David,
Boy! your mom must be hard to impress! Even after graduating from
medical school, you still have to go out and dead stick under a traffic light
with her on board! :>)
Bill B
From: Rotary motors in aircraft
[mailto:flyrotary@lancaironline.net] On
Behalf Of David Leonard
Sent: Sunday, March 14, 2010 10:55
AM
To: Rotary
motors in aircraft
Subject: [FlyRotary] Re:
[SoCAL-RVlist] Re: Off Field Landing
Ok, sounds like I have some fessing up to do...
I took my mom up for a flight on her birthday and we went to overfly
the area we are going to be doing a memorial pass today. I was
entering a user waypoint in my hand held GPS and my hand must have accidentally
hit the 'cold start' switch. That switch doubles the injector duration
and is used for starting in extremely cold temperatures. But it was too
much fuel for the engine to keep me aloft (just an occasional sputter). I
was only at about 1100 AGL at the time so my emergency procedures only got as
far as: turn toward airport, switch fuel tank, aux fuel pump, verify
fuel pressure, primary switches turned on... shit, time to find a place to land
this thing... call mayday, choose best spot, fly under traffic signal and
onto road.
Mom was cool and collected the whole time. We were very lucky to
find a gap in traffic, the cars were waiting for the light I flew
under. Also really glad to have a plane as nimble as an RV. I
don't think I could have done it in a Bonanza. (course a Bonanza doesn't have a
'cold start switch' either)
It was not until after all the commotion on my drive back to OKB
that I finally had a few minutes to think about what could have been the
cause... then I really felt stupid. If only my emergency procedures
went one more step and I would have tried tweaking the mixture I could have
saved myself a lot of embarrassment.. But when it is time to fly/land the
plane, that is what you have to do.
Sure enough, upon return to the plane I discovered the cold start
switch flipped. I checked out everything else, ran fine. Later in
the afternoon I flew it home to OKB from Palomar. I am so very grateful
that extreme embarrassment is all I suffer. Thanks for all the support
from the GA community.