Hello from Chief Pilot Central.

The beautiful month of October is upon us. Despite the shortened days, the Fall mornings can provide some fog-free and unlimited visibility flights. Many of my own students are IFR trainees, and there is nothing better than describing the dawn’s beauty while they are under the hood. This where I practice my Garrison Keillor style of narration.

As far as new news, many have read by now, as I am below Mike’s article, that I will be taking over the management of the Maintenance department. I take this task on with the same dedication that I have tried to put into the DFS, and now Chief Pilot’s office. My concerns, like those of many, are balancing the need for safety and availability, while providing reliable and economical services to our member/owners. If you have any suggestions, and/or questions regarding the maintenance of the WVFC fleet, please feel free to call or send me an email.

Only one incident since we last talked. We had one of our 172s run off the end of the runway at SQL airport. An investigation is still in process. Preliminary results seem to indicate landing a little too far down on the runway and then an indecisive process for deciding when to go around or commit to the landing.

Remember, since our home base airports PAO and SQL are not endowed with long runways, we need to have a heightened sense of awareness of making the go-around decision. My mantra has always been touch down in the first third, or go around. The other is always to reinforce the thought of the infamous WIDCO rule: When In Doubt, Chicken Out. Remember, we are not always going to be landing at the likes of Castle and Mather, both stoutly plus 10k foot runways. Remember, stay current, stay safe. Roger Wilco Over and Out.

To best serve you, there are a few ways that you could help us become more efficient, and perhaps create more flying time for everyone. It's also important to explain our reasons for asking things, like always recording the Tach time in planes that have a Tachometer. By doing this our Maintenance Department is better able to predict upcoming maintenance on our planes. This makes for fewer last-minute cancellations and allows you to plan around maintenance. Little things like this can make everyone, both members and staff, much happier.

The first thing we would like to bring up, that may not seem very important, is making sure you park the plane you fly in its designated parking space. If that space is for some reason full, please take the plane to maintenance and inform them that a plane is in the wrong spot. One thing that sadly can cause delays in our maintenance department is when they are pulled away from their important tasks of fixing our planes to move back a whole chain of planes that have been parked in the wrong spaces.

Wouldn’t you love to be able to pull up the schedule on a day you feel like flying and discover a two hour opening perfect for you to just go up for a short time? We all occasionally have those days. Unfortunately, the schedule is often too full for last minute flights. One way to create more time on the schedule is to make sure that you cancel a flight when you decide for whatever reason you cannot make it. Or, if you realize that you will be late, please call in to reschedule it for a little later, especially if you will be over an hour late. Another thing you can do is plan your flight, so that you know about how long it will take. This can prevent needing to give yourself over an hour of extra time to prevent a late arrival, time that could be used by someone else. Of course, please do not underestimate the time it will take you either; give yourself more leeway the farther away you are flying. Also, if you are scheduling time with an instructor before your flight, then schedule only the instructor for the time you plan to do ground before you fly.

Finally, we would ask that you please try to write as clearly as possible when writing down your squawks. Squawks are transcribed from the books onto the computer for easy access to all. They are listed under the Mx Status link when you are looking at the schedule for planes. When squawks are indecipherable we are unable to put them in the computer. Make sure you put your member number and date so that the squawk is not anonymous and made at an unknown time. The squawk means more to us if we know who it is coming from. We also cannot fix what we do not understand, so please be as descriptive as possible. If you know that others have had trouble reading your handwriting, or if you write small, print in block letters, and do not worry about needing two boxes instead of one.

All of us at WVFC thank you for your time. Blue Skies! We’ll see you at the Club!

Forgive the break in the normal series of articles about the Safety Attitude, but this one pretty well hit me in the gut. It was the first fatal accident of a PC-12 in the US.

It’s a sad thing when an airplane you love dies.

It’s worse, of course, when there are fatalities. I didn’t know the pilot or his girlfriend, but I knew the plane.

With the exception of the trip from Switzerland to the US, I was aboard, and except for 45 minutes, was PIC for each of Pilatus N451ES’s first 250 hours. It’s the plane I left the West Valley General Manager position to fly full time. Independent Electric Supply, for whom I flew it, bought the plane new on December 14, 2001, and I flew it out to California to start a period of flying it nearly a hundred hours per month for the next 5 months. Like all PC-12s, it was a single-engine, pressurized turbo-prop. It had all the latest goodies – dual Garmins (430 and 530), the King Multi Function Display with the Integrated Hazard Avoidance System (weather radar, Stormscope, Enhanced Terrain Avoidance, TCAS out to 20 NM), radar altimeter, and complete co-pilot instruments independent of the pilot’s. It had loads of creature comforts, and the pilot could stay in his seat for over six hours without stress or strain. I know from personal experience. N451ES also had an autopilot that could fly with an unbelievable degree of accuracy. On a typical flight, the only times I actually needed to hand fly it (I flew it by hand more often, simply because it’s an awesomely fun plane to fly) was the first 1000 ft of climb. Then again I needed to hand fly it in the last 1000 ft of descent and the actual landing. Both of those restrictions were a result of POH limitations.

It also gave me a great deal of pleasure to take some of our West Valley CFIs along on some of the flights to give them a feel for what a larger plane is like, and how technology is being used in them. Turbine time is precious for folks who want to advance to airline or corporate jobs.

Unfortunately, Independent Electric had to sell the airplane, and someone on the East Coast bought it. Even more unfortunate, 451ES crashed on September 14, 2002, killing the pilot and his girlfriend, the only occupants of the plane.

What I know to date is that the plane took off from Lake of the Ozarks on an instrument flight plan, and at one point was directed by ATC to turn right 20 degrees. The radar showed a turn of more like 40 to 45 degrees, and at an altitude of about 13,500 feet, it began a rapid descent. Witnesses said it was spiraling at a very steep angle and engine noise was heard. A cold front was pushing through the area at the time, and thunderstorms may have been present. According to the NTSB there was heavy rain in the area at the time.

At this point, I’m leaving the facts and going into speculation, with some relevant safety-related questions.

First, although the PC-12 is a VERY strong airplane, there are no airplanes that are stronger than all thunderstorms (fact). If the plane went into a thunderstorm, there may have been a pilot judgment issue. You can often see thunderstorms with the unaided eye, and certainly with the weather radar and Stormscope. A weather brief may have pointed out these hazards as well. Those of you who learned to fly in Northern California may not realize just how benign our weather is. Only rarely are there conditions here in which you’d rather be on the ground wishing you were in the air, instead of the other way around. The thunderstorms of the mountains, high deserts, and Great Plains build rapidly, and carry forces nearly impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced a piece of them.

So, aside from perhaps trying to beat a thunderstorm instead of logging another day of bass fishing, what could have gone wrong?

Probably the pilot had at least the same training I did in the PC-12 simulator, and may well have been more experienced – on my first PC-12 PIC flight, I had just over 25 hours in type (insurance minimums). But, like all complex airplanes some things may not be obvious in time of crisis.

Did the engine fail because of too much ice into the air intake? At 13,500 feet, the plane may have entered icing conditions, and these can be extreme in thunderstorms. Did the pilot remember it takes about 20 seconds for the inertial separator to open? When the engine fails, the restart procedure results in the loss of the Attitude and Heading Reference System (this provides the information we usually see on the Attitude Indicator and the Heading Indicator). Was the pilot prepared to fly the plane on the peanut gyro? Was there structural icing? There are systems to deal with that (Probes, AOA and windshield heat are on per the checklist on all flights), but the boots need to be turned on if required.

Had the plane been flying on autopilot? Under heavy G forces, the autopilot is disengaged, and yes, there is a warning, but there may have been a lot going on at the time, and the pilot may not have noticed.

Two extremes of airspeed are possible in a short period of time in a thunderstorm. High speed, and therefore heavy G loading, and low speed, and therefore stalls. The PC-12 manual warns against stalls, and the stick-pusher is supposed to keep them from occurring. The stalls themselves are reputed to be pretty dramatic. So much so that the factory rep nearly went completely white when he heard that the RCMP pilots were overriding the stick-pusher to train in complete stalls and recoveries, or so I’ve heard.

Was the engine noise heard by the witnesses actually the sound of an engine generating power, or was it a windmilling engine at flight idle in a steep descent? Was the spiral they witnessed a spiral or a spin? Were all the control surfaces still intact, or had there been damage in a thundercloud? What was the airplane weight at the time (since it affects maneuvering speed)? At low weights, the maneuvering speed can be less than 130 knots. Pretty easy to exceed if you’re climbing at 120 knots (best rate) and hit a really strong gust.

Was the pilot’s turn of more than 20 degrees meant to keep the plane clear of a thunder cell? By doing so did he run directly into hail being thrown out of the cloud? Hail, of course, does bad things to airframes and windshields. I saw a picture of one PC-12 that had tangled with hail. The leading edge of the wing was nearly flat, and had been smashed back about a foot and a half. I’d hate to guess what it did to the aerodynamics and things like stall speed.

Did the plane enter a spin? If so, did the pilot have the presence of mind to turn the yaw damper off? If not, the rudders couldn’t be operated effectively independent of the ailerons – not what you want in a spin recovery.

Obviously, there is a lot I don’t know about what happened. But I do know the plane, and I do know the training the pilot probably went through. That gives me pause. It makes me wonder how all the questions I have just asked apply to the planes we fly every day. Sure, we don’t have all the same equipment, but there are similarities that need to be looked at.

More importantly, these questions point to the importance of KNOWLEDGE, and not just good technique. For these are conditions one can’t practice for in a real plane, but one can prepare for through knowledge and anticipation.

No amount of technique is enough to fly into a thunderstorm safely.

It’s a sad thing when an airplane you love dies.

That’s right! Researchers at Stanford University’s Aviation Safety Laboratory are recruiting for a study looking at the effects of nicotine withdrawal on aviator performance. To participate you must be a licensed pilot with a current medical, 20-60 years of age, and smoke an average of about 15 cigarettes a day or more.

Participants will be trained on the Lab’s Frasca 141 flight simulator, then tested during two 14-hour test days under various conditions, some of which may include chewing nicotine or placebo gum, or abstaining from smoking. (Approximately 40 hours total sim time.)

Upon completion of the study, participants will be reimbursed $750. For more information please contact Lisa Wilson at lisa.wilson@stanford.edu.

* Wednesday, October 9, 7-8:30 pm, PAO
Tailwheel transition -- discover a whole new way of flying. Ann Elsbach

* Wednesday, October 16, 7-8:30 pm, SQL
Introduction to IFR flying -- discuss the IFR training process, syllabus and requirements for the IFR rating. Darryl Kalthof