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Engine Failure and a happy rescue.

F1R

Well Known Member
https://youtu.be/pSiTpHNq-IA

There will be a some good take away lessons revealed in the follow up to this recent event from July 27 in northern Quebec.

He forgot to turn on his ELT in the aircraft but did most things right to assist his location detection and rescue.

Not enough clothing and no bug shirt or adequate protection from the insects.
Not enough water.

A great tribute to the SAR techs and SAR system and team members.
 
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Sobering thoughts as I'm making plans for some flights in the Canadian Arctic next summer.

I hadn't considered the bug problem but that's very real.
 
Yes, for the benefit of the southerners, what is a bug shirt? What is special about it? Where do you get one?
 
For those venturing into central to northern Canada, having thick, full coverage clothes, gloves and a mosquito net for your head are a must. You'll notice the SAR Techs had them. Recommended survival gear for these latitudes.

In some places, the insects are in clouds and people have been driven mad literally after a day or two of being bitten alive after being forced down.

Don't fly in what we call the "sparsely settled" areas without the proper survival gear on board. If you're not found quickly like this guy, you'll have a very rough time.

Bug shirts or jackets can be found at Cabelas, selling Ben's and Coghlans brands. Can get an all in one pack with head net, gloves and jackets.
 
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One interesting thing not shown about the accident is that while under the caps chute a tree penetrated the floor of the aircraft to the left of the pilots knee and then penetrated the roof. The plane was literally skewered. A few inches right and the outcome might have been very different.
 
What a great day for the SAR Tech's!! They train and train for a day like this. Unfortunately when they get to most crash sites the outcome is body extraction and not a happy outcome like this! That BRS system saved another one.
 
Check those ELT's

For those of you who haven't seen my presentations, I've been pointing out for some time now that the lack of ELT arming is almost as prevalent as the jamnut plague. YTD alone 3 RV's have come through our shop with ELT's in the OFF position, and one even had the antenna disconnected and laying on the aft fuselage floor.

It's not going to do anyone any good if you are incapacitated when you go down.

Vic
 
For those of you who haven't seen my presentations, I've been pointing out for some time now that the lack of ELT arming is almost as prevalent as the jamnut plague. YTD alone 3 RV's have come through our shop with ELT's in the OFF position, and one even had the antenna disconnected and laying on the aft fuselage floor.

It's not going to do anyone any good if you are incapacitated when you go down.

Vic

Helped with a condition inspection this year and found the ELT armed but the batteries were installed backwards thus the G-Switch test IAW 91.207(d) would not set off the ELT. New batteries installed the correct way and the ELT would now pass 91.207(d).
 
we train for in-flight emergencies....don't we?

great comments on here; if you are lucky enough to live in an area where survival courses are available, DO IT!
If not, most flying clubs have within their talent pool all or most of the resources to host one.
Like the chute; the life you save just might be your own!

https://www.bcaviation.ca/survival-shakedown.html

I was lucky to have participated in this exercise. A pleasant afternoon at a pretend crash on a forested hillside in late spring, turns into 10% of the pilots being pulled out by 2 am due to risk of hypothermia.
you don't know, what you don't know, til you...well, you know.
:)
 
great comments on here; if you are lucky enough to live in an area where survival courses are available, DO IT!
If not, most flying clubs have within their talent pool all or most of the resources to host one.
Like the chute; the life you save just might be your own!

https://www.bcaviation.ca/survival-shakedown.html

I was lucky to have participated in this exercise. A pleasant afternoon at a pretend crash on a forested hillside in late spring, turns into 10% of the pilots being pulled out by 2 am due to risk of hypothermia.
you don't know, what you don't know, til you...well, you know.
:)

Wow! That is awesome. I had no idea such a course was out there. Wife and I just came back from the Karamat Extended Summer course in Edmonton as a way to start to school ourselves in bush survival - in our case, we came with the airplane crash mentality, but Karamat leans more towards any survival situation, so it was great that way. We loved it so much were doing the winter version this Feb. But your shake down class is a great way to wake pilots up to need to bone up. Any idea if there are similar shake-downs in the US that you guys sister with or we should look into in the lower 48?
 
great comments on here; if you are lucky enough to live in an area where survival courses are available, DO IT!

This is really interesting. I'd say most of us who live and fly in the Southeast don't put much thought into serious survival gear. A lot of the terrain is row crop, pasture, or populated enough to call rescue with a cell phone. I think I'd do OK if downed in the piney woods (note to non-southerners; down here it is not unusual to be flying over farmed pulpwood as far as the eye can see), assuming no significant injury. I don't know of a survival course here...but I've never looked.

In the colder months, or when flying a MomCheck run to PA, I wear or carry a full coverage winter motorcycle riding suit as my primary survival tool. It's warm, windproof, and waterproof, and dimensioned to wear over other clothing. I guess a snowmobile suit is similar, maybe better.

Never heard of a bug shirt, but now I'll have one before flying the north woods!
 
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For those of you who haven't seen my presentations, I've been pointing out for some time now that the lack of ELT arming is almost as prevalent as the jamnut plague. YTD alone 3 RV's have come through our shop with ELT's in the OFF position, and one even had the antenna disconnected and laying on the aft fuselage floor.

It's not going to do anyone any good if you are incapacitated when you go down.

I assumed that the "forgot to turn on the ELT" was in the context of not manually activated because descending under the CAPS in a low wind condition would be a mostly vertical decent which I think typically doesn't activate the ELT.

FAR 91.207 requires yearly inspection of an ELT. As Vic has pointed out, this applies to RV's as well (FAR 91 applies to all aircraft).
An added step I do for the inspection is to do one last activation check of the ELT using the remote panel after I have reinstalled the ELT. This will assure that it wasn't accidentally let off. It wont 100% assure that the ant isn't disconnected because from close range the still transmit a signal that can be received by a hand held radio, but with some experience, you can get familiar with what is a weak vs strong ELT signal.
 
Canada dispatched a C130 and helicopter.... I hope he does not have to pay for it...

He was almost impaled by tree that went though cockpit right next to his left leg.

With out a chute he would have had to land in the tree tops? I wounder how that would go.... If you had a chute on your back I suppose you could bail.... but flying over wilderness or water you take your chances.
 
C-130 AND SAR COST

gmcjetpilot

In Canada, all SAR Cost are free, if you go down, we will search for you for as long as there is a very very small chance that we will find you.

While in the Air Force ( SAR ) I've searched for airplanes, missing persons and all for weeks until there were no possible chance of finding survivors...

On the topic of ELTs, make sure they are in the Armed position and if activated in a crash, leave it ON ( A SAR comes to mind when the pilot of a Beaver (DHC-2 ) turned his ELT OFF to save the battery in the Arctic and forgot about it, when he turned it back on a month + later, we found him the next day..

Hoping no one here have to go thru this scenario

Bruno
 
ELT on/off/armed aside he had a Personal Locator Beacon or PLB that he was getting text messages... better than ELT.

There seems to be a real focus on a bug shirt. OK. Winter? Hypothermia is your enemy not bugs. Good idea however to have survival gear.

To fly in some parts of Canada they require you have emergency survival gear and equipment. Bug shirt is not on list... but mosquito netting for the head and tape to tape up your clothes presumably long sleeve shirt and pants to keep the bugs out is recommend by AOPA Canada and other suggestions.

https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media...-for-pilots-canada-survival-in-the-wilderness
 
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