My second in-flight emergency

Yeah, this one I don’t put any quotes around the word “emergency”. It was scary, it was real, and I’m happy to be on the ground again. And I will never, ever, ever skip the run-up just because I flew the plane for two hours a mere 15 minutes ago.

The mission for today: Jim Wright and Bill Shaw were to take the Dakota to Goderich Ontario to get painted. Lenny and I were to take the Lance with all the stuff that Sky Harbour was going to put on the plane as they painted it (brand new LoPresti “Zip Tips”, new windshield, wheel pants, etc), and fly the two people who took the Dakota back.

First snag of the day: Both planes have ice on the wing. Jim and Lenny “borrowed” a couple of bottles of de-icing fluid from Bill Laws and took care of that while I did the flight planning.

Second snag of the day: We can’t clear customs in Goderich, have to make a stop in London, Ontario. No problem. Filed IFR even though there were a couple of fluffly clouds over Rochester and the whole rest of the way is solid ceiling and visibility unlimited.

So we get ready, taxi up to the run up. Due to my experiences the last two times I’ve attempted to fly the Lance, I was keeping an eye on the alternator. Get to the runup area without incident, and when running up, the alternator suddenly goes to zero. Cycle the ALT switch and it’s back up. Lenny says that since it’s VFR weather and we’ve got two handheld radios and two handheld GPSes, we should chance it. Worst decision of the day – we should have grabbed one of the Archers instead, although then one or two of us would have had to stay home.

While climbing out, the alternator goes to zero again. I switched off the fuel pump, and it came back on. 15 or 20 minutes later, it did it again. This time switching off the autopilot “fixes” it. Two or three more times on the way to London, the alternator went to zero, we cycled the ALT switch, and we were fine again.

It was a beautiful day and in spite of the problems with the alternator, we were enjoying ourselves.

Then it came time to leave London. We start up, and lo and behold, we’ve got no alternator. We tried cycling the switch to no avail. Tried turning some stuff off and on again, still no luck. We’ve solid VFR, great weather, so Lenny says “I don’t want to get stuck here, let’s just get going”. We skip the run-up to save time and because we’d just flown the plane for two hours. That was the second worst decision of the day.

Unfortunately we’re in a very long wait to take off. There are three of us waiting at the Alpha intersection (with only 4,000 feet of runway ahead of us), and a King Air waiting at the very end, but it seemed like we spent an awful lot of time staring at an empty runway while the control tower tried to “create a gap” (his words). I’m not sure what sort of gap he was trying to create, because like I said, the was almost no traffic landing and we must have waiting a good 10 minutes. I think part of the problem was that number 1 to take off was an ultralight or Sport Plane, so he needed to give it a lot of time. I guess he figured it would be inpolite to let the three of us waiting behind him go while he was “creating a gap”.

When it was finally time to go, we took the runway with the controller saying “start your roll now, no delay I have a Dash-8 on 2 mile final”. So I pushed up the throttle and there was a strange sound that sounded like the prop overspeeding and then settling down. The engine was aneamic and not producing its normal power. I looked at Lenny and said “should I stop”, but by that time the red runway end lights looked pretty damn close, so I dragged it into the air. We were not climbing like we should, and the engine started coughing and sputtering and shaking. We tried switching the fuel tanks, turning on and off the fuel pump, alternate air, left and right mags, nothing was helping.

Right off the end of the runway was a lake, and Lenny said “turn back as soon as we clear this lake.” I did, and with trembling voice I called the tower and said “This is Lance 977, we’ve got to come back and land.” The tower called somebody else, so as soon as he stopped talking I said “this is 977, we have to come back NOW, we’ve got engine problems”. That got his attention. I think I sounded a wee bit panicy, although by that time I was actually in a better position than the first time I called. He said “Roger, continue on your left downwind for runway 33”. By this time we’d actually managed to struggle up to pattern altitude, but with the engine still running rough.

I flew a very close-in downwind so that if I’d lost the engine I probably still could have glided into the runway. The controller offered me the crossing runway, but as I saw it right off my wingtip it looked like I would have to do too extreme a maneuver to get to it, so I said I’d stick with 33. 33 is longer, too, so it was probably the right decision.

At this point I saw a Dash-8 that had been on approach when I’d taken off. He looked like he was still heading directly for the runway and at my altitude. I thought “Shit, he’s going to try and land that Dash-8 ahead of me. Doesn’t he know I’m in trouble here.” Funny how even though I’ve criticized other pilots for being reluctant to say “the E word” (Emergency), I didn’t say it. Tower must have seen my hesitation to turn base, because he said “That Dash ahead of you is going to stay at his altitude, he’s not landing”, so I said “Roger, making a short approach”, cut the power way back and turned a very short downwind-base-final, dropped the gear, and glided in. Even made a pretty good landing, if I do say so myself.

Jim and Bill had gone to a different FBO than us, so I taxied over to Shell to join them. Lenny said “before you shut down, do a run-up” – I tried and the damn thing was backfiring so bad I though I was going to break something. We shut down.

What followed was a whole ton of bureaucracy. I had to call customs and tell them that rather than leaving the Dakota in Canada and coming back in the Lance, we were going to leave the Lance and come back in the Dakota. Had to call the tower so they could write up why they forced a Dash-8 to do a go-around. Had to find a mechanic on the field so we could hand over the Lance for him to work on.

We let Jim and Bill do the return flight planning. Not the worst decision of the day, but not the best, as they filed the flight plan for us leaving Goderich instead of London, and had us clear customs in Buffalo instead of Rochester, so we had to call up Flight Service and amend the start of the flight plan, but it was too late to do anything about the customs notification.

The four of us crammed into a Dakota, which is not the most comfortable plane in the world, let me tell you, and off we flew to Buffalo. But even with four adults and flight bags and full fuel, it still climbed at over 1,000 feet per minute.

Anyway, it’s a relief to finally get back to Rochester, and end a very frustrating day.