Airplane Crash at Fairbanks Shown from 3 Onboard Cameras N334DH
This video is intended to show that you can walk away from a bad situation if you continue to fly the airplane until it stops. In this case the engine quit without warning at 200 feet above the ground and there were only 20 seconds for recognition, trouble-shooting, decision-making, and execution before ground contact.
Studies have shown that without at least 500 feet between the airplane and the ground at engine failure a complete turn-back is not possible and further an analysis by an Annapolis professor of aerodynamics concluded that in this case I had only a 90 degree arc on either side of the nose in which to turn and execute a landing. He figured that I used 85 degrees and had very little options left. As a learning point, he suggests making emergency turns at 45 degrees angle of bank in order to get the maximum amount of turn vs. altitude loss instead of the 28 degrees that I used if one needs to maximize the turn radius. Obviously this one put me where I needed to be.
To the Monday morning quarter