You’re in the clouds, over tree-covered mountainous terrain, when your only engine starts running rough.
That is the stuff of nightmares for pilots.
For Washington-state residents Truman O’Brien and Craig Beles, that scenario became their reality on a March 2021 flight.
Truman and Craig survived. Lightspeed Aviation caught up with the pair on Vashon Island in Washington state’s Puget Sound and turned the interview into a series of four videos for the company’s Aviation No Tie Downs series.
It is well worth a watch.
Wonderful!
Of course it is easy to be an arm chair ‘critic’ and hindsight is 20/20….however, I lesson I learned is that I would have pulled the carb heat right at the start of the engine roughness and leaned appropriately. And left it one while in fact the engine was making at least some power and generating some heat instead of turning it off and then pulling it on again, after it was too late, IMHO. In my aircraft in addition to trying to avoid carb icing conditions I will also periodically pull carb heat (and lean) on as a check and to run some warmer air thru the carb, Expecting some slight roughness due over rich (countered by leaning) but not the coughing and sputtering of an engine digesting water. Removing carb heat I want to see those rpms rise again and engine smoothness. Although they were talking to ATC why not squak 7700 too. This was not mentioned. The cause of the engine roughness was not mentioned but it could have been carb icing quite easily. (I did not watch the last episode, the cause may have been indicated there). Just my two cents.
And a very good 2 cents it is! 🙂 The temperature aloft was well below 20F so the likelyhood of it actually being carb ice is remote. “Grasping at straws” And after breaking out of the cloud deck, I did pull carb heat and left it on all the way to the ground. Thanks for your thoughtful comments!
Oh, and the NTSB still hasn’t done their examination as of Dec 11th. Pretty sure we had a bad cylinder – valve? (This based on the initial rythmic vibration.)
Great set of videos! There’s something here for everyone. Thank you for preparing it and sharing it with the aviation community.
Extremely well done videos talking about these two pilots and their off airport landing. I very much enjoyed their story and successful rescue. Keep up the good work.
What a great story !
Thank you!