Vintage Instructor THE
BY DOUG STEWART
Lesson Learned For me, one of the most important phases of a flight comes after the engine has been shut down and the airplane rolled back into the hangar. It’s that phase when I debrief myself on the job I have done as a pilot during the flight just completed. When necessary, I tend to be harsh on myself, but by being harsh I help myself continually learn and improve as a pilot. However, when the flight ends in the disaster of crashing into trees upon takeoff, and my passenger and I end up in the hospital with multiple serious injuries, the word “harsh” in describing how I debriefed myself hardly suffices. Indeed, it doesn’t come close to describing the emotions I went through during the early weeks following the accident I had late this summer, which was recounted in last month’s issue of Vintage Airplane. Although many of my trusted friends and associates who called and wrote offering words of concern, support, and wisdom said that I should not be too hard on myself as I dissected the events of the accident, it was virtually impossible for me not to be. The process had started even before the ambulance, with me on board, commenced the journey to the hospital from the accident site. There were so many unanswered questions running through my mind, but the most important one to me was, “What could or should
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I have done differently to avert this disaster?” Why didn’t I abort the takeoff the instant the thought occurred to me? Why had I continued and lifted off as soon as we reached rotation speed? What was I thinking?
But as I made these computations . . . I realized one of the major mistakes I had made. I recalled thinking, when I first thought of aborting the takeoff, that I probably would end up running off the end of the runway and damaging my airplane. Thus, as soon as I saw rotation speed on the airspeed indicator, I decided to continue with the takeoff. Mind you, not more than two seconds passed between seeing the airspeed drop from 55 to 52 and then come back up to the rotation speed of 65. I knew that under normal conditions my Cardinal should have no problems clearing the trees. Earlier in the day, I noted how well the engine was running, which reinforced the decision to continue. (Flying up that morning, I was running the engine lean of peak and made special note that CHTs were about 50
degrees below typical temperatures when operating ROP (rich of peak), that I was burning about 1-1/2 gallons less fuel per hour, and, best of all, that the engine was purring and really seemed to like it.) In light of those previous thoughts, it never entered my mind that that very same engine might have decided to “head south.” Perhaps you can see how I was lulled into a sense of complacency by those facts, as I viewed them. The engine had appeared to be running great; neither the density altitude nor the weight and balance posed any issues. Although I had not referred to the performance charts that day, I was intimately familiar with the “typical” performance of my own airplane and knew that there shouldn’t be any problems whatsoever in clearing the trees, which stood more than 2,500 feet from where we started the take-off roll. As an aside, during my recovery in the weeks following the accident, I had more time than usual to get some reading done. One of the books I chose to reread was Fate Is the Hunter by Ernie Gann. In that book, he describes a similar incident that happened to him in Agra, India. It was summertime, and he was taking off in a C-87, a lessthan-stellar performer. He had ordered a light load of fuel so that he would be able to get the best performance possible in order to clear the Taj Mahal, which stood just beyond
the end of the runway. As he headed down the runway, he realized all was not as it should be. “I already sense something is wrong,” he wrote. “We are halfway down the runway and have only achieved sixty miles an hour. … Appreciation through habit is nearly instantaneous, but understanding is not. What the hell is wrong now? … Yet all is apparently in order. These are the moments of truth in a pilot’s life when he must decide within seconds whether he should abandon take-off and jump the brakes, or fully commit his airplane to flight. There is still room for choice.” Mr. Gann made the same choice I did. He decided to commit to flying. The similarities don’t end there. As he broke ground and lumbered out of ground effect, he realized that he wouldn’t clear the Taj Mahal unless he took some nonstandard action. And just as I did, in order to clear the first set of trees in my path, he deployed more flaps, which ballooned him over the Taj, just narrowly missing workers who were in the process of restoring the building. After clearing the Taj Mahal, Gann had no other obstacles in his path and now could afford to lose some altitude as he cleaned up the airplane to get a climb going. I, however, didn’t have that luxury. More trees stood in my path. Once Gann arrived at his destination, he found that, unbeknownst to him, the fuel tanks had been topped off, contrary to his fuel order. He had not checked the tanks and thus was about 3 tons heavier on takeoff than he thought he would be. He had the answer to his problems shortly after the flight ended. For me, an answer is not yet forthcoming. I am still waiting for the NTSB probable cause report. They have downloaded the information from my engine monitor and GPS, and they have the engine. They saw, in their initial investigation, that there was no scarring on the propeller blades save for some
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curling at the tip of one blade, giving some indication that the engine stopped as soon as the prop hit the first branch, which is evidence that the engine was not making any power at all, so to speak, when we hit the trees. Nonetheless, I still have not received a solution from the NTSB. Whereas the NTSB is slow in coming up with an answer to help me solve the riddle of what went wrong, the FAA helped me out, albeit indirectly, when I received a certified letter from them informing me that I would have to take a recertification checkride (the infamous 709) to the Commercial Pilot Practical Test Standards on “performance and limitations; and short field take-off with maximum performance climb.” In preparing for the oral portion of the “ride,” I pored over the performance tables, coming up with the performance I should have had on the day of the crash. Even with a fudge factor added that took into consideration that the airframe was more than 30 years old, with “draggy” worn-out paint, and that I wasn’t under the employ of the Cessna folks as a test pilot, we only needed 1,560 feet to clear a 50-foot obstacle. But as I made these computations— not only for the day of the accident but also for the day of the test—with my FAA inspector on board, I realized one of the major mistakes I had made. And from that realization I have learned at least one very important lesson.
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It’s a mistake I have made, not only as a pilot, but also as an instructor. And it is a mistake that I see many other instructors make as well. When so many of us teach short-field takeoffs and maxi mum-performance climbs, the big emphasis always seems to be on clearing the obstacle. We all know the drill of the short-field takeoff. Get as much runway as possible; hold the brakes as you apply full power; assuring full power, release the brakes, allowing the stick to “float” as you accelerate; lift off at the proper rotation speed; and accelerate to VX (best angle climb speed) until clear of the obstacle. Everything we do in the short-field takeoff is predicated on clearing the obstacle, but therein lies the mistake. When one uses the performance charts for the airplane, the first figure that one obtains as the planning for the takeoff is done is the ground roll. Yet how often do we skip over that number and move on to find out if we will have sufficient distance from the obstacle to clear it? Had I done the actual planning on the day of the accident, with all the correct information relative to density altitude, wind, weight and balance, and runway surface and gradient, I would have found out that I needed 960 feet for a ground roll. Then, when my airspeed faltered, knowing that I was about 200 feet beyond the 960 required, there would have been no hesitation in pulling the throttle to idle and aborting the takeoff. I would
have been aided and abetted in the decision by sound fact rather than by a subjective guess. So although I still don’t have a complete answer to what happened, and I might have to wait quite some time before the NTSB comes up with its “probable cause,” hopefully discovering why the engine stopped making power, I have learned a very valuable lesson: Even when you are intimately familiar with your airplane and its performance, you shouldn’t get complacent about doing the required planning. And when you do that planning, consider absolutely all of the elements, not just the end result. Otherwise you might not be as lucky as I was, and instead of looking down at the daisies, you could be looking up at them. Also remember that regardless of how many hours you have in your logbook, the learning never ends. I learned a very valuable lesson in this episode of my flying career. May you not have to learn in such a dramatic way. May you be blessed with blue skies and tail winds while you continue, as I do, to learn more and more about the wonderful world of flight. Doug Stewart is the 2004 National CFI of the Year, a NAFI Master Instructor, and a designated pilot examiner. He operates DSFI Inc. (www.DSFlight. com) at the Columbia County Airport (1B1) in Hudson, New York. Editor’s Note: A pair of copy-editing goofs introduced long after Doug submitted his article for publication crept into the January issue’s article. First off, the line concerning “... the houses actually get bigger rather than smaller” should read: “In this regime, you will notice that if you increase backpressure on the stick, rather than making the houses get smaller, they actually get bigger.” The other error that crept in was an incorrect spelling out of IAS, which is, of course, Indicated Air Speed. Our apologies to Doug for the introduction of the errors into the copy he submitted.—HGF