guns or aviation
which does the press know less about? there’s a toughy.
Eyewitnesses said the plane was circling above the Brooklyn beach when its engine suddenly stalled, and the aircraft quickly plunged into the beach. The pilot tried desperately to right the four-year-old plane after it went into a tailspin, said Herbert Lecler, 51, who was fishing on the beach.
reading that, wouldn’t you get the impression that if you’re in a small single-engine prop plane and the engine gives out, you’re a goner? it’s the same story the all-knowing morons spew about guns. it was the gun that “went off”. it was the plane that “plunged”.
any private pilot will have had the power pulled on him at least a few times in training — some far more than that. one cool instructor o’ mine shut off my fuel valve while i wasn’t looking. the engine quit, and i immediately moved to get the plane flying at “best glide”, while looking for a suitable place to land. this is only difficult if you’re stupid. it requires little skill, but you do need above-average situation awareness — the same awareness all pilots should have before taking off.
cessnas fly well without power. they are stable without power. however, they can’t normally maintain altitude without power, so a pilot has to keep that in mind and accept 
that he must descend immediately. in the cessna 172 identified in the story, it would come down at 500-700 feet per minute if flown properly (moving forward at ~70-75 MPH), and still have airspeed enough (energy) with which to flare (arrest the descent prior to touchdown). this picture of a standard approach in a 172 shows the vertical speed indicator at 500 FPM down (see zoomed inset).
to get an idea of what that looks like in motion, view this .mpg of a crosswind landing. the vertical speed hovers around 500 FPM, and at the end i pull the power back completely. you’ll notice there’s no abrupt “plunge”. this is, with some allowance for understandable panic factor, the same rate of descent which all cessna 172 engine failures more than a few hundred feet above ground should see. the landing may be messy — even deadly — because of terrain, but there’s no excuse for “plunging” other than complete incapacitation of the pilot.
barring structure failure, the only reason one would go into a “tailspin” is if the pilot screwed the pooch. a spin can only be entered from a wing stall (“wing stall” referring not to the engine, but rather to a wing which has quit flying because it was angled too sharply against the relative wind. a spin is when one wing is stalled more than the other). a stall should not ever be entered unintentionally, but if it is, recovery is an easy thing when you keep your wits together. barring that, just take your hands and feet off the controls; the plane wants to fly. aviation wags have long joked that the best stall recovery device would be a boxing glove that comes out of the control yoke and knocks the pilot unconscious. sadly, it’s partly true; most stall/spin incidents are creations of the pilot, not some evil gremlin that targeted him. you’d never think that listening to the story though. engine quit (translation: aviation is inordinately dangerous and unpredictable), plane went into a spin because engine failed (translation: nobody’s fault), pilot “tried desperately to right” the plane (translation: he did everything possible), and they all died (translation: we are helpless).
do you think maybe the MSM has contributed to the decline of personal responsibility? i think it’s not even in doubt. language matters.
say what you want about good pilots of any persuasion, they all know about unintended consequences and, in their hearts, austrian economics. sometimes the worst thing you can do to an airplane is try desperately to right it.
“if you want to make an airplane go up, pull back on the stick. if you want to make an airplane go down, keep pulling back on the stick.”
whether pilots or not, 95% of the public is too stupid to ever learn the truth of it. the curse is that we inhabit the same planet with them.
May 21st, 2005 at 21:53
wow, interesting stuff, I actually feel more educated on the subject of aviation. First and last time I went up in a little plane, (piper cherokee) this brother got green in the gills from looking down at the little houses below. (They need a window vent on the right side, the pilot had breath like ass that didn’t help!) Same thing happened when I went hangliding, I kept looking down at this hawk circling below, next thing, I’m droppin’ yack bombs on the spectators. How are you supposed to keep from looking down? Ain’t shit to see ahead of you, or to either side. I’ll take the commercial route, with the cutesy little liquor bottles and the handy pillow anyday.
May 22nd, 2005 at 07:05
Good question, Charley — and a toughy indeed. But if one keeps in mind what the MSM has become — the other side of the mouth with which the politicians spew their lies — it isn’t surprising at all.
Anon, I’m LMAO at “dropping yack bombs”! I much prefer the private route over commercial, though: you can bring along all the liquor and pillows the plane can hold (plus yer guns too!), and you (and your luggage) won’t get felt up and ass-raped in the process of trying to get on the plane.
May 22nd, 2005 at 07:14
was that you, FatPossum? whoever you are, introduce yourself to sunni snake. sunni snake, perhaps FatPossum.
; )
May 22nd, 2005 at 07:32
Nice to meetcha’ Mrs. Sunni. Anonymous peeper of Brother Pig’s site that I am; I feel as I’ve already met you, sorry for my lurkingness. Heck, I fly commercial hoping I’ll get groped! (The ass raping thing I could live without.)
Pleasure to make your acquaintance ma’am,
the Obese Nocturnal Marsupial
May 22nd, 2005 at 20:21
Pleased to make your acquaintance, as well. No need to apologize for lurkingness on my account. :-) Uh, but I ain’t a Mrs.
June 9th, 2005 at 23:46
I agree with anonymous, interesting stuff. I am also a student pilot and stuff like scares me half the time and also leaves me perplexed. I’ve been practicing stalls (Cessna 152) and I found it’s not that easy to enter into a stall, especially a power on stall. From the recent crashes, I’ve been consumed with emergency landings. Story still troubles me…
June 10th, 2005 at 06:02
aymiee, i agree that it’s not easy when trying to enter a stall. i suppose most people stall after the engine stops, or on approach with a good helping of flaps. a slowly increasing back stick and decreasing airspeed can get an inattentive, distracted pilot into stall territory on final. and you know about the classic base/final overshoot cross/control. that’s killed more pilots than can be counted. always had a tick in my head that no matter what, keep it coordinated.
couple things that helped me very much when i was flying (just reminiscing since i miss it):
if i hadn’t flown for a while, i asked for permission to sit in the rental plane a day or so before (never been denied) for at least 30 minutes. while tied down, i’d go through all sorts of mental procedures, including engine failures during and just after takeoff — moving my hands over the controls. with all the minor diffs between cessna model years, i find it’s nice to get used to a specific layout. did the same thing before my private checkride. when the examiner pulled power on me, it was no sweat. fun. even though i’d just put in 10 degrees of flaps, my hand automatically took them back out immediately. the examiner was thrilled. (i’ve mentioned in another post how it’s nice to listen in while your future examiner grills a checkride applicant, and debrief his prior victims when able).
i stole a crew briefing habit from the pros for takeoffs, but converted to my one-man crew: before every fresh takeoff (first of the day, or at a new place), i’d talk through what i was going to do if the engine failed during/after takeoff. what’s my turnaround altitude for that airport? where’s my emergency landing spot if i’m too low to turn around? if i’m to land into trees, will i keep the plane coming down, or pull the stick into my chest and hope there’s no such thing as physics? will i stall above the trees and plop down like a rock, or allow the tops of the trees to slow me gradually?
if at a new field, i like to see an aerial pic and talk to locals about best place to land if engine failure after takeoff.
unfortunately, i also swore by the old saying, “if you’re relaxing, there’s something you’re not doing that you could be.” my examiner was a big one for covering the oil pressure gauge and asking, “what letter is the needle over?” it’s a good point; you should know where those trend gauges are, if not by letter, at least something useful. “if your engine quit right now, where would you land?” same thing.
best with the flying.
July 17th, 2005 at 18:20
Quote: ” my examiner was a big one for covering the oil pressure gauge and asking, “what letter is the needle over?” it’s a good point; you should know where those trend gauges are, if not by letter, at least something useful.”
Very true, I was brought up on a farm, dad was an aircraft mechanic and motorcycle racer. He taught me the value of watching the trend of engine gauges. Years later, One of my first flying lessons was by an instructor who was always in a hurry to get home. One day, he refused to let me check oil levels due to the “FACT” that the plane was still hot from the last flying session. Translation: He was in a hurry.
After I took off, the temp gauge was climbing higher than I had ever seen it, within one minute, I insisted we land as it was just riding into the red zone. Pulling back on power and heading back to pattern, the oil pressure was starting to drop… -by the time I flaired and landed, I shut off the engine and coasted off the main runway. Oil ALL OVER the underside of the plane. The prior fool had neglected to afix the oil cap properly on that old Continental. Luckily, No damage to engine.
One quart was remaining in the pan, and it still looked like oil. (I knew the mechanic, and was not afraid to ask)
The instructor? His next job? A pilot for Northwest-Orient.
July 17th, 2005 at 19:04
that’s more than just an aviation story. interesting how few people are born to deal with emergencies. i guess you’re familiar with the CVR of the air florida flight 90 crash. if that F/O had told the captain to shove it, he and many other people might be alive. three times he raised an issue which should have called for a T/O abort. good thing your “instructor” followed your plan. hope he’s washed out by now, but probably not.
August 10th, 2010 at 21:30
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