Tinworm-wings: My first emergency landing!

Sunday, 28 February 2010

My first emergency landing!

Photos by Simon, using Cat's phone

I had to do an emergency landing today when my engine stopped at 600'. I hadn't climbed beyond about 900', after emerging from beneath the controlled airspace stub over Ely, because of low and ominous cloud above, and I'd descended when I experienced a lot of buffeting higher up.

It had been glorious flying around Ely and I was elated and on the home stretch, but for a detour north to avoid rain which I could see coming toward me from the West, at that time dropping on the airfield. I hoped to skirt around it and come back to Sutton Meadows from Chatteris, but as I hit the Washes, the engine cut out and I immediately turned left to find a good field heading into wind (190 deg). I quickly found a likely candidate, did a couple of beats and turns and did a textbook power-off landing in a newly planted and boggy field.

After securing my wing I found a track and walked towards the nearest farm buildings, where I was greeted by a lovely family, about whom a lot more later. But for now, a huge thanks to Cat and Simon and Cat's mum, Linda, for being so welcoming and supportive, to Cat for guiding my rescuers, Dave Garrison and Dave Broom, to the field and for lending me her mobile, and to Simon for coming and getting completely drenched with me as we dragged the plane from the boggy field and de-rigged the wing.

You are not wrong. The seat is missing.
In the rush this morning, I forgot to pack it,
so ended up scavenging this bit of carpet underlay to make a seat

I feel bad about putting the Daves out. They were brilliant; I am enormously grateful, Chaps!

Something like this does your heart good; and frankly I needed something to do my heart good this weekend, following a very difficult week. The landing actually felt very soft indeed, but I felt my back jar as I man-handled the plane on the ground. Linda is right though, I may simply not have been aware during the landing of the impact it had on my back, as I was too pre-occupied and running on adrenaline. I expect I will feel it tomorrow. But I have no regrets...it was bloody exciting....and gratifying too, as I am now an engine-failure veteran.

I "partialled" on engine failures, and they do say that what you have to be re-tested on you will do especially well later. I heard something on Radio 4 recently about some study which shows that the safest drivers (and those who are most considerate or have fewest accidents) failed their first driving test.

When the engine stopped on me I just thought, "So this is what we worked so hard at. Great, this should be interesting." And if anything, it was really rather an anti-climax. Let's hope the next one is just as anti-climactic. Yes, next time; rare though they are, they do happen. The Daves have each been rescued from fields, more than once. There are two kinds of pilot, those who have had an engine failure and those who are going to have one.

2 comments:

Aviatrix said...: Bravo Peter for keeping so cool, calm and collected. I'm truly impressed.; 28 February 2010 at 16:52
Tinworm said...: Thank you, Aviatrix. You know how much I admire you, so your praise means an awful lot to me.
x

For those who don't know, it was Aviatrix who took me up in her Chipmunk (when we met at Sywell) and let me take the controls, thus making a lifelong ambition come true.; 28 February 2010 at 23:02

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Ground handling (how to store an aeroplane at home and get it to the airfield)

A trial flight in a Thruster, when I was 28, c.1991

I have started to learn to fly before...TWICE! First time round I had just graduated and got a job at an aerodrome in Cornwall, where I earned flying hours by fuelling microlights, giving hourly weather reports to the Met office etc. The weather was bad, so there was little flying to be had...and in the end I was paid with broken propellers and bits of crashed fuselage to hang on the wall. The boss was a great bloke called Ian Stokes, who had been a leading light in forming the BMAA and had manufactured Thrusters in the early days . In retirement he moved to The Gambia and became a publican and, shockingly, was murdered this year.

Flying Rogues

ten years on from my first experiences at Moorland Flying School (and now nearly ten years ago) the flying school was under new management and my girlfriend and I booked full courses. We both made good progress initially but never felt we were being moved on and had difficulty pinning the instructor down to signing our logbooks. When another instructor signed himself as P1, we got suspicious, contacted the CAA and were horrified to learn that our instructor did not have a current instructor rating, that we had not been insured and that none of our hours counted towards our licences. We were eventually refunded and the instructors were prosecuted by the CAA.

The very sympathetic CAA investigator spoke to the BMAA on our behalf and my hours have been allowed to count (at the discretion of the school). But in point of fact, I flew way over the minimum number of hours subsequently, so it is really quite academic in the end.

Around 2001 an instructor in Norfolk tried to convince me that if I bought his aeroplane he could teach me at a cut rate, as I'd then be using my own plane. Great idea, I thought, except that it turned out that the aircraft in question had failed a noise test and could not be used from the instructor's field. He later admitted that I would have to learn on his aeroplane at the normal rate. He resisted showing me the paperwork, kept avoiding me and eventually, when it was quite clear I wasn't going to buy without the paperwork, told me to F-off.

So far my experience has been that there are a lot of rogues in flying, which is one reason why I was so very impressed by the professional set-up at Sywell.

by air to Africa

My sister and I were lucky to fly many thousands of miles in the 1960s and '70s in many aircraft types, including BOAC VC-10s, Boeing 707s and even a Nigerian Airways Dakota, as our dad (and later our mum) had teaching posts in Kenya and Nigeria. Those were still the romantic days of flying, when passengers walked across tarmac and up steps, rather than walking down the tubes that have turned passenger flying into a mundane affair. (Mind you, aren't take-offs still incredibly exciting!?)

Back then air hostesses GAVE children the sorts of nick-nacks that their parents have to pay fortunes for from the airline catalogue these days; things like model aeroplanes, keyrings etc. We were also given sweets to help us cope with depressurisation. (And they were hostesses, so nobody give me a hard time)

Mum says that I cracked my first joke when I was small, on a flight out to Kenya, when I said, "Mummy, shouldn't there be a wing on this side of the plane too". Apparently I got her with that one.

At Kano airport I remember standing behind an engine and thinking how hot it still was....and then being told that the engine was cold. The heat was Kano. I got a headache and took several days to aclimatise.

The airport perri-ways at Kano were littered with aircraft that didn't make it, including a burnt-out Mig 15. The Nigerian Airforce flew them and my dad played squash with one of their pilots, Ben, at the Kano Club. I recall a Mig fly-past on my birthday. Was it arranged with Ben over a beer? Was it a pure coincidence?

At Entebbe airport (Uganda) I remember climbing down the steps on to the runway and being encircled by soldiers with machine guns, who then went through all our belongings and confiscated my cherished Swiss Army penknife, purchased on one of numerous European stop-overs. That was in the twitchy time after the Israeli hijacking ...and mum had to stifle my protests.

Before my first flight to Nairobi, as an infant, I was scared stiff. I didn't understand that I wouldn't have to sit astride the fuselage, as I did on my pedalcar! In a funny way, I not only overcame that fear but have come full circle; microlighting is just like sitting on that pedalcar......open to the elements - real flying!