Vmc roll crash

Cass

Cass

You'll have that
Could be old but this about made me sick the first time I saw it.



I'm not sure, but it sounds like a lot of backfiring before the engine finally eats it. Might just be background noise.

Thoughts?
 
Never sacrifice airspeed for altitude. Altitude may be good life insurance, but nobody ever benefits from their own life insurance policy. Airspeed is life.
 
I was fat, dumb and happy with three students in a Seneca II practing Vmc demos over the foothills just north of Gilroy about 16 years ago.

I would normally hold a foot against the rudder pedals to "artificially" represent a loss of rudder authority so the student could recognize Vmc and recover, safely above stall speed AND Vmc.

Usually I'd check the weather and compute where the critical altitude was where Vs = Vmc so I knew how high I could, well, should fly and have students work on Vmc maneuvers.

A little cocky, a little overconfident and a little distracted because I had just scored an interview at Skyway and was getting picked up by one of my friends for dinner. He was an IT zillionaire so it's a CFI's dream to have a free dinner and then take him and some stripper he met on a "Bay Tour".

So I tell my student to demonstrate approaching Vmc and recover. Everything is going fine, beautiful afternoon over the foothills in Santa Clara County and then he slows towards Vmc, the windspeed gets lower and lower and the light rumbles as the plane starts to roll as he loses control authority.

SNAP!

Now I've got a windscreen full of green, the aircraft rolled on it's back and starts that wonderful helical rotation about the whatever access... I grab the throttles and snap them back to the full idle position.

Ooh, let's just call it a spin. It IS a spin, crap!

"Mr. X, Mr. X, MY CONTROLS" I'm applying full forward aileron, trying to neutralize the ailerons and rudder opposite the rotation of the aircraft.

The student has his hands with the "Death Grip(tm)" so I screamed again, "Mr. X, MY CONTROLS!"...

Nothing.

I slap his wrist and shout "My Controls!" then he finally un-asses the controls and I'm working on a recovery.

Rudders are useless, ailerons are useless, pitch control is useless and all I remember is how quiet it is, nothing over the intercom and the pungent smell of garlic as we're spiraling towards the ground. Both a feeling of disbelief, acceptance of the seemingly inevitable and wondering how it's going to feel when plow into the hill somewhere near that trail that looks like a great single-track that I'd love to have ridden my bike on if I hadn't of been so stupid to not pay closer attention to.

Pens, dirt, books, headsets, manuals, rocks... how in the world do little pebbles get into an aircraft, shifting around the cabin of the Seneca.

Between pumps of the useless elevator, full but completely dead application of the rudder pedal and grumbly bursts of differential power eventually halts the rotation and now we're about 60 degrees nose low in about 120 degrees of bank about CRAP 700 feet up so I'm going to have one chance to recover, power-off unload the aircraft, pull to the sky, nose rises, bring the power back in, but the right engine is surging and unwilling to come back to power fully, still have some tunnel vision and just waiting for the aircraft to pancake itself onto the (hopefully) soft dirt. Right engine comes back to life as we start a reasonable climb and recovery.

Granted I've never been in war, or been shot at (as far as I know) but the days when you're convinced you're going to die tend to stick with you.

Lessons learned:

a. Seneca's suck in spins.
b. Vacuum the damned airplane every once in a while.
c. Don't get cocky
d. A student (or the other pilot) will only come close to killing you if you LET them.
e. Yes, you're about to die. Take it seriously, FIGHT, do something.
f. It's happening NOW. Save the disbelief for debrief.
g. Improvise when you've gotta.
 
Doug Taylor said:
I was fat, dumb and happy with three students in a Seneca II practing Vmc demos over the foothills just north of Gilroy about 16 years ago.
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Wow, awesome story Doug. Had you been ~200AGL like this cat, I probably wouldn't have had a place to share this video ;).

I remember practicing these recoveries, listening to my instructor tell me how violent it could be, and not really ever experiencing or witnessing the true nature of a full roll... after watching this, it's not an experience I'd like to have.
 
It's nastier than I thought it would be. But I fully appreciate the push for spin training and the adage that you should never spin a twin.

You DO NOT want your first unintentional spin to be in a training situation and the scenario when you hit Vs and Vmc is a KILLER.

I got very lucky that day. VERY very lucky.
 
I feel very fortunate to have a former Piper Test Pilot as our DPE at the flight school I went to. He would demonstrate a Vmc Roll for either the Commercial Multi or MEI checkrides. That is something I never, ever want to experience again...it was a mind blowing one, even with someone that had done hundreds of them.
 
In the 'nole FTD I tell my students to take one to a full VMC Upset, and it looks like something that can only be described as a violent backward somersault into an upright spin, that they tend to recover from after a turn and proper recovery input. I then reinforce that this it the FTD, where getting the thing to spin in the first place is quite a feat, and spin recovery will happen once you let go. I ask them, after seeing what an initial upset looks like, is that somewhere they want to find themselves in an airplane not truly spin tested? Sometimes morbid teaching aids are effective.
 
Does anyone think the yaw/slight roll to the left right before the roll became violent was VMC or was the turn to the left intentional. Obviously if we knew which engine failed this would be easier but it seems like at about :20 seconds they reached VMC.
 
Since I have no experience in twins I am curious, how can this be avoided? If you are close to gross weight on takeoff and lose the criticle engine, is climbing basically out of the question? How does one turn to make it back to the airport to land, luck?
 
Matt13C said:
Since I have no experience in twins I am curious, how can this be avoided? If you are close to gross weight on takeoff and lose the criticle engine, is climbing basically out of the question? How does one turn to make it back to the airport to land, luck?
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If it were me in that position I'd lower the nose, pull power to idle, turn into the operating engine, and add rudder into the operating engine. Identify and verify the dead engine, feather the props on the dead engine. Then slowly add power in the operating engine.
In the video it was the left engine that quit. If you look closely you can see the props begin to slow down.
 
Matt13C said:
Since I have no experience in twins I am curious, how can this be avoided? If you are close to gross weight on takeoff and lose the criticle engine, is climbing basically out of the question? How does one turn to make it back to the airport to land, luck?
Click to expand...

The FAA published an Advisory Circular about flying light twins. It says something to the effect of "treat a light twin as if it is a single engine plane with the power divided into two units."

Basically, if it's heavy and hot (and it doesn't have to be that hot), don't expect climb performance out of a light twin.

As far as getting back to the airport, how are you going to get back in a single if the engine fails at 300-400ft? Same thing in a light twin.
 
msmspilot said:
The FAA published an Advisory Circular about flying light twins. It says something to the effect of "treat a light twin as if it is a single engine plane with the power divided into two units."

Basically, if it's heavy and hot (and it doesn't have to be that hot), don't expect climb performance out of a light twin.

As far as getting back to the airport, how are you going to get back in a single if the engine fails at 300-400ft? Same thing in a light twin.
Click to expand...

That is what I was expecting but figured I'd ask anyway. So yeah, fly straight ahead, look for somewhere soft and keep if flying.
 
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