Post by afy46 on Jan 18, 2011 0:05:30 GMT -5
I was flying the Air Sheffel 737-800 in FS9 today on a flight plan from Duluth Intl. (KDLH) to Saskatoon/Diefenbaker Intl (CYXE). At 33,000’ and somewhere just over Rocanville, Saskatchewan we had and double flameout. There’s no way that I know of to start the Air Sheffel without going through the whole process, so I decided to ditch her, hopefully on some terra firma, preferably on a nice stretch of concrete terra firma also know as a runway.
The best and closest candidate with a RW over 5000’ was Barker (CYDN) at Dauphin, Manitoba located approximately 69 nm to the Northeast. With a headwind of 55 knots out of the Northwest, it had all the makings of the perfect dead-stick landing. It has a RW facing into the wind, a VOR, and a NDB for lining the sweet ole 738 up. The APU served us well by also by keeping the avionics alive and in tack along with the control surfaces.
Remembering the FSX adventure, the first thing I did was start the APU for power. At least the controllers and gear still worked although without hydraulics the flaps were inoperable. As I remember the 738’s best glide slope is at about 170 to 190 knots while still clean. With a Glide Ratio of 17:1 that would give me a fair shot at RW 32 from 30nm out and 10,000’, but I wanted to stay well within the tolerances so managed to bleed of half the original cruise altitude in around 70 nm while maintaining a distance of just outside 30 nm from the VOR to allow a turn onto a final approach at around 15,000’ to 17,000’.
There was a lot more going on in the beginning that I hadn’t anticipated. First of all, I was flying Radar Contact ATC and Otto was at the controls at the time of the flameout. As you might have guessed she didn’t want give up control of the Auto Pilot. I kept setting it to descend and she kept wanting to climb back to FL 330 and a heading of 304 degrees and I kept wanting to set us at FL200 and a heading of about 70’degrees. I finally got her to relinquish and controls by saying MY PLANE! That procedure works every time as it’s the proper one. Of course there’s the declaration of an emergency which must be sent to the company and a pause for a response. Thanks for bell warning Dutch, because I closed the FCOM window to see all the other windows. There was plenty to do while waiting for the replay that’s for sure. The starting of the APU, flipping generator and APU generator switches, shutting off fuel pumps, throttles, and any other devices that may be of danger of causing a fire. To be honest, I didn’t go through any check lists. I figured if there was anything that the APU didn’t power, it probably didn’t need immediate attention anyway. After all, we’re just a single pilot running the circus, while the copilot sits idlely (is that a word
by to merely remind us about barometric pressure at transition, and landing lights at 10,000’.
As my ball park computations slowly started to come together and palms and brow sweating a tad, I ended up with plenty of air under the 73, at about 5500’ and 10nm out from the threshold of three two. With a speed of about 180 knots on glide and 4000’ to bleed off yet, we could stay up nicely with a decent descent rate of about 700 to 800 FPM.
Yeah baby! The 149 PAX went wild as we came to a complete stop with the front gear about 3’ off the end to the RW. Whew!
The shear enjoyment of a successful emergency landing doesn’t get any better than that! Not to forget the 30 or so minutes of hell just before that, of course!
Fred
P.S. I'm still working for Angel Wings. Just thought I'd do some moonlighting with Acme. It's actually nice to sit behind the controls of some of the big iron for a change of pace.
The best and closest candidate with a RW over 5000’ was Barker (CYDN) at Dauphin, Manitoba located approximately 69 nm to the Northeast. With a headwind of 55 knots out of the Northwest, it had all the makings of the perfect dead-stick landing. It has a RW facing into the wind, a VOR, and a NDB for lining the sweet ole 738 up. The APU served us well by also by keeping the avionics alive and in tack along with the control surfaces.
Remembering the FSX adventure, the first thing I did was start the APU for power. At least the controllers and gear still worked although without hydraulics the flaps were inoperable. As I remember the 738’s best glide slope is at about 170 to 190 knots while still clean. With a Glide Ratio of 17:1 that would give me a fair shot at RW 32 from 30nm out and 10,000’, but I wanted to stay well within the tolerances so managed to bleed of half the original cruise altitude in around 70 nm while maintaining a distance of just outside 30 nm from the VOR to allow a turn onto a final approach at around 15,000’ to 17,000’.
There was a lot more going on in the beginning that I hadn’t anticipated. First of all, I was flying Radar Contact ATC and Otto was at the controls at the time of the flameout. As you might have guessed she didn’t want give up control of the Auto Pilot. I kept setting it to descend and she kept wanting to climb back to FL 330 and a heading of 304 degrees and I kept wanting to set us at FL200 and a heading of about 70’degrees. I finally got her to relinquish and controls by saying MY PLANE! That procedure works every time as it’s the proper one. Of course there’s the declaration of an emergency which must be sent to the company and a pause for a response. Thanks for bell warning Dutch, because I closed the FCOM window to see all the other windows. There was plenty to do while waiting for the replay that’s for sure. The starting of the APU, flipping generator and APU generator switches, shutting off fuel pumps, throttles, and any other devices that may be of danger of causing a fire. To be honest, I didn’t go through any check lists. I figured if there was anything that the APU didn’t power, it probably didn’t need immediate attention anyway. After all, we’re just a single pilot running the circus, while the copilot sits idlely (is that a word
by to merely remind us about barometric pressure at transition, and landing lights at 10,000’.As my ball park computations slowly started to come together and palms and brow sweating a tad, I ended up with plenty of air under the 73, at about 5500’ and 10nm out from the threshold of three two. With a speed of about 180 knots on glide and 4000’ to bleed off yet, we could stay up nicely with a decent descent rate of about 700 to 800 FPM.
Yeah baby! The 149 PAX went wild as we came to a complete stop with the front gear about 3’ off the end to the RW. Whew!
The shear enjoyment of a successful emergency landing doesn’t get any better than that! Not to forget the 30 or so minutes of hell just before that, of course!
Fred
P.S. I'm still working for Angel Wings. Just thought I'd do some moonlighting with Acme. It's actually nice to sit behind the controls of some of the big iron for a change of pace.
