Today we practiced "Forced Landing", also known as the "Emergency Landing". Part of it is a manoeuvre called "Slipping".

It's a little scary stuff, not so much the Forced Landing but doing a Slip!

Remember, everything I talk about applies to our Tecname P92 ECHO

Slipping

What you do: push the stick in one direction (aileron) and the rudden (FULL RUDDER) in the opposite. This makes you fly sideways.

The goal of this is to loose height fast while maintaining a reasonable airspeed for you landing approach.

When going sideways, your speed will drop quickly so you must also push the nose down a little. At the same time, you can still turn using the stick all this while keep pushing full rudder.

It's scary because these are pretty extreme actions which I'm not yet used to doing.

But they do the trick!

In an emergency landing it's very useful to do this, because presumably you have no engine power anymore. That means if you are too low you'll never make it to your landing spot. If you're too high, you can use the slip to go lose that height.

Otherwise, it will come in handy if you can't use the flaps - which will make it harder to lose speed and height.

Forced Landing

A forced landing will typically happen in a field. Here's the "procedure" when you suddenly lose Power:

  • Convert all excess speed to height until you reach the optimal glide speed
  • While climbing check fuel valves open and magnetos
  • Set flaps as soon as possible
  • Find a field where you can land, preferably up-wind
  • Fly to the field
  • Use the time you have before you reach ~ 800 ft to circle above the field and inspect it for possible wires, tractors, water wells or whatever obsacles there may be. Try to see as much of the field as possible
  • While doing this, ensure you maintain the correct airspeed using attitude (nose up or down)
  • Once you are ~ 800 ft out, fly away from the field in a 45° angle, try to keep an eye on the spot
  • When far enough out do a turn for final towards the field (take the wind into account)
  • Air for a landing one third into the field - ensure you clear any obstacles
  • If necessary lose height using a slip, set full flaps, ...

In a practice forced landing, it's important to ensure that behind the field there are no obstacles because you have to fly away. In a real landing you perform the landing as good as you can and hope you can walk away.

This is pretty cool practice. We did it twice on the airfield itself and twice on an actual field. Of course, on the actual field we did not actually land! But I think it must've been cool to watch for who-ever saw it.

What can be better

In general, it was OK. I wasn't too happy with my landings, but I was a bit off-focus because of all the slipping and tight corners.

For some reason I was way to eager with the rudder this time. I must pay more attention to this next time.

Surprise guest

After taking off after a touch-and-go landing, we were flying the circuit. We knew another plane was in the neighbourhood, through the radio. I was a little surprised when I saw them flying overhead. Not a big deal because they were well above circuit heigh and we were in the circuit.

But to be sure we re-announced our position on the radio and ensured the other airplane had a visual on us.

The airfield is uncontrolled, so it's up to the pilots to keep an eye out when flying close to the circuit. It wasn't very busy today though.

Conclusion

We'll be doing more of this in the next lesson.

Track

The GPS track:

Running costs

1 hour flying time: € 96.00
1 hour instructor time: € 36.00