Warbird Information Exchange

Great work by the pilot there after losing the engine. Plane looks pretty decent considering. Hope they get it fixed and back in the air quickly!

Great flying! Sucks it happened but it does look in pretty good shape. It seems like the soil did a good job minimizing some of the damage.

Any landing you can walk away from...

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If the CO ask,s you to be Tail End Charlie...Just Shoot Him..A Piece of Cake

I'd bet good money that pavement would've done LESS damage, but if it wasn't an option (and it doesn't look like he had much of an option), it still looks like a perfectly acceptable outcome.

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Aerial Photographer with Red Wing Aerial Photography currently based at KRBD and tailwheel CFI.
Websites: Texas Tailwheel Flight Training, DoolittleRaid.com and Lbirds.com.

The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD. - Prov. 21:31 - Train, Practice, Trust.

True, but it looked like he was way too low to make the field.

Kudos to the pilot for a successful outcome. Observations:

1) Good judgement by the pilot to make the unobstructed plowed field where he had a high chance of survival. He was low and didn't have many options, so good decision not to try to make it back to the the runway. Sometimes you have to just take what you can get. Surviving the crash is WAY more important than aircraft damage.

2) Good judgement on landing gear up. This is always the correct thing to do when landing on an unprepared surface, (i.e.- other than a runway, hard dry lake bed, frozen lake, etc.)

3) Look at that top blade on the youtube video. I don't think I've ever seen a blade just shear off like that in a clean cut separation. I've only seen prop blades curl when landing off field.

Great job to the pilot! He lives to fly again!

Unless it slung that blade off at the start of the event... Didn't see any smoke or oil from an engine failure....

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Those who possess real knowledge are rare.

Those who can set that knowledge into motion in the physical world are rarer still.

The few who possess real knowledge and can set it into motion of their own hands are the rarest of all.

Glad to see there were no serious injuries.
I'm always thankful for that.
If the engine had shed a prop blade under power, it would rip the engine from the airframe in a heartbeat.
That, very likely, would not be survivable.
The end of the video shows the engine (and probably the mount ) broken away. (look at the thrust angle)
I would suspect that the prop dug in to the soft ground, then the blade let go as the mount broke.

I don't see this as being easy to repair.

He also landed with the flaps up. Not sure what the manual says but with that flat nose you can see how it dug into the dirt and bent the cowling and engine down. Full flaps on a T-28 would probably pitch the nose down quite a bit more in a belly landing.

The manual does say to land with the flaps out in a loss of power situation off field. I don't fault the pilot however, as he did everything else correct and the outcome was safe. Nobody is perfect in these types of high stress situations. If you read the accident report from Sully's landing on Hudson, they did several things which were procedurally incorrect, but in the big scheme of things, were minor, especially considering the outcome. Additionally, there is a scenario in the T-28 where you could have a catastrophic engine failure with accompanying loss of hydraulic pressure from the engine-driven pump and consequent loss of flaps. Though the flaps can be manually pumped down, if this happened, there was not enough time to do it. I'm sure he had his hands full just concentrating on flying the aircraft to a friendly patch of field.

The main thing here is that the pilot made good decisions all around and didn't stall/spin it into the ground in an attempt to land back on the runway.

Hello,

Looks to be a similar situation than the Miss Velma emergency landing 2 years ago in Duxford : good decision no to try to reach the airport at all cost and put the plane down on the acceptable nearest field.

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Sorry for my bad English:-(

Yes, I agree.

I too thought it was similar to the Miss Velma situation and had that post typed up yesterday but deleted it because I didn't want to cross a line on speculation. From the sound of the video it seems to me he may have also had a fuel starvation issue.

I was impressed with how he was able to mush it along with the hose highish and such low apparent airspeed.

I'm glad he was able to get down in one piece and appears to be unhurt!

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He did a great job. A*. Spare parts are plentiful and cheap. He walked away from it and the airplane can easily be rebuilt.
The T-28 in the dirty configuration, ie, flaps and gear down, canopy open and prop windmilling only has a 5.4 to 1 glide ratio. He got a little slow on final and this increased his sink rate. Flaps would’ve made the sink rate much higher and move the CG forward. As it were, he kind of made a water ditching type landing which somehow kept the nose from digging in and flipping the plane on its back.
The only thing I might’ve done differently is crack the canopy open a bit in case it went over on it’s back.

He did a great job. A*. Spare parts are plentiful and cheap. He walked away from it and the airplane can easily be rebuilt.
The T-28 in the dirty configuration, ie, flaps and gear down, canopy open and prop windmilling only has a 5.4 to 1 glide ratio. He got a little slow on final and this increased his sink rate. Flaps would’ve made the sink rate much higher and move the CG forward. As it were, he kind of made a water ditching type landing which somehow kept the nose from digging in and flipping the plane on its back.
The only thing I might’ve done differently is crack the canopy open a bit in case it went over on it’s back.