Sandown Snow and Alternators
I had the whole afternoon booked today on an AA5 with the intention of visiting another airfield, this time Sandown on the Isle of Wight. This flight would serve a number of purposes, firstly to give myself more time on the AA5 and secondly to practice a few touch-n-go's on the grass runway at Sandown. I had a new instructor come with me today in order to provide critical input into my techniques, James.
Once in the air I realised I couldn't have picked a better flying day.. with scattered cloud at around 4500AMSL and visibility of greater than 40km, the best vis I have seen for a long time. To add to the beauty of the sky, many of the clouds were showering snow which looked awesome from the air. The flight down for some reason I was not focussed on actually flying and repeatedly allowed the aircraft to climb gently above my planned altitude. I think part of this was I felt more relaxed than usual so became a bit sloppy and also I am still adjusting to the attitude of the AA5 from the Katana.
We crossed the coast and watched the large ships heading in towards Portsmouth. Reaching the Isle of Wight I circled around the coast and descended ready to enter the ATZ for Sandown. Sandown from the air is another good looking airfield, surrounded by gentle hills and the small town to the South. I am the only aircraft in the circuit so join for the first touch and go, I turn for a nice tight circuit forgeting that the AA5 is not a Katana, so pass the runway on downwind with the runway around the middle of my right wing. Base therefore is a sweeping turn on to final, ok I am high so full flap and full sideslip.. bah not coming down enough.. going around. My next circuit is much better and the landing is ok, I do a couple more of these. I decide I like landing on grass just for the fun element of bouncing along on a less than smooth surface.
Sandown has a fairly new restaurant/bar at the airfield which is pretty nice with a large veranda for watching the aircraft. We get some cokes from the bar and chat about flying and careers and so on for about an hour.
Time to depart, we leave and begin climbing for 4000ft over the Isle of Wight, ready to cross the solent. This is basically in the hope that if the engine fails we have time to glide close to the shore for ditching. No sooner are we out accross the water and we get a strange whistle in the headphones, strange sound.. ah possibly related to all those pretty little warning lights illuminating. Ok starter warning light is on, alternator warning light is on, and the AMP guage is showing discharge from the battery. James takes control to allow me to carry out the alternator failure check-list. I check the circuit breakers are in, they all are. So following through on the list I try turning the Alternator master switch off and on again.. no change. I turn off all electrics we can do without such as all lights and the ADF, NAV1 and NAV2 and COM2. I therefore have just transponder, COM1 and the pitot heat on (we decided to keep this for the moment as we were soon to pass through some snow flurries). I have control again, we have basically gone through the emergency check-list and failed to fix the problem therefore we have several choices, land nearby at Goodwood or continue towards Blackbushe. Blackbushe is approximately 40 minutes away and in reaching there we need to get clearance to transit through Farnborough's ATZ. We decide to contact Farnborough shortly, advise them of our problem and then tell them we will switch off radio, squawk 7600 and contact them again before entering their ATZ.
We cross over the solent onto land again and pass through a gap in the row of clouds in front of us, out the other side is once again sunshine with occasional fluffy clouds and amazing vis. Whilst I fly and navigate, James plays with the electrics
and turns of the Pitot heat, he tries recycling the alternator master again and suddenly we seem to have alternator again.. he starts switching on lights one at a time and then pitot heat, we lose alternator. So pitot seems to be responsible. We leave that off and continue with all electrics back. Therefore we don't mention it to Farnborough. The remainder of the flight back is uneventfull.
I think this turned out to be a good training exercise having to cope with my first airborne emergency situation, albeit a fairly minor one. It was also an amazing flight in itself with beautiful conditions and a nice airfield visited. On reflection had I been without an instructor present it would have been more worrying but I think it reinforced the value of practicing all kinds of emergency procedures regularly. Knowing in advance exactly what you are going to do takes a lot of the stress out of the situation and today proved to me that unusual situations can happen suddenly without any prior warning.
Once in the air I realised I couldn't have picked a better flying day.. with scattered cloud at around 4500AMSL and visibility of greater than 40km, the best vis I have seen for a long time. To add to the beauty of the sky, many of the clouds were showering snow which looked awesome from the air. The flight down for some reason I was not focussed on actually flying and repeatedly allowed the aircraft to climb gently above my planned altitude. I think part of this was I felt more relaxed than usual so became a bit sloppy and also I am still adjusting to the attitude of the AA5 from the Katana.
We crossed the coast and watched the large ships heading in towards Portsmouth. Reaching the Isle of Wight I circled around the coast and descended ready to enter the ATZ for Sandown. Sandown from the air is another good looking airfield, surrounded by gentle hills and the small town to the South. I am the only aircraft in the circuit so join for the first touch and go, I turn for a nice tight circuit forgeting that the AA5 is not a Katana, so pass the runway on downwind with the runway around the middle of my right wing. Base therefore is a sweeping turn on to final, ok I am high so full flap and full sideslip.. bah not coming down enough.. going around. My next circuit is much better and the landing is ok, I do a couple more of these. I decide I like landing on grass just for the fun element of bouncing along on a less than smooth surface.
Sandown has a fairly new restaurant/bar at the airfield which is pretty nice with a large veranda for watching the aircraft. We get some cokes from the bar and chat about flying and careers and so on for about an hour.
Time to depart, we leave and begin climbing for 4000ft over the Isle of Wight, ready to cross the solent. This is basically in the hope that if the engine fails we have time to glide close to the shore for ditching. No sooner are we out accross the water and we get a strange whistle in the headphones, strange sound.. ah possibly related to all those pretty little warning lights illuminating. Ok starter warning light is on, alternator warning light is on, and the AMP guage is showing discharge from the battery. James takes control to allow me to carry out the alternator failure check-list. I check the circuit breakers are in, they all are. So following through on the list I try turning the Alternator master switch off and on again.. no change. I turn off all electrics we can do without such as all lights and the ADF, NAV1 and NAV2 and COM2. I therefore have just transponder, COM1 and the pitot heat on (we decided to keep this for the moment as we were soon to pass through some snow flurries). I have control again, we have basically gone through the emergency check-list and failed to fix the problem therefore we have several choices, land nearby at Goodwood or continue towards Blackbushe. Blackbushe is approximately 40 minutes away and in reaching there we need to get clearance to transit through Farnborough's ATZ. We decide to contact Farnborough shortly, advise them of our problem and then tell them we will switch off radio, squawk 7600 and contact them again before entering their ATZ.
We cross over the solent onto land again and pass through a gap in the row of clouds in front of us, out the other side is once again sunshine with occasional fluffy clouds and amazing vis. Whilst I fly and navigate, James plays with the electrics
and turns of the Pitot heat, he tries recycling the alternator master again and suddenly we seem to have alternator again.. he starts switching on lights one at a time and then pitot heat, we lose alternator. So pitot seems to be responsible. We leave that off and continue with all electrics back. Therefore we don't mention it to Farnborough. The remainder of the flight back is uneventfull.
I think this turned out to be a good training exercise having to cope with my first airborne emergency situation, albeit a fairly minor one. It was also an amazing flight in itself with beautiful conditions and a nice airfield visited. On reflection had I been without an instructor present it would have been more worrying but I think it reinforced the value of practicing all kinds of emergency procedures regularly. Knowing in advance exactly what you are going to do takes a lot of the stress out of the situation and today proved to me that unusual situations can happen suddenly without any prior warning.
posted by Chris @ Wednesday, March 01, 2006
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