Randy,
you make an excellent point in that how people will react in an
emergency is an unknown. Often, people that imagine themselves to be
heroic, will turn to mush in a real emergency, yet others, who express no
personal bravado, stay cool and calm in the clutch.
It's
uniformly agreed that training is an excellent antidote to panic, but still,
some of these emergencies scenarios are infrequently practiced and, even
then, in such an artificial environment, as to be nearly worthless.
While physical training and practice for emergency situations is the
gold standard, it is still costly and time
consuming.
Fortunately, there is a no-cost method of maintaining a high level of
emergency proficiency....mental training and practice. The same as
golfers and most other athletes 'visualize' the shot, pass or hit, we can
visualize the emergency and go over, in our mind, one hundred times, even one
thousand time, our response. The time to 'think' is before an emergency,
not during it. If we have thought through the emergency scenario,
we will have a game plan to implement immediately, and not have
to formulate one on the fly (literally and
figuratively).
We can
do these mental exercises every flight; inventing and visualizing different
scenarios and thinking about our mental checklist responses--each one may take
only a few seconds.
No
cost, low effort, but highly effective.
Chuck
Jensen
I was just talking to a
fellow pilot concerning emergency training, etc.
There was a Piper Tramahawk
that went down a few days ago near me, killing both the student pilot and the
CFI... It apparently lost power and then altitude. The odd part is, it
crashed into some trees.... In a rural area where there are many many
opens fields and pastures. Clear, no wind, VFR.
OK, here's a plane that will
still fly at 50 KTS, with a CFI on board, with miles and miles of open area to
attempt to walk away from a dirt landing... Seems
simple???
I'm sure we all remember the
countless times the CFI pulled the throttle or shut the fuel valve off during
our private training. And with that, we were taught to find the open areas or
landable roads, freeway, golf courses, etc., get to best glide, brace for
the worst.... I'm sure most of us always have a conscious landing spot in mind
during every mile of every flight..
So how does this happen??
We'll never know what they were thinking but I can only guess that when the
sh*t hits the fan some pilots try to stay calm and revert to training and some
pilots lock up and forget everything. I can only speak from my own
experiences, not anyone else's.
It's impossible to know how
anyone would react until it happens to them. It's pretty easy to make
decisions sitting in an easy chair but real panic is overwhelming for many
people.
I'm sure there's a few
pilots here that have experienced a dead stick or two, a fire or some
emergency that called for immediate action. Perhaps some of these stories
could be shared with the LML folks.
Randy
Stuart
LNC-2
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 7:52
PM
Subject: [LML] Re: Legacy Crash
Watsonville?
I was trained that in event of a fire on board to get out of
the sky ASAP. Not dangle on a parachute for several minutes while cooking.
We would practice 7000 ft / min decents with quick pull out and stick it on
the earth while still cognizant enough to land it and hopefully no major
parts melted off.
On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 1:18 PM, farnsworth <farnsworth@charter.net>
wrote:
-----Original Message----- From: Lancair Mailing
List [mailto: lml@lancaironline.net] On Behalf
of Ron Laughlin Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 9:26
AM "I wish he had had an airframe parachute. He might still be
with us. I guess he opted for Rob's extra 10 gallons of gas that gave
him soooo many more options.... RonL" Since an
airframe parachute option is not an OPTION on a Legacy, he had
two other options that may have allowed him to survive:
1. Wear
a personal parachute 2. Install a feathering prop
I have both of
those options with my Legacy. The prop is counterweighted and so will
feather with loss of oil pressure.
Lynn Farnsworth Super Legacy #235 TSIO-550
Powered Race #44 Mmo .6 Mach
Feathering Prop
|