I agree with John. No one is willy nilly flying around with suspicious engine operations. In the case were my turbo went out and I 'flipped the switch and flew home', I exaggerated to make the point that I could have done that if necessary. In reality, I landed at the nearest airport and spent several hours checking everything out and verifying that I really knew what was going on. I removed the exhaust and spied the broken turbine wheel. THEN, I flipped the switch (and used some tape to hold it in place - verified that it was working, flew a couple test laps around the patten and landed again to check things out) and then flew 1000NM to get home.
On Tue, Apr 14, 2009 at 9:00 AM, John Slade <jslade@canardaviation.com> wrote:
Gary Casey wrote:
>There seems to be a tendency to keep going in spite of inflight problems.
I don't believe that's true. In case that was partially in response to my "aircraft flown to home base" after the turbo blew, understand that this was during flight testing. My standard test routine was to fly over a triangle of airports 35 miles from point to point. This triangle was chosen such that from 11,000 feet I could glide to an airport from the midpoint of any one side. As it happens, the turbo blew at 11,500', 5 miles from the least attractive airport in terms of facilities, and 30 miles from home base. At reduced power and always within glide distance of the field below, I was able to maintain altitude to the midpoint and was then assured of a safe return to home base.
John
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