FLYING LESSONS for August 8, 2013 Suggested by this week s aircraft mishap reports

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Thomas Gallagher
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FLYING LESSONS for August 8, 2013 Suggested by this week s aircraft mishap reports FLYING LESSONS uses the past week s mishap reports to consider what might have contributed to accidents, so you can

In almost all cases design characteristics of a specific make and model airplane have little direct bearing on the possible causes of aircraft accidents, so apply these FLYING LESSONS to any airplane

You are pilot in command, and are ultimately responsible for the decisions you make. FLYING LESSONS is an independent product of MASTERY FLIGHT TRAINING, INC. www.mastery-flight-training.

1 FLYING LESSONS for August 8, 2013 Suggested by this week s aircraft mishap reports FLYING LESSONS uses the past week s mishap reports to consider what might have contributed to accidents, so you can make better decisions if you face similar circumstances. In almost all cases design characteristics of a specific make and model airplane have little direct bearing on the possible causes of aircraft accidents, so apply these FLYING LESSONS to any airplane you fly. Verify all technical information before applying it to your aircraft or operation, with manufacturers data and recommendations taking precedence. You are pilot in command, and are ultimately responsible for the decisions you make. FLYING LESSONS is an independent product of MASTERY FLIGHT TRAINING, INC. This week s lessons: Wax On, Wax Off I was combining our annual business trip to EAA AirVenture with my friend, co-worker and some-time flight student s first dual cross-country flight. He had flown his first solo in a Cessna 172 about two weeks before, so we spent an hour getting familiar with the four-seat, fixed-gear, 180 horsepower Beechcraft Sundowner we would fly to Oshkosh. The following night, the evening before our trip, we spent about three hours planning and briefing for the flight. FLYING LESSONS readers know I m a big fan of GPS and moving maps for situational awareness, but I also see a lot of complacency among pilots who spend their lives flying the magenta line. My experience with flying students, and the NTSB investigation reports, show many pilots are lulled into incomplete flight planning when they have the ability to load up a quick flight plan or a direct to routing. It s when things don t go as planned that the situationally complacent pilot can get into trouble. To start my friend off right with his navigation lesson, then, I split the roughly sixhour flight into three legs. Each leg would employ a different brand of navigation, I explained. The end result would be a more situationally aware pilot. I didn t know at the time that this would turn into a powerfully positive lesson for my student. The first leg was from Wichita Beech Field to Atchison, Kansas Amelia Earhart Airport (it would be too ironic to get lost trying to get there). To start the planning I had my student plot a direct-to flight using ForeFlight on his ipad. The first portion of this hour-and-a-half route is shown here. I then asked my student if he saw anything on the chart that looked like a good ground reference that went in the same direction. He identified the Kansas Turnpike, Interstate Highway 35, that runs from just east of KBEC to Topeka, Kansas. From Topeka, a prominent two-lane highway and rail line swings around the north end of a large lake and then goes directly to the destination airport.

2 Could you simply take off and follow the roads and other ground references to find Atchison? I asked. Sure, he replied. That s what we ll do, then, I continued. Pulling out a paper Sectional chart, I told him we were going to put away the ipad for the first leg of our trip and fly the old-fashioned way: by using pilotage. I had my student circle prominent landmarks along the way and, using a plotter (remember those?) measure the distance between landmarks. I had him complete a paper flight log with distances, distances remaining, and places to put estimated and actual times crossing and times en route. Given our airplane was to be full of fuel, and that it can cruise about five hours with VFR reserves, I suggested that our maximum time aloft should be no more than four hours, and explained a simply fuel management strategy for him to include in his written flight log. Once we were in the air I made him identify landmarks, write down the times he crossed each, and figure (using an honest-to-goodness E6B whiz wheel circular computer) the time to the next landmark and time to destination at every landmark. My objective was to make him keep his eyes outside the airplane, and to actively check his position and estimate the time remaining throughout the flight. After easily finding Atchinson, fueling up and waiting about an hour for weather to clear our next stop (a valuable LESSON in its own right), we launched on our next planned leg two hours flying Victor airways using VORs and no GPS. As we flew the airways I kept quizzing my student on our position, making him use roads and rivers and railroads on the map to confirm which town we were passing over, and frequently asking him to point to the nearest airport not on the chart, but by pointing at it out the window. The nearest airport feature on this flight was the student pilot s index finger pointing outside. This was his first experience with VORs, but I wanted him to be constantly backing up his position with pilotage. On the third leg I let him fly a GPS-direct route using his ipad moving map. But I still quizzed him on town identification and pointing to the nearest airport. Basic pilotage was a a tool used to crosscheck the GPS. My student had no trouble flying a straight path along the magenta line, while at the same time remaining very aware of precisely where he was and what direction would take him to the nearest airport. And so it was on the first leg of our trip home, from Appleton, Wisconsin to Pella, Iowa, that this learning came to fruition. I had let my student plan a GPS-direct VFR flight using the ipad backed up by pilotage and a few VOR cross-bearings. A misty rain had blown through a couple hours before our departure, leaving us with a 6000-foot ceiling and good but not excellent visibility, about seven miles. Our destination was still reporting IFR but was three hours down the pike, and conditions en route were generally high overcast. Our before-takeoff briefed plan: fly as far as VMC permits, and land well before conditions grew worse. We could turn around at any point before entering or above IMC, and a turn to the east would take us toward improving conditions at any time. After leveling at 4500 feet for cruise and leaning the mixture, I called Flight Service and we activated our VFR flight plan. I demonstrated filing a Pilot Report (PIREP) and then asked for an update on the weather up ahead. Central Iowa was still IMC, but conditions as far as the Mississippi River were reported as good. As we flew into southwestern Wisconsin, however, a few clouds began to build beneath us, at maybe about 1000 feet. The puffy bits of fog multiplied as few flew on, until they would be better described as a scattered layer. It looked like the low clouds were filling in ahead of us. And then he did it. Without any prompting from me at all, my student announced he thought we needed to divert and land. He immediately turned toward the nearest suitable airport, about seven miles to the east, and began a shallow descent. I helped him plan his descent and arrival, because he d only come into a strange airport a few times in his entire life, and we had to maneuver around a few low puffy clouds to remain VFR. As we descended he deftly used

But he did tell me after we landed that he had no trouble deciding it was time to land, because we d talked about the hazards of overflying clouds when VFR, and found the airport easily because I

3 ForeFlight and the charts to find the airport information, listen to AWOS, and determine the runway and pattern altitude he d use. Would he have successfully located a suitable airport so fast if I had not emphasized pilotage as a backup to all aerial navigation, even GPS? I m not certain. But he did tell me after we landed that he had no trouble deciding it was time to land, because we d talked about the hazards of overflying clouds when VFR, and found the airport easily because I insisted he be tracking his precise position every step of the way. As we debriefed I mentioned he had just experienced a situation that most pilots never get to see under controlled conditions, with a CFI. Instead, I told him, most pilots facing their first brush with nearby IMC do so alone and, I m afraid, often without the skills to prevent the encounter from becoming an emergency. I expect these LESSONS will serve my student very well throughout his entire flying career. In the classic 1984 movie The Karate Kid, elderly karate sensei Mr. Miyagi subjects young apprentice Daniel LaRusso to a long and exhausting series of repetitive and seemingly pointless chores, appearing to be taking advantage of the young boy s desire to learn while wasting his time on menial tasks. One of the most powerful moments in the movie is when Daniel confronts the old man in his frustration, and Miyagi demonstrates the repetitive hand motions committed to muscle memory in each of the menial tasks is a vital jab or block to be used in karate competition wax on, wax off motions turned into mastery of the art. Only then do we see the extreme wisdom of Miyagi s instructional methods. I m no Mr. Miyagi, but I do make my students learn the basics of aviation and navigation. You never know when you ll need to draw on this practice and experience to alter the course of a flight or to save you from a hazardous situation. More to the point, if you have these practiced skills at the ready and know when to employ them, you may never even recognize how difficult or dangerous the situation could have become for a less-welltrained pilot. And that s why there is still a need for training and currency hand-flying, eyes outside, hand on the map (paper or electronic) stick-and-rudder flying in today s magenta-line, glass cockpit world: to master the art of aviation at all levels. Ideas? Comments? Suggestions? Let us know, at Mastery.flight.training@cox.net Thanks to AVEMCO Insurance for helping bring you FLYING LESSONS Weekly. See Contact mastery.flight.training@cox.net for sponsorship information.

4 Debrief: Readers write about recent FLYING LESSONS: Reader Charles Robertson joins the conversation about when it s time to overhaul with some insightful comments: An important factor on deciding risk/benefit to an engine overhaul is the infant mortality in a new engine. I'd much rather be behind a frequently run engine at 25% over TBO than 50 SMOH. The term infant mortality to describe an engine or component that fails soon after being put into service, most frequently an engine or cylinder that is damaged or quits within about 100 hours of being installed. It stands to reason that if an engine or component has a manufacturing defect or was installed incorrectly that it would fail sooner rather than later in the engine s life, simply because of the enormous stresses on these parts when under power. The fear of infant mortality in our engines, then, is the fear of manufacturing defect (either in the metals, the fabrication or the assembly of the engine) or mechanic/installer error. Recent history appears to show that many mechanical engine failures can in fact be classified as infant mortality cases. The question raised by FLYING LESSONS, however, is this: given that catastrophic engines failures do occur outside the infant mortality stage, and when they do they tend to involved high-time engines or components, is there any way to inspect or track trends in piston airplane engines to predict when these types of late-in-life catastrophic failures are about to occur? In other words, since it s fashionable (and arguably wise) to exceed the manufacturer s recommended Time Between Overhaul (TBO) when the regulatory structure permits, just how long after TBO is safe? If not an arbitrary number of hours or calendar years in service, then what tells us when enough is enough, and it s time to overhaul the engine? How can we make an informed decision, not one based on a predetermined number or put off in the interest of saving money with no science to back the economic decision? I responded to reader Charles: History supports your position. The question is, when is too much? How can we tell whether 10%, or 20%, or 50%, or more? Where do the risk curves cross? That's what I'd like to know. Charles replied: I'm a Mike Busch devotee. I don't think there's any reasonable way to tell. His position seems to be entirely run on condition with oil analysis. There are certainly good example of high utilization operators running 50% over TBO and beyond. It's not a perfect system - there will still be catastrophic failures, but I don't see evidence that any fixed time overhaul schedule will meaningfully reduce the risk. See You re right. There appear to be no predictors of bottom end failure, and after the infant mortality stage bottom end failure seems to be the greatest non-fuel cause of engine failures. Flying an engine to failure doesn't sound like a good risk management strategy any more than flying a vacuum/pressure pump to failure, given the historic consequences of those failures. I don't like arbitrary TBOs any more than you, but I would like to figure out how we can avoid flying to failure. An unnamed reader writes: Mike Busch might be able to shed some light on this - he's talked about his engines going well over TBO numerous times. Mike, a frequent Debriefer to FLYING LESSONS, has not chimed in yet. I did not run across him at Oshkosh for the first time in many years so I could not ask about this there (I was too busy to attend one of his many seminars). I'm hoping he'll come back with something scientific to support bottom-end trend monitoring, but having heard him speak many times, as well as being a friend, I don't think he has anything except "hope" to support his highly aggressive TBO-busting. He has told me before he manages the risk of flying past TBO by having two engines and taking simulator training frequently to be ready when his first engine gives out. Thinking about it, that may be the best risk management strategy of all.

5 I spoke with several engine experts about this at Oshkosh. I purposely did not talk to the manufacturers I highly value their opinions, and will ask them eventually, but their responses would be predictable and so I spoke with mechanics and overhaulers not directly related to the engine producers. To a person (ok, they were all men) they agree there simply is no way to tell what s going on inside the bottom end of the engine. As we ve already said in FLYING LESSONS, all the borsecoping and compression-checking in the world can t tell what s happing on the other end of the bottom of the cylinders. And every engine expert I spoke with said that oil analysis may indicate long-term wear, but it is not a reliable predictor of catastrophic failure. One mechanic noted that one engine manufacturer recently raised its recommended TBOs for most of its products under most circumstances. TBOs were generally raised from 1700 to 2000 hours. Why only 300 hours, when these engines have decades of service records? Maybe it s precisely because of that service history, the mechanic supposed. Perhaps they have developed very reliable but proprietary trend information that says three hundred extra hours is okay under most conditions, but 500 hours, say, is not. So we don t know. So where does this leave us? Pretty much precisely where we started. There is no way to determine the health of the bottom end of the engine short of splitting the case and tearing the engine down. Once you ve gone that far, you might as well overhaul. Until we have some reliable means of tracking engine trends in the lower end, then, we ll have to overhaul our piston engines at some arbitrary number of operating hours or calendar time in service TBO or some fairly low number of additional hours in the hopes things in the bottom end are still ok. It s just part of the cost of risk management and owning an airplane. A voice from my past Tom, Thanks for the question concerning TBO. I have the following comments: 1. You flew with me the day I first flew my Baby with her new engine (May 1996) Since that time I have flown her all those hours. 2. For the last ten years, I have had the same shop, same mechanics, perform all maintenance, They have been the only shop inside my Girl s engine ( Pacific Aircraft -Modesto, CA ) The owner (Head Mechanic) says from their inside "view" of the engine it looks like the cleanest engine that they have ever worked on. 3. I have either supervised or changed the oil & filter myself every hours since the new engine was installed in I use Exxon Elite only in the engine. 4. Baby now has 1600 hours + on that engine and has had 4 new ECI cylinders installed during that time. Yes, two Continental cylinders are still hanging in there. 5. As far as I can determine, she runs perfect never has failed me and I intend to run the FREM BB about hours. 6. We will in all likely hood have to install the final two new cylinders in the next year or so. Thanks for your FLYING LESSONS, Bob Corbett Wow, great to hear from you, Bob! Thank you for your comments about my life s work. Keep monitoring your engine as best you can, make a safety decision, not a financial one when it s time to overhaul, and fly safely. What do you think? Mastery.flight.training@cox.net It costs a great deal to host FLYING LESSONS Weekly. Reader donations help cover the expense of keeping FLYING LESSONS online. Be a FLYING LESSONS supporter through the secure PayPal donations button at For piston Beech pilots Thank you, generous supporters. It really helps. The Beech Weekly Accident Update is posted at

6 Personal Aviation: Freedom. Choices. Responsibility. Thomas P. Turner, M.S. Aviation Safety, MCFI 2010 National FAA Safety Team Representative of the Year 2008 FAA Central Region CFI of the Year FLYING LESSONS is 2013 Mastery Flight Training, Inc. For more information see or contact

NEW FAA REPORTS THIS WEEK

NEW FAA REPORTS THIS WEEK Beechcraft Piston Aircraft Accidents posted 12/3/2009 through 12/10/2009 Official information from FAA and NTSB sources (unless otherwise noted) Editorial comments (contained in parentheses), year-to-date