certainly will be now.

I've been picking through the plane pretty thoroughly the past couple of days. I got all of the pins changed out, screws tightened down, etc. I'm adding a few of those pins to my toolkit that I carry in the plane, along with safety wire. I had a spool of safety wire in the kit until about 2 weeks ago when I took it out to make space for some other tools. Perfect timing.