Engine-out over Birchwood!
By Rob Stapleton
It wasn’t a big surprise when the engine quit.
I was at 1,400 feet and a mile north of Birchwood airport, north of Anchorage, Alaska. The glide would get to me the main runway where my student and I could safely land, if the other runways were busy.
My training on engine out landings from my flight instruction taken in the mid 60’s came in handy.
That first instructor, Tony Mason (the son of famed Lockheed test pilot Sammy Mason) had said many times while we were flying in my early days flying at Santa Paula, California, where are you going to land…engine out.
So when I watched my engine coolant temperature climbing while returning from an introductory training flight, it was experience and training that came into play not fate.
I love flying my weight shift Antares MA-33 in thermals and around the Chugach Mountains northeast of Anchorage.
Feeling the air flowing over the lines of the Aeros Stranger IIM wing, the rush of an updraft, and sharing the thermals in a turn with bald eagles, are my treasures.
But this was a day of reckoning.
The tiny Rotax 582 that produces 64 horsepower at full throttle was not cooling properly. Watching the gauge go from 180 degrees to 200 while flying over the cool mudflats of the Knik Arm was alarming.
If we only can get closer to the airport, and a bit higher, we’re safe. I can do it.
Landing on the mudflats or in some four wheeler ruts would either flip the Antares over on the wing, or damage the trike on a rough landing. No, it had to be the runway.
When the red needle pegged the gauge’s right hand notches, it was over. Hot aluminum, scraping against steel running at 5,200 rpm, would surely ruin the engine for good. I looked at the airport and throttled back. The engine quit.
There is a strange sense of peace that comes over you when you are silently gliding above the earth. Like watching a satellite at night stealthily cross in front of the stars, it is truly a private moment.
Now focusing on the all the other powered traffic in the area, I was weighing my options to get my student and aircraft down in a safe place, out of the way.
How one gets to this point, flashes across your mind.
We shouldn’t have landed on that sandbar, or I shouldn’t have taxied through the sand to a wet spot for takeoff. Maybe the engine would not have overheated?
Twenty-twenty hindsight without guilt, just reality, now a thousand feet and a half-mile below. The ground.
The biggest mistake on my shoulders was not replacing the coolant, with river water that boiled out the clear plastic tube running from below the coolant cap, while waiting for some wind on the sandbar. I remember it, dripping like green blood from an enlarged insect.
But I can blame myself later in a private moment, alone reflecting with both feet on the ground, smelling the tall tidal grass, and wet glacial mud near the airport.
My friend Pete Marsh was ahead and below me in his yellow Antares and green Stream wing turning base leg for a landing to the north.
The white Antares surrounding me was floating like an angel, or perhaps with the help of an angel.
We entered the pattern downwind at 600 feet, no problem, no noisy engine.
Pete was now on final, there was a Cessna on the main runway, another crossing 01Right, and another ahead of Pete taxing to the Northeast ramp. No room, time or altitude to make another orbit of the field.
Diving behind Pete down to the gravel end of the runway I made my turn to base-leg and into final approach just as Pete was touching down.
We floated over the gravel behind Pete and touched down without a sound, just the feeling of the tires scraping the ground and rattling the gravel. We were down safely! Not fate, not luck, not even skill, it was the altitude and a message I learned at the age of 15. Always be aware of where you are and look for a place to land.
Many pilots opt for turning back to their airport, and most never make it. Had I not been over a stand of trees surrounded by mud lined with houses, shutting down the engine and landing before it quit would have been my first choice.
Now after disassembling the engine and going over the aircraft, I have found two design factors that could be changed to prevent similar events with this aircraft.
∑ Check your radiator (mounted below the aircraft) for gravel and sand blocking the cooling when landing off airport. Move the radiator for off airport landings
∑ Putting a coolant expansion bottle on the cooling system to allow for coolant return
∑
This incident could have been avoided by not landing off airport in sand, or waiting for the engine to cool, or to add coolant with the engine running before running again at full throttle.
The result, and the moral of this blog is to share with other users the delicate boundaries of use these two cycle engines.
My story ends with a complete engine rebuild due to overheating of the mag side of the engine, and the scoring of the piston rod on the PTO side of the engine, which now requires a new crankshaft.
Does anyone have a Rotax 582 engine for sale?
I am yearning to fly again, soon!
It wasn’t a big surprise when the engine quit.
I was at 1,400 feet and a mile north of Birchwood airport, north of Anchorage, Alaska. The glide would get to me the main runway where my student and I could safely land, if the other runways were busy.
My training on engine out landings from my flight instruction taken in the mid 60’s came in handy.
That first instructor, Tony Mason (the son of famed Lockheed test pilot Sammy Mason) had said many times while we were flying in my early days flying at Santa Paula, California, where are you going to land…engine out.
So when I watched my engine coolant temperature climbing while returning from an introductory training flight, it was experience and training that came into play not fate.
I love flying my weight shift Antares MA-33 in thermals and around the Chugach Mountains northeast of Anchorage.
Feeling the air flowing over the lines of the Aeros Stranger IIM wing, the rush of an updraft, and sharing the thermals in a turn with bald eagles, are my treasures.
But this was a day of reckoning.
The tiny Rotax 582 that produces 64 horsepower at full throttle was not cooling properly. Watching the gauge go from 180 degrees to 200 while flying over the cool mudflats of the Knik Arm was alarming.
If we only can get closer to the airport, and a bit higher, we’re safe. I can do it.
Landing on the mudflats or in some four wheeler ruts would either flip the Antares over on the wing, or damage the trike on a rough landing. No, it had to be the runway.
When the red needle pegged the gauge’s right hand notches, it was over. Hot aluminum, scraping against steel running at 5,200 rpm, would surely ruin the engine for good. I looked at the airport and throttled back. The engine quit.
There is a strange sense of peace that comes over you when you are silently gliding above the earth. Like watching a satellite at night stealthily cross in front of the stars, it is truly a private moment.
Now focusing on the all the other powered traffic in the area, I was weighing my options to get my student and aircraft down in a safe place, out of the way.
How one gets to this point, flashes across your mind.
We shouldn’t have landed on that sandbar, or I shouldn’t have taxied through the sand to a wet spot for takeoff. Maybe the engine would not have overheated?
Twenty-twenty hindsight without guilt, just reality, now a thousand feet and a half-mile below. The ground.
The biggest mistake on my shoulders was not replacing the coolant, with river water that boiled out the clear plastic tube running from below the coolant cap, while waiting for some wind on the sandbar. I remember it, dripping like green blood from an enlarged insect.
But I can blame myself later in a private moment, alone reflecting with both feet on the ground, smelling the tall tidal grass, and wet glacial mud near the airport.
My friend Pete Marsh was ahead and below me in his yellow Antares and green Stream wing turning base leg for a landing to the north.
The white Antares surrounding me was floating like an angel, or perhaps with the help of an angel.
We entered the pattern downwind at 600 feet, no problem, no noisy engine.
Pete was now on final, there was a Cessna on the main runway, another crossing 01Right, and another ahead of Pete taxing to the Northeast ramp. No room, time or altitude to make another orbit of the field.
Diving behind Pete down to the gravel end of the runway I made my turn to base-leg and into final approach just as Pete was touching down.
We floated over the gravel behind Pete and touched down without a sound, just the feeling of the tires scraping the ground and rattling the gravel. We were down safely! Not fate, not luck, not even skill, it was the altitude and a message I learned at the age of 15. Always be aware of where you are and look for a place to land.
Many pilots opt for turning back to their airport, and most never make it. Had I not been over a stand of trees surrounded by mud lined with houses, shutting down the engine and landing before it quit would have been my first choice.
Now after disassembling the engine and going over the aircraft, I have found two design factors that could be changed to prevent similar events with this aircraft.
∑ Check your radiator (mounted below the aircraft) for gravel and sand blocking the cooling when landing off airport. Move the radiator for off airport landings
∑ Putting a coolant expansion bottle on the cooling system to allow for coolant return
∑
This incident could have been avoided by not landing off airport in sand, or waiting for the engine to cool, or to add coolant with the engine running before running again at full throttle.
The result, and the moral of this blog is to share with other users the delicate boundaries of use these two cycle engines.
My story ends with a complete engine rebuild due to overheating of the mag side of the engine, and the scoring of the piston rod on the PTO side of the engine, which now requires a new crankshaft.
Does anyone have a Rotax 582 engine for sale?
I am yearning to fly again, soon!
posted by Akfotoman at 12:52 AM
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