Multi-Engine Training - Part 1: The Drill

Happy New Year everyone, it's January 2019 and in the spirit of continuous improvement and lifelong learning, one of my New Year's resolutions is to add a qualification, which is why I recently traveled to Mason City in northern Iowa to receive

training

in Dr. Rosenthal's twin-

engine

engine

s. highly experienced instructor, examiner pilot, air show pilot in this first documentary video and I will guide you through the exercise. The immediate steps we follow after losing one of the motors in the second video will cover VMC, the minimum control speed. I say to Martin, oh, you. Well, you have a nice flight from Cedar Avenue, yeah, it's nice, so you want to do some

multi

-engine

training

.

Hey? I am interested in learning about this. Yeah, I think you're here to do that. Great, let's start right. Let's get to it, yes, I have printed some of the ACS here, the ACS commercial pilot. Many of the tasks that we have to do, frankly, are the same tasks that you would do to get your commercial and the reality is that a baron is just a two-engine bonanza, so today we're going to focus here on the things that are really at the heart. and the soul, the meat, if you will, of the classification of various engines, the things that are really different from the simple ones, yes, and I suppose one.

One of the points I want to convey to you is that when you go to get a

multi

-engine rating, unfortunately the training you receive is designed to pass the test, the training in some areas is woefully inadequate, so let's dig a little deeper into it. which I believe and I'll share with you some of my philosophies about flying multi-engine airplanes and why it's different and how important it is, and that's what we're here to accomplish, okay? The tasks that we are going to have to do are activate and reset, so this is really the heart of all multi-motor training and to activate a motor there are many different methods, people teach it in different ways, but I am quite hard on teaching a method called

drill

, first when the engine fails in a multi-engine aircraft.

I don't care how much experience you have or how much you've done this if it's totally unexpected. There will be a moment of shock, panic, terror, whatever you want to call your body, it's going to take a big dose of adrenaline, okay, yeah, and the adrenaline will change your vision from 180 degrees to two inches at 2000 yards, okay, will light up. your heart rate will slow down your brain, it will destroy your fine motor skills and one of the things we have to do is train to overcome that phase and go from being a drugged monkey, the drug is adrenaline, to a functional pilot which is actually flying the airplane mm-hmm because when we are flying this airplane that went from one hundred percent performance to thirty percent performance, the finesse with which we fly the airplane will have a lot to do with its performance and the probability of a successful outcome in four thousand feet of concrete somewhere, of course, so we need strategies to help us overcome that and they need to be reinforced regularly with recurrent training and that's one of the things you really have to commit to if you're going to fly.

A multi-engine airplane is flying it professionally and committing to recurring training and then when it happens unexpectedly in reality, you'll still go through that phase where you take the big shot of adrenaline, you'll have some panic, some terror, whatever, but you have to have strategies and tools to overcome that phase recover your vision from here to here recover your fine motor skills and fly the plane delicately completely and accurately for a successful landing at an airport and that is difficult to train because, by definition and training you expect it to happen and outside of training it doesn't, but this is the deal that everyone says will rise to the occasion.

Well, pilots don't rise to the occasion, they sink to the highest level of their recent training and the longer that training goes. the lower the levels because flying is a perishable skill is a good way to put it so let's talk about the

drill

motors can fail and numerous different phases of flight that can fail on the runway before we have left the ground, right? would be your response if the engine failed on the runway, I would cut the power and stop on the runway, that's right, if you have a feeling that something is wrong on the runway, stay on the ground, stay on the ground, that's fine. it gets dangerous ER once we've left the ground I think I can almost categorically say light up the twins if you have an engine failure and the gear is down we should take the power off and land fine and if we have an engine failure and the march is in transit so we are going to do what is called the drill and we are going to introduce this into your brain in the same place in your brain where mary had a little lamb exists and the drill is like this here write this if we write we remember that we are launch point for the blue line mixtures props throttles fins equipment identify check feather mixture engine failure checklist so the first thing you're going to do when this engine some people will swear okay that's relax almost a little bit you're going to push the nose forward basically with the nose on the horizon initially because if you maintain the climb attitude your speeds will disappear.

I'm going to decline quickly. The next thing we're going to do is push the mixes forward now if so. right after takeoff, they should be forward, okay, yeah, so you have to get close to the propellers and you'll push the propellers all the way forward, uh-huh, slowly and deliberately, and then you'll push both throttles all the way forward mixtures, propellers , accelerators, okay? They'll go down and again Barun, they have the rear flaps up, they should be up, but we're going to check that the gear is in transit, because if the gears are down, what were we going to do to lend Trey?

That's right, all the right gears. Identify, we're going to hit the dead leg to do that, we have to look at the ball and push, you know, so if the ball, if the plane is Yan Yan, we're going to push to get the ball back to the center that will be on . the good side of the engine, so we're going to slap the dead leg, which is the leg that's not pushing the rudder, that's right and the reason we slapped a dead leg is because then we're going to call it identified mm-hmm and then we will be I will check it by pulling back the same accelerator, okay, and if it calms down, what are we going to do?

Push it up again because we pulled it all back, okay, but check by pulling the throttle back, okay, because if you pull back the wrong way. throttle, you can push it forward again, yes, then we'll grab the same propeller control, we'll pull it all the way and that will start the feather process, aha, okay, and then we'll pull. the mixture now let's take a minute and fly the plane, what are we going to do with the five degree pitch? what is the good engine? and we are going to relax the rudder until we divide the ball into half a ball, okay? and when.

We have everything stable and we are far from the ground, so we are going to pull out the engine failure checklist and what we want is for the ball to point directly at the ground and when we put five degrees tilt on the plane, if the balls on the center are pointed, they do not point to the ground, so the reality is that we want the ball no matter how much bank we have, yes, so many degrees a bank off the center mm-hmm because the ball must point to the ground at all times in coordinated flight , yeah, and that's how we determine that we're in coordinated flight because the ball is pointing to the ground, okay, that's the exercise, so we're going to do the exercise over and over and over again and you'll be driving down the road in your car and you will boom engine failure pitch for blue line mixes struts throttles fins up gear up identify check feather blend engine failure checklist only half the time and when you can do it slowly and deliberately 100% of the time, when I go boom, the engine fails, I hope you recite it without breathing slowly and deliberately, then we get on the plane and you will do the exact same thing now, once you start that process, okay, you're in it. panic, oh my gosh, I lost an engine, what do I do?, oh yeah, exercise, okay, when you do that, you get a little shot of endorphins, okay, that makes you feel good and your vision goes from here to here and every step of the way.

You understand well, your vision goes further and further. Some will argue that if I'm right after takeoff, I don't need to mess around with gear and flaps. You know, I just skipped that. I guarantee you. If you don't make that

part

of your ritual every time I can put you in a situation where you will lose gear and the flaps when they are actually down, have you ever taken off on the plane? It's been three or four or five miles from the airport and I say why is this plane not going. I have exactly what song on my computer.

So the ritual makes sense out of the chaos and an engine failure and a light twin. The unexpected is chaos. There is a cone of confusion. The helmet fire. whatever word you choose to use when it actually happens and if you can throw a piston that comes out through a hood or a small fire out there just in case, you really know chaos and you need a ritual so this must be the deepest possible. in your brain like Mary had a little lamb' and you can do it over and over again precisely, slowly and deliberately, the slower and more deliberately you do it, the faster and more accurately it will be completed because if you make a mistake here and you actually use wrong engine, game over, you just turned into a glider and the engines are not going to come out of the boom, how about if you say you are doing an instrument approach and you are configured to land, would you still do all this?

Steps so you can continue well with the landing. I would follow those steps if I am at the entry marker and with the gears down. I'm not going to raise it because when going down a 3 degree glide slope there are very few light winds that won't maintain a 3 degree glide slope with one engine running, so if the gears go down in a fin shape they get closer or if I lost the engine at 20 miles out and am approaching on my single engine approach. it's going to be exactly the same as a twin engine approach in every way possible, oh that means slowing down on the marker flaps, getting closer to the marker, the only difference between a single engine ILS and a twin engine ILS is that we have tolerance zero for the following. the glide slope, yeah, you know, okay, so maybe you say a blind spot and a low spot on a single engine approach.

We want to be on the glide slope at 1 point high, so nothing below the glide slope, single engine, that's fine and normally fly the blue line plus 10, you know, that's the speed I would fly on approach. with only one engine, so we have some margin, so if you get distracted and lose speed, you know you have ten knots to lose before you go the wrong way. The drag hub side is the drill, so the next step is we're going to sit in a chair and do the drill on top because there's no point getting on the plane where you have all that weird noise and everything. of that until you have this brain firmly memorized and can execute it reliably and accurately repeatedly, so you know at first glance you would say this is a little stupid, but you've been to Oshkosh, right? mm-hmm if you go to Oshkosh and you see the professionals, if you go down to show the Center and you watch them before they fly, they go out and do their maneuvers, okay, what we're doing here, they do it because it makes them perform better, then, what are we going to do? here we are not walking we are sitting because we are going to be sitting in our plane we are going to gamble in theory we are going to walk through the maneuvers okay and first of all I am going to talk to you about it and then you will know that we will work together to get you to the same place, so we're at the end of the runway we've done our run and we're ready to go and I'm flying the plane that you're on right now so that's my takeoff so at the end of the runway I'll say okay , we will leave the runway 3-0 at Mason City, if I have a problem before the gear retract, we go to close the throttles and land in a straight line, we have a lot of runway after the gear retract, it will be mixes, accessories, throttles , flaps, gear up, identify, check propeller mixture, climb to a safe altitude, do the engine failure checklist and return this way to the ground, and if I were my co-pilot, I would say that in a situation of a single pilot, once he is comfortable with the decision he made, now that he has done it, he has thought it through, he has a plan and the probability that he will do it.

We're going to execute that plan, it's major, okay, so now I just said it. I'm sitting here. I take out the pen at full power. Okay, airspeed is alive. The temperatures and pressures are good. Okay, so I'm around 50 60 knots. all air speeds are alive. I'm going to look at the oil pressure at the oil temperature,that's the last time I'll look at it, to make sure I have some pressure and that the temperatures don't go through mental temperatures and pressure. well, okay, red line and you're accelerating very quickly in a sterile, even rude manner, you're accelerating very quickly, the red line is VMC +10, turn and I'm going to pull back on the yoke like you would in a Bonanza establishment if I don't want to say we have more performance, but we want speed, so it will just be flatter, probably a similar rotation to what you would do in a Bonanza, making the airplane go up from positive rate to positive rate, the altimeter and the vsi. they are showing a positive gear and when I take my hands off the throttles to go up the gear I am now committed to flying and five seconds later arm motor failure pitch four blue line mixes accessories throttles flaps are up gears up identify check now I have a bunch full trunk full rudder check feather mix now I'm going to tune up I'm going to come back and I'm going to fly very precisely I'm going to raise the dead I'm going to release the rudder to split the ball and I'm going to stay the course and fly right on the blue line give or take a knot or two now I'm breathing again now I'm relaxing I have altitude I have airspeed now all I have to do is come back and fly a normal landing Okay, huh, so are you ready?

Let me ask you a question. The

part

that I find very difficult and maybe not in real life is identifying yourself. The other steps are more or less mechanical, but will I do it? I know at the time, so you have 300 horses pulling on one side and a 7-foot disc dragging on the other side if you center the ball if you do what you have to do with your feet to get the plane pointed where it's going. To have a lot of strength in your leg is important, there will be no question, so let's start again at the end of the track briefing with the starting track 3-0 in Mason City.

If we have a problem before the gear retract speed, we cut the power and then head on we have a problem after doing the mixture, speed up the flaps, up the gear, then we identify, check the throttle mixture, so take your hands and you're reaching here to get the mixture and here for the throttle, so that's the mixture accessory throttles the mixture accessory throttles are in the middle yeah, okay, that's great, okay, that's the exercise that you're going to work on tonight so you can say it slowly and deliberately with a purpose and then we'll go sit on the plane and do it, we'll update it before we do it and then we'll get here today, we'll go from the ground phase to all the things we talk about and we're going to fly.

It's going to be our introductory flight, the goal here is first and foremost to get you comfortable on the plane and then we're going to introduce all the concepts that we talked about yesterday, so we did it at the table now, now you're tanned in the chair. It's time to do it on the plane, where there is a nice and calm atmosphere and that will be the last step to fly, so let's start with the pre-takeoff briefing and then we will do the exercise. Okay, let's do it. leave the track 3-0 in Mason City, any anomaly before the train retracts, we press the accelerators and Len goes straight, if we have a problem after moving up the gears, we go through the drill that is prepared for mixing accessories blue line, throttle flaps, gear up, move it to no gear, identify, check feather mix and then check this one, we've got the timing right and then we'll take off fine, we're bringing the runway power to 25 inches, the pace It's alive, pressures and temperatures look good, red line plus 10 rotation. accelerate boom mixes propellers throttles fins up gear ah that's why we gear up every time because you forgot to retract the gear after takeoff and anyone who tells you to skip gear will sooner or later get caught, that's a perfect example of why Absolutely here, let me start again, we are taking the track power to 25 inches, exceeds live pressures and temperatures, good redline, +10 positive rotation, gear goes up, speeds up the mixture, tips the throttle flaps, gear up, identify, check feather mix and then checklist very. well, let's fly, it's been alive, which is a precious good five inches at +10, all paid equipment ready, okay, you feel quite comfortable on the plane, it seems so, it feels like home so far Yes, yes, something tells me that will change, look.

Good idea, so if we were flying along altitude and suddenly an engine started running rough, we could take some time to diagnose, we could look at our fuel pressure, feel the flow, we have fuel flow, fuel pressure. oil, everything doesn't work, but when we finally decide, you know, that the engines don't work, we're going to have to turn it off. I think the best way to turn it off is to go back to what we know and have trained and that is the exercise, but boo for whatever. reason why we have decided to turn off the left engine, okay, then we are going to run the exercise, so let's do it right, so if there is any margin above the blue line, you are in step of the blue line, we are at correct level. and yeah, okay, oh, this bottle of Ehlers is a nice stunner, yeah, the peps are out.

I'm pushing to the right. Rubber sole identified with a large certified feather. Moisten completely and mix and check this bouquet. Close the office. Half of all offspring return. and drink the wine well if you're blue in your if you go up to a thousand feet from it uh well this is good man this is good a plane flies we'll get rid of that equipment or the plane flies very well right Could you really shoot an iOS with this plane ? That's all we have to do. Well, we have some good. I'll restart the checklist. Fuel down there.

Turn it on, which is simple. A rich orange accelerator mixture. Your pump is low on Creek. and Frank, okay, that's how it flies. I bought the engine. I had a lot of fun flying the Baron with Doug and as you can imagine, flying with two engines involves more than shutting down one engine and the following video will cover what may be the most critical concept of the minimum control speed of the multi-engine client. BMC and for those of you with a keen interest in multi-engine flying and a special treat, I have a full recording of my ground school session with Doug available here as always if you like this video, please like it here on YouTube and Subscribe to my channel by clicking here until next time.