stories

ENGINE FIRE!

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 07:30:03 +0100

19th May 1990

This was one of the most frightening experiences I have ever had in my flying career, and a very funny story in the pub afterwards -as they always are in hindsight.

NAC in Port Elizabeth had just done a major overhaul on both engines of a Piper Aztec ZS-PHW which was based in nearby Grahamstown. The engineer who was responsible for most of the work (Jeremy Blanford) phoned and asked if I would like to do the test flight, volunteering to join me. I always think it is a good idea to take the guy who did the work along for the ride. Gives me confidence anyway. In those days I still worked for a living and only freelanced for NAC as well as operating a King Air 200 (N221B) So I was very happy to get out of the office for a few hours.

It was a beautiful day in PE so we opted to fly along the coast towards St Francis bay and back to PE. A test flight of this nature involved running the engines at fairly high power settings for about 30 minutes at a time,if I recall correctly. All went well for about 45 minutes and we were passing the Gamtoos river mouth eastbound on our return to PE when it happened- or I at least thought it did! Jeremy and I were chatting so I was looking at the right hand engine when I saw smoke coming out of the cowl.

He couldn't understand why quick as a wink I shut the engine down and feathered it. Jeremy hadn't seen any smoke because his back was to the engine. We were at about 3500 feet and maintaining height on one donkey,although we needed a fair amount of power. After much discussion as to what could have caused a fire Jeremy persuaded me that I had probably seen the sun glinting off the breather fairings that an Aztec has on top of the cowling. Why would a brand new engine catch fire,indeed why would it?

Mistake number 1.

Mistake number 2 was the fact that he persuaded me to restart it!! Which I did and it ran for a 3 or 4 minutes until I saw smoke again,except this time it was accompanied by flames. He had no objections this time when I feathered it. Once again he tried to convince me to continue on to PE,as I had decided to land at John English's strip - Progress airfield, which we had in sight. I wasn't going to make the same mistake again. He was fairly relaxed through all of this until I told him to unlatch his door, during a quick briefing,and also that if the engine caught fire again I would be kicking out the window and he could follow me out on the left hand side. That got his undivided attention.

Unbeknown to us both that nearly happened.

We changed to Progress frequency -it's unmanned ,but we shouted Mayday anyhow(which John happened to hear) and joined straight in on a long final for runway 22.(I think it is?)At this stage we had probably been running the left engine at high power settings for about 10 minutes or so. The CHT was increasing!! This wasn't happening to me! I kept the speed well above blue line and we were fairly fast on the approach but the runway is long.We touched down a tad too fast and taxied off the runway at a fair pace.

We were both in a hurry to get out of the aircraft.

The engine didn't catch fire again and as the Aztec was turbocharged we even did a 3 minute rundown on No 1(left) engine. John had heard our call and was on hand with a fire extinguisher and you won't believe this,but just as well he was! I was about to shut the engine down when believe it or not, SMOKE from that side as well!!! John got to use the extinguisher.

We scurried out of the cockpit like scared rabbits.

Jeremy claims to this day that this 2nd lot of smoke was only caused by some oil spillage in the cowling and not a real fire. If it had happened two minutes earlier we might not have made the field. James Thompson flew across from Uitenhage in his Bell Jetranger and picked us up and we went straight to the Gremlins Grotto (AFC pub) for a few, make that several,calming drinks and lots of discussion.

Debriefing in a pub is the best.

The funny part was told many beers later by the now much more relaxed engineer who says that when I first spotted the not now disputed smoke,he looked up to see that my face had turned very white. So I'm not to sure why he didn't believe me! To this day I do not know how that Aztec got back to PE from Progress? Also amazing is that according to my logbook I did another test flight a few days later in the same aircraft!

The only other time I have had a suspected fire was in the above mentioned N221B out of Cape Town.

I will save that story for another tale.

An Avcommers story

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 06:40:48 +0100

APRIL 1994

I was one of those that got his PPL before his driver’s licence and often had to ride the old bicycle out to the airfield to fly. But I got into the work scene and ended up at Grand Central working for a real and proper schyster (no names no packdrill). All things being what they are, I came into a little bit of dosh and felt that perhaps I needed to do a conversion onto something with VP prop and retracts. First option was a Mooney 201, which quickly got binned when the young Mr Paul Smith convinced me that a C210T was the only way to go, and I completely agreed without any doubts. Conversion done and thoroughly loving the C210T (of course, the legendary ZS-AVB) I decided to invite some friends for my first alone Hire & Fly exercise.

My friend, and his fiancé, both avid aviation supporters, didn’t hesitate and arrived at Grand Central at the due time and day. Take-off was uneventful and we enjoyed the little jollie over Pretoria with my friend taking lots of pics of his house and Menlyn Shopping Centre and all. Time duly came for us to return to Grand Central, it being late afternoon I didn’t want to hang around too much for fear of it getting dark and/or a thunderstorm making an appearance.

Routing via the N1 across the threshold at Waterkloof and approved straight in onto Runway 17 from the North. Before landing checks complete and a double check for the wheels down and locked and the fright of my life when the nose gear didn’t indicate a green light!! Promptly recycled the gear with no change and of course checked the bulbs (all working). Got approval to break off the approach and get into the GF to see if we could fix the problem. The usual process got started with myself flying the airplane and my friend (who is not really a small chap) pumping the manual gear extension for all that he’s worth. I requested a fly-by for the tower to have a look see, which we did, and the tower confirmed that the nose gear was not extended but main gear seemed down and locked. They also mentioned that the front set of nose gear doors were open but not the rears and the nose wheel was still properly up and hidden from view!

The GF was entered once again and manual pumping continued. In the meantime we had several pilots on the radio giving us suggestions and offering us advice. From SAA captains to Bizjet captains!! One suggestion was to climb and gain some altitude and then enter a steepish dive with a pull out at the bottom whilst pumping the manual gear extension (To hopefully get gravity to assist) Nada, Niks, No Joy!

Eventually the legendary Mr Paul Smith gets on the radio (in the tower) and tells everyone to “shut the hell up”, we’ve got to get on the ground before it gets dark (which was fast approaching!). Paul briefed me on procedure (which ironically was fresh in my mind from the very recent conversion to type) and we got ourselves ready for the landing on Runway 35. Fire engines summoned and at the ready, lights flashing and standing guard along the side of the runway, landing approval received, landing briefing completed (sunglasses removed and stored in the door pockets!), base leg and turn onto finals with full flap, short finals kill all the electrics, unlatch the doors and pull the mixture… over the numbers, flare and hold it, hold it, hold it, (felt like a lifetime), speed decaying and eventually the nose settled on the runway with the prop taking a few chunks out of it. It felt like we were properly in a vertical nose-down position sliding down the runway. I didn’t even try to keep her straight and drifted off to the right of the runway just onto the grass where we came to a stop! Doors open, friends out and then I’m out and vomiting next to the runway (I felt I had a good enough excuse!).

There lay ZS-AVB, one of the highest airframe time C210T’s in the world having done ANOTHER gear-up landing. Engineers arrived, pulled the tail down, unlatched the rear nose-gear door pin and “voila!” the nose gear drops and locks into place. Just that one little lock-pin not releasing caused all the drama!

Needless to say, Russel Langley got me back in the air the very next day with him to do a test flight on another C210T - “Get back on the horse”, he said, and I’ll NEVER forget it! RIP Russel and thanks Paul!

Sheila Scott Story

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 11:07:03 +0100

Her A/c at FAVG (see my story)
Cape Record Confirmed The Royal Aero Club were last week able to state the actual times (subject to FAI confirmation) of Miss Sheila Scott's attempt on the London - Cape Town record. The 6,017 miles between London Heathrow and Cape Town Malan airports were flown, between July 6 and 9, in an elapsed time of 74hr 14min 39sec at an average speed of 81.05 m.p.h. The flight in the Piper Comanche 260 beat Mrs Amy Molli- son's 1936 record by 4hr 13min 21sec. The record time included fairly lengthy stops at Tripoli, Kano and Luanda, and the actual distance flown was quite a lot more than the Great Circle distance quoted above. Miss Scott was expected back in London with her Comanche last Tuesday, August 1, at the end of an attempt on the return record. It was planned this time to fly via Lusaka, Nairobi, Khartoum and Benina.

INDIAN AIRSPACE

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:29:58 +0100

CLEARED TO LAND
Flying in India can be challenging at times (in fact most of the time!) ATC's most favourite word is "standby" or "say again." It is guaranteed every single time you ask for anything they will tell you to standby. When it comes to vectoring for an ILS they are not too bad, but unfortunately they are useless at mundane stuff like giving you landing clearance.

Here are a few Indian ATC stories.

When I was flying 320’s in Muscat for Oman Air we used to have a turnaround in Trivandrum (or Thiruvananthapuram as it is officially called) which is in Kerala in Southern India,close to Sri Lanka. It's about a 4 hour flight and we used to leave at about midnight arriving at 6 in the morning local time.

So on arrival you can feel fairly tired and somewhat grumpy. On handover from approach we were greeted with a "say again" by the tower to which we replied and were told to extend our downwind leg!
"Why" we asked?
"Because the tower only opens at 0600 they replied.
"But the time is 0605" I replied.

" Say again" !!!!!!!

Which I did and then came the classic - "oh in that case cleared to land."
While we were still about 10 nm from the airfield just entering downwind, we complied with the instruction.

On another occasion en route from Bangkok to Bahrain in an A340 at Fl 340 ATC asked us if we would like to climb Fl 360. A quick look at the cruise page confirmed that we would get there and of course their reply was "standby"

Imagine our amazement when the call came back " Sorry maintain Fl 340,
Fl 360 NOT available "
Why offer it to us in the first place!!!

As a colleague of mine always says the only thing that surprises me is that you continue
to be surprised.

Whilst waiting for an aircraft to arrive in Madras I asked the ground staff what it's
ETA was ?
" Any time now sir! " it arrived 20 minutes later.

In Bombay (now Mumbai) a question like this is answered with a standard 2 minutes, which is not 120 seconds. In fact I always ask if that is Mumbai 2 minutes or 120 secs?

Night stops are a nightmare mainly because of the unruly road traffic - all trucks have painted on them -
“Honk if you want to pass” and everyone does regardless of whether they want to pass or not!

Ah incredible India as they advertise now days.

India is one place I will not miss when I retire!

FORCED LANDING

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 09:56:43 +0100

According to my logbook this happened on the 15th July 1967 - I had just turned thirteen!

We were on a trip in South Africa from Port Elizabeth to Durban and then Johannesburg back to PE.

My logbook entries are as follows -

7th July PE - East London 1'20"
EL - Durban 2"25"

We attended an airshow at Virginia airport and Shelia Scott arrived in her Comanche having just set
a non-stop record from the UK to Cape Town. I think she was the first female in a single and the
fastest time for the trip, maybe someone can enlighten us?

11th July DN - Virginia 20".
VG - Ladismith 1'40"

The trip had been uneventful other than having to do a series of 360 climbing turns on the leg out of Ladismith in order to clear the mountains! This was quite normal for an Ercoupe with an 85 hp engine. It had a variable pitch prop which did help, especially in the cruise- we could easily do about 85 kts! or was it MPH?
Places like Rand Airport(5500 Amsl ) were also interesting on a hot day with a climb speed of 65!

11 JULY 1967
Ladismith - FAGM(RAND) 2'20"

13th
Rand - Grand Central 40"

15th
GC - Bloemfontein 2'50"

Bloem to Forced Landing Road 3'00"

The trip from Bloemfontein was also uneventful until after Cookhouse in the Eastern Cape. Having just cleared some very mountainous terrain the trusty 85hp decided to run very roughly, we were at FL 85.

The engine had lost about 50% of its power and we had to land!
We had a good ten minutes to look for a suitable force lob field and my father decided on a nice long road.
A mayday was transmitted to PE and they told us to look for Henrys Flats airfield that was close-by, but we
couldn't find!

I have subsequently landed there on numerous occasions, more recently with a gaggle of Yaks in near darkness! but that's a story for another day.

ATC called a formation of two AT6 Harvards from 6 squadron which were in the area to try and be of assistance to us but to no avail.

I was not that perturbed about our predicament until we were on final approach at about 2000 feet when my dad mentioned that we open the canopy! The Ercoupe has a two part split sliding window.He suggested this in case we needed to make a quick escape after landing. This proved unnecessary!

Unfortunately at about 1500 agl I noticed two fences running parallel to the road and we were in a low wing aircraft. We had no option as at this stage as we were too low to find another field. At this stage I recall feeling the anxiety begin.
Thankfully we continued and landed with plenty of wingtip clearance.

The fence proved a bonus as a strand from it was used to repair the engine- a loose baffle on the exhaust system had caused the problem. The wire was used to tie it up and I hitched a ride with a bemused passing car,while my father took off and found Henrys Flats only about 10 nm away!

Meanwhile the harvards were conversing with each other on the PE VHF frequency saying things like"look for smoke!"
We never got to see them.

Our ordeal got a small mention in the local PE newspaper and I guess it was a bit of a non-event, but at age 13 it was huge for me.

Fortunately it did not put me off flying and it has been my ONLY forced landing. I am now 57 and have around 20 000 hrs so I guess things have been pretty good in the aviation world.

Eric vd Merwe
Bahrain
June 2011