I learned about that…
The day I learned about flying… A moment’s inattention could easily have led to Peter Yarrow becoming a statistic, as he reports…
used to be the proud owner of a beautiful RV-8, G-GRVY, originally built by my friend Peter Lawton, before he sold it to me. She was his second -8 build and had a 200hp engine and constant speed prop, linked controls and throttles front and back. She was flawless… it was the pilot who wasn’t. This article is to help others learn from my potentially very dangerous situation, brought about entirely as a result of my poor airmanship. If pilots and crew learn from this and take a little extra care, then I will be pleased to have passed this on. I blush with embarrassment at my lack of judgement. At the time of the incident, I was a relatively experienced PPL with about 1,500 flying hours, including a US IR, and a single-engined trans-Atlantic crossing under my belt. I also had around 800 hours in a Grob 109B motor glider. You will see that many intentional engine-off landings in the Grob was to prove useful experience once you read the explanation of the following incident. My trip was to include a visit to the Orkneys, and then a return trip via Stornoway, Sollas Beach and Barra before returning to a farm strip in Hertfordshire. Having flown up to Kirkwall, and then to some of the lovely islands in the Orkneys, including Papa Westray, Sanday, Eday and Stronsay, I set course in beautiful weather to Barra, via Sollas Beach in the Outer Hebrides. Having dropped into these beautiful islands with ease,
I
Above The RV-8 parked on Sollas Beach, up to which point a tour of the Orkneys and Outer Hebrides had been wonderfully uneventful.
perhaps I became a little overconfident and over relaxed, and I had also landed at Barra and Sollas previously. At Barra I met up with friends, who were there on holiday, and we had one of the special ‘cockles off the beach’ lunches, which can be had at the airport restaurant. I then offered to take one of the youngsters for a tour around the island before heading south to Hertfordshire. This involved me removing the life raft and other safety equipment from the rear of the aircraft and setting them to one side by the airport fence. Having toured the island, I replaced the equipment in the rear seat, and prepared to head south. The beach at Barra is quite rough and corrugated, and I had a bumpy departure to the south-east. As I climbed out, I tried reducing the power to a climb setting, and found that the power could not be reduced. In the climb, this was not a worry, but when I reached the cruise height at about 6,000ft I was flying fast, but again no issue other than a higher than normal fuel consumption. But with plenty of avgas on board, this was not an issue either. I simply could not work out what was causing the throttle to be stuck at full power, so through the helpful services of Scottish ATC, I contacted Peter, the builder of the aircraft, by phone. He made some recommendations about how to land engine-off, which ATC helpfully relayed to me, but that was it.
50 | LIGHT AVIATION | June 2020
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22/05/2020 12:10
