When I looked at the wreckage of the Ryan PT-22 my first thought was, "wow, they should be able to rebuild that." After that I got that good feeling from knowing that pilot Harrison Ford found himself at a point where he had to make a very difficult decision and, unlike many before him, made the right call.
In the immediate wake of the crash there was no information on the cause but a look at the photo left no doubt it was engine failure on take off. One of the first lessons drummed into the brains of every student pilot is how to respond to this very situation. They're taught to resist the impulse to do a 180 and land on the runway they just left and, instead, look for some place more or less to the front to put the plane down.
The tower tape reveals that Ford, on declaring his engine out emergency, initially thought about a go around. That entails making a sharp turn at slow speed with no power. The usual result is a differential stall because the inside wing is going so much slower than the other and it loses lift. One side of the airplane still wants to fly after the other side has quit for the day.
But Ford didn't stall. Instead he spotted an opening on a golf course and was able to make a wings level deadstick landing. Both wings stayed on the plane. The fuselage and tail are largely intact. Han Solo, meanwhile, lived to fly another day.
Pretty sweet.
The pic of the Millennium Falcon has it backed into the golf course. Oops!
ReplyDeleteOf course, that's how you land the Falcon engine out. Didn't you read the manual?
ReplyDeleteOf course! I should have known.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, good for Harrison Ford for being able to land after losing his engine shortly after takeoff.
I had a few scares during my flying days but fortunately I never had to face that one.
You know how difficult it can be having to overcome your powerful instincts and fall back on your training.
ReplyDeleteDear Mound
ReplyDeleteThe character's name isn't Hans. It's Han. He's not from Norway. He's from Correlia.
With affection,
Chewbacca
Plus he got the Kessel Run down to just over 11 parsecs . . .
ReplyDeletehttp://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kessel_Run
I stand corrected, Chewie. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, Ed, the Kessel Run. BTW - anyone know when the next episode is supposed to be in the theaters?
There's a reason why it's called "The Impossible Turn" as almost every factor is against it. Climbing out, not a lot of altitude to work with, in an underpowered airplane that's as draggy as hell. He was probably between 500 and 1,000 ft AGL when he made his initial call to tower, right in that zone that some guys think they can do a shallow 180 for an RTR - Return to Runway- so let's say he was at 700. If he'd been lower than 500 when the Kinner quit he'd've never made the golf course abd awfully things would've likely ensued; 1,000 feet or more would've given him the margin he needed for a safe 180 RTR turn depending on winds, so at 700 - 600 feet he may have thought he could do the turn but his training, experience, and the view outside the cockpit told him otherwise so he made the best possible choice and aimed for a forced landing in the most marginally open area available. All things considered it was a damn good landing and he handled it very, very well. I hope he's back to good health and flying again soon.
ReplyDeleteI saw a video on YouTube awhile back where a student pilot and her instructor demonstrated the Impossible Turn at altitude (6,000 ft AGL) with an altitude loss of only 500 feet, so it was theoretically possible to do the turn from below the recommended 1,000 ft minimum, but they both noted that she did so with her eyes in the instruments (no outside situational awareness), with a generous altitude margin, and in a practice scenario with an instructor at hand. Climbing out over trees or houses with not a lot of space between you and them when the mill goes silent and your sphincter starts sucking the seat up to your eyeballs and you've got to find a clear space thirty degrees to either side of your rapidly foreshortening flight path is another matter...
I hope the Ryan's not a write-off. From what I've heard the little Maytag Messerschmidt is a ball of fun to fly (tho I must admit if it had been on of the PT-22's older and much more beautiful siblings, the Ryan ST-A, you probably would've heard my cries of anguish and despair all the way from southern Ontario to LA,,,
N.
It looks like a reasonable salvage/rebuild job to me, Neil. That godawful main gear must have taken a good bit of the impact before detaching. Hey, it was a preliminary trainer. They're designed to take a load of abuse.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you.
Thanks Mound. Actually that steam pipe landing gear on the PT-22 is for all intents and purposes identical to that on the ST-A, it simply lacks the sheet metal fairings and spiffy wheel pants of the ST. They were stripped off of the '22 simply because they got in the way of maintenance. Some late pre-war and early wartime USAAC photos show them still sporting them but they didn't stay on long. I've seen photos and have some video of them on current aircraft - mostly in civvie paint jobs - but they seem out of place on the 22; much more suited to the ST-A and ST-M (the militarized ST-A). One thing about it, though, that gear is hell for strong and had to be in the ham hands of all those neophyte cadets way back.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're right. They can probably get her back in the air without too much trouble. It's amazing what they can do today with little more than a data plate and a prop spinner...
N.