REFLECTOR: Precautionary landing near St. Louis

Tue Nov 18 14:54:18 CST 2008

For those who need to loose altitude in a hurry... I have a standard fixed
gear that's 15 years old and about 1200 hrs on it.
When I'm too high and need to get down I just slip it. Have found no adverse
behavior and it will descend at 1500 to 2000 FPM. I frequently do it on
final to adjust for my goofs...  Now for those with long wing 173 they do
not like to slip. When you try to slip them they get sloppy and squirm out
of the slip!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-----Original Message-----
From: reflector-bounces at tvbf.org [mailto:reflector-bounces at tvbf.org]On
Behalf Of Dave Philipsen
Sent: Tuesday, November 18, 2008 2:22 AM
To: Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list
Subject: REFLECTOR: Precautionary landing near St. Louis

I have a story to tell the group about an incident that happened about
two weeks ago as I was flying home to central Illinois from Dallas, TX.
The reason I am relating it is so that someone else who may have a
similar setup may be able to avoid having the same problem that I did.

I was flying my Velocity STD-FG in a northeasterly direction through the
Saint Louis Class B airspace at about 5500 ft. and about 12 miles NNW of
Lambert Field. The weather was perfect: wind out of the southeast at
less than 10 mph, no ceiling, 10+ miles visibility at about 11 AM.  Very
suddenly, the tone of the engine changed to a much harsher, louder
sound.  I immediately checked the engine instruments and everything
still looked fairly normal.  Next, I looked at my GPS and saw that I was
about 6-7 miles from KSET, a rural airport in St. Charles County.  I
didn't know exactly what was wrong, just a very different sound.  Was it
an exhaust leak, had one cylinder quit firing, etc.?  I moved the
mixture to full rich and pulled the power back some.  The noise subsided
a little but still didn't sound quite right.  I applied power again and
that raspy sound was back again.  I thought to myself, "Well, I'm close
enough to make it to KSET without any power so there's no need to push
the engine any harder than I have to."  So, I pulled the power back to
almost idle and let ATC know that I was having an engine problem and I
was going to have to make a precautionary landing at KSET.  A controller
was immediately assigned to talk with me and me only.  Even though there
was other traffic on the radio, he did not ask me to change frequencies
but just started giving me vectors for the airport.  He gave me runway
information and the current weather at KSET.  Based upon that
information, I told him that I wanted to land on runway 18 which was
3800 feet long.  By this time the airplane had slowed from about 180 mph
down to about 120 mph and the controller told me that I should see the
field at about my two o'clock position or so.  All I could see was
farmland but I stayed in a slight bank turning as he instructed me.
When I finally saw the field I was about 2 miles away and probably about
3000 feet MSL.  Field elevation was 437 feet.  I had to lose a bunch of
altitude.  I pulled the throttle all the way back to idle and pushed the
prop control full forward and kicked in both rudders to create some
drag.  I probably should have engaged the speed brake but I wasn't so
sure I wanted that much drag nor did I really want to take my hands away
from the controls to flip the speed brake switch.  The rudders were both
almost fully engaged and I was loosing altitude a little faster.  At
about a mile out I was lined up for runway 18 but still pretty high
(maybe 1800 feet MSL).  I thought maybe I should do a 360 just to lose
some altitude but I also thought I'd better check to see if the engine
would respond just in case I needed a little power.  I nudged the
throttle forward and the engine started coughing and sputtering.  That
wasn't going to work.  So I bagged the 360 turn idea and just decided to
make a gentle 'S' turn.  As I came over the numbers I was still pretty
high...maybe 200-300 feet above the ground.  I could see the other end
of the runway in the distance.  Was I going to overshoot?  I made sure
that the throttle was all the way back and the prop was all the way in.
I pulled hard back on the stick to get a somewhat nose high attitude and
by the time I was about halfway down the runway I was pretty sure I was
going to make it.  I forced it down at maybe 5/8 of the way down the
runway and was able to stop before the end.  Using the momentum from
landing I turned off on a taxiway and made it a little way back toward
the terminal building.  Again I tried to apply power by inching the
throttle forward.  The engine coughed and sputtered and then finally
died.  The airport manager came out and towed me in.  The controller
from St. Louis TRACON had called him on the phone and alerted him of my
landing.  By the way, I had lost contact with ATC because of my low
altitude at about a mile or so from the field.  The controller wanted to
know if I'd made it in ok.

Well, I was relieved that I had made it in with no damage to myself or
the airplane.  But now I had to find out what the problem was.  I
inspected the exterior of the plane and quickly found a clue.  The
pilot-side exhaust pipe was not sticking through the lower cowling as it
usually had.  Not good.  Was it merely an exhaust pipe break?  If so,
why had the engine run so rough and eventually quit?  I peeked inside
the cowl with a flashlight and saw my exhaust pipe hanging there by the
safety wire.  Good thing it didn't just fall out and go through the prop.

I removed the lower cowling and found that there was no other apparent
damage to the engine.  I just had a broken exhaust pipe.  Apparently the
engine started running rough because my air intake sucks air from inside
the cowling and the engine just started sucking in its own exhaust!  I
suppose as the airplane slowed down there was that much less fresh air
getting in to clear out all of that exhaust gas.

Well, I called the factory just in case the exhaust pipe was
unrepairable on hopes that they would have a spare in stock.  Would you
believe it, I ran into the same problem again.  I was told that since I
was not the original builder/owner and since I had not paid the $400
transfer fee or whatever they call it, that I was not eligible to even
buy parts from them!  I reminded the gentleman that Scott Baker had
informed me that I could buy parts but that I just couldn't receive
support.  He said that he would check into that but that the pipes
weren't in stock anyway so it didn't really matter right now.

So, I removed the pipe and took it down to the local welding shop where
they repaired it for 50 bucks.  I put the pipe back on, started up the
plane and flew it back home without a problem.  The moral of this story
is that if your induction system is sucking air from inside the cowling
you'd better check to make sure that it can get fresh air in the event
of an exhaust leak.  I was just so thankful that this had not happened
about an hour or so earlier while I was flying over the Ozark
mountains.  Of course if I had lost the exhaust pipe over the mountains
I probably wouldn't have been in such a hurry to pull the throttle back
and maybe, just maybe, there might have been enough fresh air coming in
at 180 mph that the engine would have continued to run ok.

--
Dave Philipsen
Velocity STD-FG
N83DP

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