Aviator90 Episode 36

Pilot: [0:31] Welcome to another episode of Aviator 90, from Angle of
Attack. Today we are going to be doing our sixth cross country
flight, and it’s going to be an awesome flight. This one is really
cool. We are going from one Sierra 2, and transitioning to 27
Whiskey.
[0:52] Should be a really cool flight, through some awesome
mountain terrain, but this time we’re doing something a bit
different, and actually quite risky.

[1:01] What we’re going to do is I’m going to teach about fuel
conservation during the course of this episode. So, basically, I am
going to take off with 50% in one of the tanks, and that leaves us
with this aircraft, with only 100 gallons of fuel, which is not a
lot, because this is a very high performing engine. So we
essentially have about 45 minutes of fuel, maybe a little more. And
it doesn’t give us a lot to work with.

[1:29] So, it’s going to be challenging to show you guys how you
manage this situation. And if this was a real situation, we would
actually turn back to the airport we took off from, because that
would give us enough reserve fuel. But we are going to continue on
to the destination, and I’ll show you some techniques along the
way, about how you can conserve fuel, and it should be very
interesting and quite eye opening.

[1:53] As always, we have a cold and dark cockpit. And I’m going to
first go to the switches, as always, and start getting things set
up. And it looks like we’re on the correct fuel tank that should
work.

[2:07] The alternator and battery on, we turn the beacon light and
nav light on, prior to start, all other lights should be off. Need
to turn both magnetos on, got that set.

[2:23] And now we are going to check the power, so, just crack the
throttle just a little bit of throttle, maybe a quarter inch, maybe
a half inch, something like that. Full mixture. We’re just at about
500 feet elevation here so we don’t need much mixture, or we don’t
need to lean it out at all, I mean.

[2:41] And then we will clear the area, make sure no one’s around.
We don’t want to chop anyone’s head off that would not be a fun
situation. And then we will get into starting up the aircraft here,
let’s see starter. And we have a start, good. It’s a beauty, this
thing starts right up very easily. Some aircraft you have to coax
them into starting up. But, good thing about flight sim aircraft is
they usually just start right up.

[3:13] All right, so we are going to look at the engine
instruments. Make sure that everything is good for the startup.
Everything’s fine. The oil temperature should warm up during the
process that will be good for us. So, what am I missing here? Let’s
turn on the avionics. The radio is on here, got that. All set
there. Then I will… Let’s see, we don’t need any other lights on
now.

[3:52] Fuel tank set. And we only have a bit of fuel in one of the
tanks so it’s important to make sure you get the right tank.

[4:02] Then let’s see. Our common traffic frequency around here is
one-two-two-point-niner, or you can even say it two-two-niner,
there’s always a one at the beginning. Transponder set to 1200,
which is VFR in the United States, might be something different
where you live.

[4:29] So let’s go to the GPS and try to set things up here. Just
as I did in the last episode, I am going to set up a direct to
waypoint to our destination which is two-seven-whiskey. So I’ll
just move the cursor over and we’ll select “two”, next is
“whiskey”, no, that’s not right. That was one of our other
episodes. That would be the next one. So, “two” and then “seven”.
I’m going the wrong way, I’ll go back up to “seven”. “Two”,
“seven”, and next, “whiskey” backwards, there we go. All right,
there we go. Then “enter”, “activate”, yes, got it. There we go. We
have got it. Direct to two seven whiskey. Looks good. That is all
we need.

[5:44] That should get us on that “direct-to” course that we set
in. With terrain today I don’t think we’re going to be able to do
that, because there are just a lot of peaks around here. So, we’re
going to be doing a bit of zig and zag but the GPS allows us to
still stay on track with that nice magenta line. Should be pretty
simple.

[6:06] I’m just going to zoom in a little here so I have a little
more accuracy for my map, which will help out… muchly. So we are
pretty much done.

[6:24] Going to power up here and we’ll come out for the taxi. I’ll
make a call.

[over radio]

[6:27] Darrington Traffic, Army Seven Niner Eight is taxied to
runway one zero.

[6:44] This is one fat airplane. It looks unassuming because it’s
shaped a lot like the smaller aircraft, like the Piper Cups and
things like that, but it’s actually quite a big airplane. It’s very
tall. We’re going to be careful here in the taxi, to make sure that
we’re not running off the taxiways, clipping the lights, things
like that. I’m sure the airport management would not enjoy having
to replace lights on our behalf. So we will be very careful here.

[7:18] As you can see, the taxiway is pretty dang narrow here at
Darrington, so we have to be careful not to run off. And this is
when centerline is especially important. I just did a flight
control check real quick. Just one of those things that’s intuitive
to make sure that you check that there aren’t any hang-ups.

[7:37] After any maintenance, when, say you have an annual and
they’re messing with your flight controls, you want to make sure to
actually look at the flight controls and make sure they are turning
in the correct direction. Because it’s been known that they’ve set
up some aircraft the opposite way, don’t ask me how. And basically
the pilots will take off, pull back thinking they’re pulling up,
when they’re actually going the opposite way. So if you’re in that
situation you’d be done because it just wouldn’t be normal for you.

[8:14] So we’re cruising down… I’m actually going way too fast;
need to pull the power, get on the brakes. Don’t know how that got
away from me so fast. It could happen, though. Pay attention; one
thing at a time.

[8:26] And then I’m actually going to stop here for the run-up.
Rather than, kind of, turning into the wind or pulling up there,
because the hold short line is a lot closer and the taxiway is
pretty close to the runway. And because we have a fat airplane I’ll
stay out of everyone’s way just in case anyone comes in.

[8:41] So I’m going to run everything up to 1,700 rpm. Now, the
tachometer on this one is a bit different than others, it’s not
just one dial. It’s kind of like the altimeter where you have a big
hand and a small hand. So right now I’m setting it up for 1,700
rpm. You can see that just below the mixture there.

[9:05] And now we’ll check the magnetos. We are at 1,700, oops.
Check the drop. We’ve got a drop, good. And then we’ll go back to
full. Make sure that we’re at full rpm. All right, good, we have a
rise. Go to the right, looks good. We got another drop there. And
we’ll go back to both. That does it for the magneto check.

[9:39] Now I’ll go through the prop check now. And we’ll just cycle
the prop a few times. Just let the rpm drop 200 to 300 rpm before
you push it back up. Just a quick little testing of that system,
getting it all ready to go. And then, let’s see… fuel’s good.
Let’s turn on the lights we need, we need our strobe and landing
light on, so I’ll throw those switches on now. Good to go there!

[10:11] And you know what? That pretty much does it. So, we will
pull on the runway here. Let me make a call before we do that and
I’ll just start to power up while we do that.

[10:26] Darrington Traffic Army, 7908 is taking 10 for eastbound
departure.

[10:44] All right, I’ve got to be really careful around these
corners… it’s going to be a little tricky here. I actually didn’t
tell you guys but I actually did set my flaps, so make sure that
you set your flaps as well. There’s nothing wrong with doing panic
checks whenever you want to.

[11:04] If something feels out of place, do a panic check because I
did that intuitively and I felt like something was missing. So, the
fact that I just looked and checked and made sure it was good,
we’re good to go there. I also forgot to look for traffic…
nothing there.

[11:23] All right! Not exactly the smoothest process but we’re
going to make it here, so I’ll pull this around and get lined up
here. We will get on our way, so I’m going to look over the dash a
little bit, power up the aircraft.

[11:43] All right, so we want to get that tail wheel off the
ground, so I’m going to do forward pressure but not a lot. We don’t
want to push the prop to ground. So, forward pressure, we got that!
Good speed and we’re taking off! Easy as that.

[11:56] This thing really performs well and now we’re just going to
climb like no other here, so… very good! So, we’re going to turn
to the right here a bit and go up this valley and during the
process we’ll clean up the aircraft, meaning we will take out those
flaps that we put in. And we’ll do that one increment at a time as
our air speed allows. We will continue on to our destination!

[12:28] So I just raised the first flap, the first notch of flaps
like I was talking about, very important. Just continue on up here.
So, this part of the flight is probably the most taxing on our
fuel. We’re climbing, going at very slow airspeed and we’re at full
power and full mixture.

[12:54] And it just really sucks down our fuel, so we don’t want to
stay in this situation for long. Today we have the option of
climbing above terrain… well, we don’t necessarily have that
option because of fuel but we could choose to climb above terrain
or we could stay lower, reduce the need to climb and we could
conserve fuel that way.

[13:17] So, I just brought up the final notches of flaps as well
and we’ll get in a cruise climb here. That allows us to conserve
fuel as well because we have less drag on the aircraft. So, I’m out
of airport area, I’m just going to turn out the landing lights so
we don’t burn that bulb out.

[13:37] And so really, part of conserving or the biggest part of
conserving fuel is the mixture. Anything else can come along with
that with the prop and the power. All those help to reduce the need
for fuel consumption.

[13:58] And basically we sacrifice speed for fuel consumption and
it will take longer to get to our destination but we will get there
more efficiently. So, a part of fuel is not directly related to a
part of time basically. We just need to make sure that that’s all
set.

[14:20] So, now that we’re nicely in the climb I’m going to pull
back the prop and the power or the… yeah, the prop and the engine
power so they are in the green as you saw there. And that will get
us all set up and allow us to conserve a little fuel that way.

[14:42] And then we will… in a moment here, start to pull out the
mixture as well because we don’t need that full mixture. Let’s get
to basically our cruise altitude and we don’t have any particular
cruise today. Right now we are kind of operating in crisis mode.

[15:00] We need to evaluate every fuel decision that we make and
every change that we make to the aircraft – every heading change,
every altitude change, every pitch change, even roll can reduce the
efficiency of the aircraft. So, we need to be very diligent in
knowing what we can and can’t do.

[15:23] Now, as I pull out the mixture here, you want to pull it
out until you hear the engine stumble. And you’ll hear a reduction
in engine power and that means you are at the point where the
engine needs that fuel.

[15:41] And so, from that point you can add a little more fuel.
There are some aircraft that are balanced correctly enough. There
are some engines that are balanced correctly enough to where you
can actually go lean of that drop. And that is called lean-o-peak,
it’s a very advanced operation of an aircraft engineer, I can learn
that today.

[16:02] But there are ways to conserve fuel and you just need to
watch what you have, watch what you’re doing and kind of calculate
in your head what’s going on. And the way you can do that is by
knowing what the needles on your fuel gauges are basically saying.

[16:21] They’re saying you have X amount of gallons and if you know
that then you can relate that to being the time left you have in
the flight. And then you relate that to your gallons per hour and
then you know how much you’re even burning per minute or how much
you’re burning per half hour, which is very important to know.

[16:52] So, I’m just going to do 122.8 since that’s the common
traffic area. We’re obviously out of the area of Darrington. And
again, relating how this is to real life. This is not something I
would do in real life, I would not take off with that amount of
fuel unless I knew I was going to have my reserve fuel at my
destination.

[17:11] It’s just not something you do. You get fuel where you are,
you get a plan for your destination. But today we’re proving a
point in the safety of flight simulator. And this is definitely not
recommended in real life. But this gets you thinking about fuel
conservation and what you can do along those lines.

[17:32] So, as we continue here we’re just going to follow that
magenta line and do our best to follow the canyons that will get us
there. And we don’t want to paint ourselves in a corner, in other
words, we don’t want to get into a canyon that we can’t get out of,
that’s very dangerous.

[17:49] Just looking at the GPS here, you can hit direct waypoint
again. Enter, enter again and it will reset the direct from your
current position. And as you see we can continue pretty much up
that canyon just off left of center.

[18:07] So, that’s the first part of fuel consumption. This is
something you can do on every flight if you like. It’s pretty
common to pull back the engine power, pull back the prop RPM and
allows you to get better fuel consumption or a little more
favorable fuel consumption out of the aircraft and therefore you
can save more for your journey.

[18:35] You might go slower but in the process you’re going to save
a lot of fuel and get there with an engine that is actually turning
the propeller. Which, contrary to belief, is preferable? You want
an engine that is actually turning and there’s no reason to stop
that engine.

[19:00] So, we are going to keep it that way. So, we’re just going
through a couple of bumps here. Pretty typical, we got that canyon
that we just came from our right. And there could be different wind
directions, say the wind is spilling down from this canyon and it
was meeting at the mouth of the two canyons, or the intersection.

[19:20] That can cause some pretty serious bumps that would shake
us around a bit. That is definitely not unheard of in mountains.
So, watch out for that, it’s important. Now, I also wanted to share
with you guys that one of the reasons we learnt steep turns and we
learnt them earlier, is partially because of mountain flying. Now,
if you get yourself in a situation in the mountains where you are
basically trapped and you have to turn around really quickly, then
knowing what a steep turn is like can be a life saver, literally.

[20:08] There’s just going to be situations where you may need to
get out of there. And a steep turn could turn you back. You do
whatever you can in that situation. You get close to stalling and
begin climbing to get out of it. And not really close to stalling,
because as you turn the aircraft going into that steep turn, the
lull factor of the aircraft increases, so that actually means that
your aircraft will stall at a higher air speed.

[20:35] So you’ve got to make sure you’re careful. But the aircraft
will tell you, based on the feel and everything, what you can and
can’t do. But it may very well push you out of your comfort zone. I
would guess to say that it actually will push you out of your
comfort zone. That’s not a fun situation.

[20:54] So, steep turns are very beneficial for mountain flying.
Just keep that in mind. Say that we didn’t have this valley to our
right and left here, all we had was a wall face. And we knew we
couldn’t climb in time to get over that. The slower you can get the
aircraft, the less distance it’s going to take up in that turn. So
we’d slow down the aircraft and just get into a steep turn and get
out of here. And that’s one of the reasons a steep turn can be
beneficial.

[21:25] Another reason would be immediate traffic avoidance, bird
avoidance, believe it or not, depending on the situation. Generally
birds dive, so you pull up when you see a bird coming straight at
you. So that works there. I could fast forward here, but I feel
like I have enough to talk about, so I’m a little concerned about
what’s up ahead because I can’t see around the corner, and what’s
coming. So I am pulling up this terrain. Everything looks fine on
the terrain, but I’m still skeptical. I just can’t see around that
corner, doesn’t make me comfortable, so I am ready on the
throttles, just in case I need to be on this turn here, because I
still can’t see what’s going on.

[22:33] Although we don’t have a lot of fuel, getting that
performance would be very important right now. So, I see there’s
still a chance it would be around this next corner up ahead that we
would have the clearing. We are just hugging these trees, hugging
this mountain valley. Very dangerous flying.

[23:00] Obviously, something you wouldn’t want to do on a windy
day. But today, it’s just fine.

[23:09] So, all right, we’re coming up here, it’s looking like it’s
closing in, guys, this is a worsening situation. Now, I have a lot
of airspeed right now. I know that I can immediately make the
decision to hit full power, and that’s everything full forward in
this aircraft, because it needs full mixture in the climb.

[23:31] So I know I can give that full authority, if I need to
climb out of this, and I can pump up over that, not the peak
straight ahead, but to the right, it’s a lot lower. And it looks
like we can just bump right over that if need be.

[23:46] So, still looking here. Definitely not looking good, it’s
looking like it’s closing in. So, I have my hand on the throttle,
although you cannot see it. And I am getting ready for that
situation. I’m planning ahead.

[24:10] All right, this isn’t going to work out. We, yeah, that’s
closing in. so, we’re going to have to climb here full power, full
mixture, full prop. And here we go, we’re pulling it up. Very
quickly, we’re going to use that energy in the airspeed we have to
shorten the distance in which we climb, and we’re going to just
climb as fast as we can here, and bump up over this ridge.

[24:35] And I actually have more room than I need in this
situation, today, with the wind we have. But imagine that there is
a wind spilling over that ridge there coming at us and therefore
going down slope. If we had that sort of down draft to fight
against, that could be a very dangerous situation, so don’t
hesitate on doing it early if you need to, if that’s what you need
to do for safety.

[25:04] And let’s see here, we’ll come up over the ridge. I’m going
to flatten out my airspeed so I have that airspeed in case I need
it again, and then immediately, and I’ve already done it, but I
pulled the mixture. I don’t want to waste any time, I don’t want to
waste any seconds burning extra fuel that I do not have, so as soon
as I got that climb I needed I nosed it over. I went back to the
power settings we had before, and that was very essential for what
we were doing.

[25:37] So now we are going to go into super conservation mode. We
are going to put the engine on the edge of choking. Now the engine
is still going to run, but this is going to give us insane fuel
range with what we have left, and we do not have a lot left. So
this is something that in dire situations an aircraft can do. It’s
not recommended for the life of an engine because you’ll have to
replace them sooner just because you’re putting them through a lot
of trouble, and so it’s important to recognize that you need to
conserve in situations like this.

[26:25] So it looks like I’m going to have to turn left up here,
and then we’ll turn right, and we should be in the clear from here
on out because it’s starting to shallow out into this lake valley,
and we’re landing by a lake today, as you’ll see in a few minutes.

Now talking about this super conservation mode: [26:51] There’s a
story in World War II of Charles Lindberg which, if you guys don’t
know who he is, he was the first guy to fly over the Atlantic
nonstop in the Spirit of St. Louis. Very famous pilot, and he’s
actually on the Aviator 90 logo.

[27:15] But Charles Lindbergh in World War II went to some bases in
the Pacific, because they were having problems with their P-38
fighter aircraft. And these particular aircraft were made to
protect a squadron of B-24s that were used to bomb different
Japanese emplacements during the war.

[27:38] A problem they were having is the P-38s just weren’t
getting the range they were supposed to, and they would have to
break off early from the B-24s and basically leave them alone to
where fighters could come in and take advantage of them. Not a good
situation. So Charles Lindbergh came over and basically offered his
expertise for this particular squadron.

[28:03] He ended up teaching them exactly how to conserve fuel on
their aircraft, and as the story goes, they basically got the
aircraft to the point where it was just choking. They were
surprised the engines were still alive. But he increased the range
of the aircraft from something like 400 miles, he increased it to
700 miles, and it may have been even larger than that.

[28:32] But basically what happened as a result is these particular
fighter aircraft were able to continue to stay with their bombers
throughout the entire mission, and it just increased their success
all around the board. And it was very, very good. And this came
from a man that was intimately familiar with aircraft.

[28:57] He was just known for being ultra-familiar, with his
mechanical prowess, I guess you could call it, he was just totally
familiar with the aircraft that he went in. It’s a lot different
from what I do in these videos. He would literally get in the
cockpit, and he would reach out and he’d feel every knob, every
button, every dial, every instrument.

[29:28] He’d know exactly where everything was, and he’d go through
this process about an hour before he’d have to do anything for the
actual pre-flight. And this was part of his pre-flight, obviously.
But then he would close his eyes, and he would reach out, and he
would get familiar with every knob, every button, every dial. So,
he was pretty intense. He was just a really thorough aviator.

[30:00] Apart from that type of mentality that he had, he was just
extremely smart in what aircraft could do, and I think all of us
can take lessons from people like that and put it in our simulators
these days. And here I am with my GPS talking about Charles
Lindbergh. How blasphemous is that?

[30:23] I just hit direct two again. It looks like we’re getting
close. We’re five minutes out from the airport, so it’s not long. I
showed you the fuel dial a few seconds ago. I pointed that out when
I was talking about Lindy.

[30:37] We’re doing good. The fuel conservation is good right now.
It is not a situation I like to be in. If I had to be in this
situation in real life, I would be having a heart attack right now,
not in the sense that I’d be losing it. But I would be very, very
on edge and making sure that everything was set correctly, that I
was doing absolutely everything I could to make sure I wasn’t
running out of fuel.

[31:04] We’re not done yet. We’re not on the ground, so we have
more to do still as you’ll see here. We’re going to let the
aircraft settle down into this airport along the lake. We will get
on the ground to safety.

[31:27] This has been quite a long episode, lots of talk, lots of
stories, lots of voice tips. I hope you guys enjoyed it. It was a
bit different than what we usually do, but I like challenging stuff
like this. I think it gives us a perspective of what can be done in
circumstances we don’t want to be in.

[31:56] There’s never a time as a pilot that you should give up.
There’s always something you can do, to try. There are stories of
accidents. And I don’t want to point any particular ones out,
because I don’t feel like I can share the details of the accidents
without being insensitive, in a way. But, there are situations
where, pilots have been absolutely out of control, where they had
absolutely no control of what was going on.

[32:30] And I’m talking about situations where there was a
mechanical failure, and they just had no choice, no control over
the situation, but they never stopped fighting, ever. They just
always did their best. And I think we can learn from situations
like that, and know that we should never stop fighting, either,
with the type of flying we do.

[32:52] And that fight starts with the preflight. So, I guess you
could say, it starts with the night before, getting enough rest for
the fight, if you want to compare it to boxing or something.
Getting enough rest for the fight, and thinking ahead, and being
ahead of everything that’s going on.

[33:12] So I’m going to zoom in here. We’re going to stop talking
about stuff that isn’t pertinent to this flight. I’m going to look
for this airport, because we are coming down to the wire here, and
I need a place to land. So, this is a little grass strip, it’s
going to be hard to spot. And I’m going to hug this mountain right
here, so we’re not wasting any distance in what we’re doing.

[33:41] You know, we’re not going to go out over the middle of the
lake before we decide to turn toward the airport, that would waste
time and that would waste fuel. So you keep those things in mind.

Let’s see, [inaudible 33: [33:52] 54] . Not sure what direction the
runway is. Pull up nearest, here, and try to look at the
information for the GPS. I don’t see anything. Still not.

[34:16] Still not seeing anything. Well, this FSX GPS just isn’t
the best, is it? It’s a little hard to work with. I guess it’s
better than nothing, but I think it’s time to put this thing away.
I can’t get it back to the main screen. I cannot figure out, but
I’m sure I’m doing something completely wrong. All right, so forget
about that. It’s time to focus on the landing. All right, that’s…
The airport is right in that clearing to the left, so it’s go time.

[35:18] I’m pulling out the power. We’re going to start descending
here. I’m just putting my first notch in flaps. You can put in that
first notch in flaps in this aircraft at a higher airspeed, and
it’s ready to do that. I enriched the mixture just a little bit so
everything’s good there.

[35:38] Full flaps-I probably could have waited a little longer. We
can have done that at the last second. We’ll just let that fall in,
though, and then we need to make sure we keep our power in line
with that extra drag that I just introduced. See the landing light
really quick, not that it really matters. We’re focused on other
things, making sure we’re focused on this landing.

[36:00] So we are going to trim the treetops here, guys. We are
going to make sure we come right over that line of trees this side
of the runway, and we are going to dump it right on to that
threshold and make sure that we get down. We have one shot at this
and one shot only. Keep that in your mind. Now, I don’t mean that
literally. If something really bad happened and you had to get out
of there, you’re going to cause an accident otherwise, don’t feel
afraid to get up and try it again, but let’s focus on the landing
here.

[36:36] So I don’t literally mean trim the trees, but get as close
as you can to safety and then at the end of the tree line we are
going to pull the power and we are going to settle in because
otherwise we’ll have too much airspeed here. So here we go, here we
go, all right, trimming those trees, trimming those trees. And we
are safe. Pull power, nosing over to compensate for that loss in
power and here we go.

[37:08] Here we go, time to flare; could have done it a little
earlier it’s going to be hard… all right, oh we’re down. We are
down, we are safe, landing wasn’t too bad. It is better to be on
the ground wishing you are in the air than in the air wishing you
were on the ground, and if you were low on fuel right now, in the
air, like we were, you would be wishing you were on the ground.

[37:38] So let’s pull up ahead here and that’s a relief to go
through a situation like that and be able to manage the fuel,
manage everything around you and get to your destination safely. So
that type of situation, although very rare, can be realistic. Say
you were flying in the bush in Alaska…totally different story and
you may be faced with hard decisions like that, so it’s always
important to be very… mindful of your situation; know what’s
going on, know how to think ahead and conserve along the way… in
a fuel management situation so I really…

[38:24] There’s no one here and I don’t think anyone’s going to
come here so I’m not going to bother really lining up straight,
that may sound lazy, probably is, but we’re just going to pull the
mixture here, I’m done.

[engine shuts off]

Pilot: [38:37] All right that does it and this time we literally cheated
death… again. So I’m going to turn off all our lights [switches
clicking] ; we don’t need those any more. Radios come off
[clicking] , magnetos off [click] , and let’s see… [click] I keep
forgetting flaps for some reason, let me put those up real quick.
Put up all the flaps…
…and that does it so now we can turn off the battery and
alternator…and then we are done my friends! Thanks for watching
this episode, I hope you guys enjoyed kind of this abnormal stuff,
and the chat-chat we had along the way. I know I was probably a
little more wordy that you would have liked but I enjoyed it, I
hope you did too and I will see you on the next episode. Until next
time: [39:08] throttle on!

Transcription by CastingWords