Since we seem to be discussing accidents, I guess it's time to talk about my own.

I had a single engine 206 loose oil pressure and RPM last week, and I elected to make a forced landing.

I was over very mountainous terrain, mostly trees and rocks, at about 8500msl. I was fire spotting near the Snake River, so in many cases, I was more than a mile above ground.

However, when everything happened, I wasn't over any suitable terrain. I managed to glide a mile or two to Horse Mountain lookout, a fire look out tower perched on top of a mountain. There was a private ranch 6 miles farther south that I was intending to glide to, but I couldn't leave an acceptable landing site for another one seperated by yet more trees and rocks.

I did the best I could, and the accident investigators told me I landed on a 20 degree upslope. It was tough to tell from the air, but it was an open alipne meadow at 7000MSL. It was just a lot steeper than it looked. On very short final, I remember shoving the throttle to the firewall to give me some energy to go up hill, but nothing happened. We hit pretty hard, and I think I lost the nose wheel at that time. The prop got it, and we slid on the prop until we were looking straight down at the dirt. The plane came to rest after dropping back onto the main gear.

I had one passenger with me, and we were both ok, aside from some sore muscles and a couple bruises. A helicopter heard us go down, and was there within 10 minutes.

I know when you work in this industry, these things happen. I hope that was my one and only. In some ways, it feels good to get it over with.

I got a day off, and then I flew 7 hours with 15 legs, all single engine. That was the toughest day of flying I think I've ever had. It's getting better. I'm pretty comfortable in the twins, but I'm still having a difficult time with single engines - pretty jumpy.

The only real advice I can offer after this experience is to remember that bad things can happen any time. You should have an escape plan in the back of your mind at all times if you're flying over stuff you can't land on.

Fly safe guys,

John[/i]

Glad you're in one piece, John, sounds like you did a pretty good job of getting it down.

I saw that one pop up on the NTSB's this week. Good job! Can't beat that deal with a stick. Walking and all! Could have been a lot sh*ttier than that.
I hear you on the "looking landable" but different in the flare thing. I've been playing with the Cub in some spots like that and I think that my bail rate after secondary close up is like 50% or better. You think it looks good from 500' but it's different when your looking up at it. I also think about it frequently when doing rehab in the mountains, some of that isn't so pretty to think about, like BANG...FLARE...THUD, especially when just starting out heavy with a full load.
The one thing I don't like about flying my kids into the woods is looking down and knowing that we've got a two or five or whatever mile stretch where we are eatin' it, period. I have even been considering floatation just for the trip to Pine. 206 quits on a mile final when the waters high you could get close to shore but managing a 5 and 7 year old while she's sinking wouldn't be easy. Then there's the swim.
Anywho, glad your still around. You guys end up with the Trislander? She was looking ridden hard.

Man glad to hear you walked away with bumps and bruises. Sounds like you did the things right.

Going to my folkses we have to fly over the Cascades right south of Crater lake. There's about a 10 minute stretch where if something happened I'd have to pick the smallest trees. There is a small meadow in the Crater Lake National Park that I would look at too. At least you could see the plane there vs in the timber. Been flying over that for 15 years, about 7 to 10 times a year and still have a pucker factor. Most likely always will.

Anway again, glad your OK.

Keep the shiney side up, Bub

Maybe next time I am at Chamberline Basin or Smiley Creek I ought to do an engine out practice. I am pretty good at my home airport with DA of about 4500 ft.

Think that a DA of about 8500 would be a bit different. Ya think.

Tim

John,

Congrats on the great job of getting yourself and your passenger back safely to the terra firma. I would imagine it would be difficult to put your mind at ease after such an incident. I swear my otherwise great running SEL has all kinds of strange noises and vibrations it saves for those night flights over inhospitable terrain. I guess the key is to use your logic and reason to convince yourself of the reliabilty of the modern powerplants,

Easy to say,,, tough to do.

Also, thanks for the fire updates you provide here. There's nothin' like having first hand info.

Mark

I think the key here is that you flew it all the way to the end, which would be important even without the little valley if you were ditching in trees. Too many of these end with an attempted stretched glide and stall/spin, when a survivable outcome could have some from a crashing landing.

Nice job, glad you are here to share this story. I guess this belongs in Live To Tell.

Good job,
Now that you have checked that block, maybe you don't have to do it again.
Over water is worse for me, but down here there are no mountains. I have a ferry flight to Honduras next week, 900 miles over water. after a while you just cope, but I have never really gotten comfortable with it.
Hey, it's a living, and a lot better one than any of the earth pigs have
Do you know what caused the engine failure?

Thanks for the good words everyone.

I meant to mention the density altitude as well. With the information I have, I figured the DA was almost 9,000MSL, which gave me a true airspeed of roughly 75kts with 65kts indicated.

We haven't figured out what happened to the engine. It's going back to Continental for a tear down, as it was still pretty new. We'd all like to know what happened.

The bit that scares me even more is I was scheduled to track wolves with that plane that day, and we're usually low and circling trying to get a visual on them. The USFS called, and we bumped the tracking flight to another plane. I shudder to think how that would have turned out. I think I'll be changing my tracking techniques.

I had a lot of luck that day. I'm pretty sure I cashed in all my good karma points too.

Fly safe guys,

John

John,
Coming back from the Maule fly in at Valier, we crossed all that stuff on a diagonal, direct to Caldwell. There were some stretches where the biggest flat thing I could see was the top of my cowling. Ridges too narrow to land on and slopes too steep to keep anything from sliding all the way to the bottom. It's an unsettling feeling to realize that it's gonna be lunchtime if the Lycoming decides to take a time out.

I only hope I can handle it as well as you did if the subject ever comes up. In my nightmare scenario, I scream like a girl and then make a little yellow mark on a big rock in the middle of nowhere.

YB

Engine failure is certainly a possibility, but thankfully it is rare these days.

Congratulations on getting it down in a condition that nobody got hurt. Been there, done that, happily walked away.

I would, however, respectfully point out that a light twin, depending on the engines, might not fare much better with one caged. A 9,000 DA is higher than the single engine ceiling on a lot of those things, even light.

I spent a lot of time low, working the airplanes. I had one catastrophic engine failure, and two partial power losses, both of which resulted in a forced landing. It happens.

Good maintenance helps, but it's no guarantee.

If it was totally safe and easy, they'd call it watching television,

Keep up the good work, in any case.

MTV

I think the stats are that you are more likely to be killed in a light twin from an engine failure, than a single. I have always assumed that there a lot of people out there flying twins that can' t really handle an engine failure.
I remember reading as a kid that Charles Lindberg intentionally chose a single engine design, based on that the more engines you had only increased the likelyhood of an engine failure.

The Weed FBO guy flies a turbo skymaster for the forest service and he thinks it is the greatest. High wing, two engines and it flyies pretty good on one.

Tim

I would think the push me pull you airplane would be one of the exceptions to the rule with the centerline thrust.

Depends on which engine pukes, actually. They aren't the most spectacular performers on one, though the turbo helps.

MTV

I don't get too excited about Skymasters. A buddy of mine flys OV-10s for the CDF, and they use a 337 for training, and it sounds like it's tough to talk guys into it.


Like you guys said, the stats aren't good for light twins. We've had one of our own to prove it.

I know full well every time I take off in an Islander with a full load, I need both engines, or we're landing, probably not where we want to either.

Hey Lowflyin' G3, we are running the trislander. It's doing ok, we're running it quite a bit under gross though. There's a picture in my gallery of it at Indian Creek.

Skymasters have never received much respect. Let's see, "skythrasher", "mixmaster" are a couple of the not so endearing terms I can recall (seems like there were others) When they used to use them for spotting out of Columbia, one pilot said flying a Skymaster was like climbing in a trash can and having some body beat on both ends with a hammer.

I have seen a couple of tricked out skymasters that looked like they would be a very comfortable plane to fly.

Actually, considering the power to weight ratio, the Skymaster isn't any worse than a lot of other light twins as far as single engine performance. They are good observation platforms compared to most light twins.

In any light twin, the remaining motor after an engine failure will take you to a landing, though it may not be precisely where you'd like to land.

MTV

"I think the stats are that you are more likely to be killed in a light twin from an engine failure, than a single. "

The tough part about statistics in the real world is accurately collecting the data points. I would say that an extremely high number of single engine aircraft engine failures result in an incident worthy of a report, although I have even heard first hand of those occuring in the pattern that were landed safely without further injury / damage and quietly rolled into the shop for repairs. However, knowing that has occurred with single engine aircraft, how many have occurred then, with multiengine aircraft that descended safely - single engine- to an airport and were repaired without government reporting and entry into the "stats".
Matt

P.S. John - great job! In my semi-vigilance to keep an emergency landing site in mind, when flying in Hell's Canyon I have previously thought about the choice of trying to go into an upslope "meadow" or to make it to one of the strips down in the canyon below. For those not familiar, there's not much in the way of open low angle terrain at the top of the canyon - even worse below the "rim". In weighing the options I considered the possibility of surviving the "landing" on the upslope only to roll/slide back into the abyss. If you give up the option at the top and don't make your strip in the canyon below you're looking at lots of terrain that can be taken for granite!
BTW, one of my instructors had engine failure and gone into a mountain-side in Alaska when he was flying C119 Boxcars. He was able to punch the rocket assist to help him match the upslope. I guess the 206 doesn't come with that option.

I'm curious as to the militairy's results using the 337 ("Oscar-Deuce") for FAC duty in Vietnam. Other than getting shot at, how did they do?
There's a pretty good movie entitled "Bat 21", adapted from (amazingly enough) a book of the same name- which was also pretty good. I recommend them both. The movie had some good flying scenes of not only the O-2, but also some helo's.

Eric