Author Topic: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)  (Read 30747 times)

Offline keith

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Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« on: September 20, 2007, 07:26:13 PM »
Here's the news article:
http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/14159777/detail.html

This is the aircraft (but not the flight):
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N4256Q

Action is on the 1730z KBVI archive, takeoff clearance is just before the 9 min mark. Engine failure occurs a shade under 2 mins later.  The pilot handles the emergency beautifully.   The clip includes the relative chaos that occurs AFTER the incident has occured where a set of similar callsigns cause no end of trouble for the controller.

It sounds as though the original tower controller is replaced (does the supervisor jump on?) one call after the emergency is declared.  I'm guessing the controller is distracted by the coordination regarding the emergency and doesn't have his full attention on the aircraft in the pattern.  He makes repeated references to the 'incident southwest of the field' and apologizes to the pilots. 

I couldn't fit all of the chaos into the 5MB archive. :)

Full credit to the pilot for handling the forced landing beautifully and not stalling as is often the case during emergency situations where the instinct is to pull back.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2007, 11:03:49 AM by keith »



Offline mk

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course
« Reply #1 on: September 20, 2007, 08:13:51 PM »
maybe the instructor steps in?  first controller sounds like a student.  doesn't bvi allow the cti students to "control"?? 

Offline moto400ex

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course
« Reply #2 on: September 20, 2007, 10:13:17 PM »
Thats interesting to hear some old UND aerospace planes getting good use somewhere else.  UND aircraft normally use the "Sioux" call sign of the last 2 numbers of the n numbers

Offline KSYR-pjr

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course
« Reply #3 on: September 21, 2007, 07:36:57 AM »
I couldn't fit all of the chaos into the 5MB archive. :)

I ran across this limitation awhile back and I found that I could drop the bitrate in Audacity by a lot (somewhere around 64kbps or even less), which lowered the size of the file but did not overly impact the quality of the recording.  Mono, voice recordings such as our ATC feeds have that flexibility, unlike stereo music tracks.

Great clip nonetheless.

Offline keith

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course
« Reply #4 on: September 21, 2007, 09:05:29 AM »
I was under the impression that using lower bitrates caused playback issues with winamp, no?

Offline KSYR-pjr

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course
« Reply #5 on: September 21, 2007, 09:11:58 AM »
No.  I believe you have that confused with the project rate setting, found in the lower left corner of Audacity.  It needs to be set to 44100 Hz, or 44 KHz.  Other settings there mess up playback in WinAmp.

The last clip I uploaded to this forum ("Mooney lands gear-up in Syracuse") was over 9 minutes long and only 4 MB in size.   I had dropped the bitrate to 64kbps from the Audacity (or is it the Lame MP3 encoder's?) default of 128 kbps to fit all that clip into the 5 Mb limit.

Go to Edit > Preferences in Audacity, then the File Formats tab.  The bit rate is at the bottom there.

Offline keith

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course
« Reply #6 on: September 21, 2007, 10:08:32 AM »
Oh boy, that's embarrassing.  That's what I get for posting too early in the morning before my brain is working. Good point!!

Offline Hollis

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course
« Reply #7 on: September 21, 2007, 10:56:28 AM »
I took the liberty of doing the audio on this, shortened for brevity, but including all pertinent info.

Offline keith

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course
« Reply #8 on: September 21, 2007, 11:03:07 AM »
Hollis,

I was on the fence about whether to do a short version containing only the emergency related info, but I was intrigued enough by the other events that transpired, I decided to make the longer one.  Thanks for making the short version, too!

Offline KSYR-pjr

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course
« Reply #9 on: September 21, 2007, 11:59:30 AM »
Oh boy, that's embarrassing.  That's what I get for posting too early in the morning before my brain is working. Good point!!

Don't be embarrassed at all!  I stumbled through Audacity the first year Dave opened the Audio Clips forum and had to learn it by making mistakes and asking questions. 

Your contributions to the website are much more important and (if I can assume) much appreciate by all, even if it means you have a slight learning curve demonstrated in each clip.  :)   Keep up the excellent work.

 


Offline jb8622

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #10 on: September 21, 2007, 03:20:17 PM »
Hello everyone. Just thought I would put my two cents in... I'm a CTI student at CCBC, and I was in the tower when all of these events occurred. Yes, the first controller was a student, and the second voice over the frequency was indeed the sup. It was very intense for several minutes, from the time 56Q reported his engine failure to the time he reported safely on the ground. It was very busy... one sup on local, one sup communicating with fire, and the other sup on ground... very busy indeed!

-Jon

Offline davolijj

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #11 on: September 22, 2007, 10:53:59 AM »
Thanks for posting this Keith.  That has to be a helpless feeling seeing an engine-out aircraft decend into the trees like that.  Props to the pilot, he never sounded rattled.

I remember during my pilot training at BVI, frequently my instructor would ask me at various different phases of flight what I would do if my engine went out.  The answer off the departure end of 28 was always, "put it down on the golf course."

Offline moto400ex

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #12 on: September 22, 2007, 05:14:28 PM »
Anyone know the flight school the planes heard in the traffic pattern are from?

Offline Hollis

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #13 on: September 22, 2007, 07:08:08 PM »
Those airplanes belong to the not-for-profit local Flying Club.

Offline KSYR-pjr

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #14 on: September 22, 2007, 09:33:35 PM »
Those airplanes belong to the not-for-profit local Flying Club.

Is it a flying club or a flight school? 

Offline Hollis

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #15 on: September 22, 2007, 09:42:51 PM »
Google/search the following site:
www.bvifc.org

Offline KSYR-pjr

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #16 on: September 22, 2007, 09:59:56 PM »
Google/search the following site:
www.bvifc.org

Don't see any ND (November Delta) tail ids in that club's collection of aircraft.   As you may recall, the clip was full of ND callsigns.

I had asked because back in 2005 I had been to that airport once and remember seeing a lot of flight instructors walking around in white shirts and ties, along with boards on their shoulders.  It seemed at the time there was a moderately-sized flight school there, which may be the aircraft you hear after the emergency in this clip.

What is interesting to me is that both the pilots and the controllers use the abbreviated tail IDs to reference these aircraft, despite the fact that there were more than two of the same ending tail ID aircraft on the frequency at the same time.  My understanding is that when there are two or more like tail ids, the controller is supposed to use the full tail id to prevent any confusion as to who is receiving the instruction. 

Offline jb8622

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #17 on: September 23, 2007, 08:58:17 AM »
Hello again...

The current flight schools on the airport are Moore Aviation and Quantum Aviation. All of the ND aircraft belong to Moore, which does the flight training for the school. 56Q belongs to Quantum. A few years ago (I believe in 2006), Pan Am used to have a flight school here, but they pulled out. That's when Moore came in.

As far as the same callsigns, we have an Arrow 806ND and a Warrior 266ND on the field. Every time we have them both on the frequency we are suppose to use their full callsign to prevent confusion.

Jon

Offline davolijj

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #18 on: September 23, 2007, 05:37:34 PM »
PJ,

I remember you flying your BE36 into BVI on an NGF mission back in 2005.  At the time, Pa Am Flight Academy had a pretty large presence there with a fleet of 22 Archers, 2 Seminoles, and a C152.  Most of the call signs ended in ***PA.  In fact we had a N623PA, N923PA, and N423PA frequently in the pattern at the same time and yes, we were required to use their full call signs.

Pan Am later went to Company Call signs (ie., "PanAm 11, PanAm 4, or PanAm 8-Sierra etc. for solo flights").  That helped with the similar call sign problem but made things more confusing because the call sign had nothing to do with the tail numbers.

Offline KSYR-pjr

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #19 on: September 23, 2007, 05:48:03 PM »
I remember you flying your BE36 into BVI on an NGF mission back in 2005. 

Yep, you were kind enough to send me a recording of my comms departing the airport (this was before the archive was so deep here).    My VFR class D communications are still as sub-par as they were then.   :)

At the time, Pa Am Flight Academy had a pretty large presence there with a fleet of 22 Archers, 2 Seminoles, and a C152.  Most of the call signs ended in ***PA.  In fact we had a N623PA, N923PA, and N423PA frequently in the pattern at the same time and yes, we were required to use their full call signs.

Ah, okay, that must have been it.  What happened to that school?  I take it they are no longer located there?

Pan Am later went to Company Call signs (ie., "PanAm 11, PanAm 4, or PanAm 8-Sierra etc. for solo flights").  That helped with the similar call sign problem but made things more confusing because the call sign had nothing to do with the tail numbers.

Ha.  Just goes to show when a problem is over-analyzed it actually becomes worse with the "solution."   :)

So, where does the FAA have you working these days, Jim? 

Offline jb8622

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #20 on: September 23, 2007, 06:06:27 PM »
All of the Moore aircraft have "Moore" callsigns, but are not frequently used. The only time they really use the "Moore" callsign is when they will need radar services from PIT after departure. Other than that, they just use their regular tail number.

Offline davolijj

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #21 on: September 23, 2007, 06:41:41 PM »
So, where does the FAA have you working these days, Jim? 


Way down here in Memphis, TN.  I doubt you'll get down here much PJ but I'm always looking out for familiar tail numbers.  By the way, Memphis is apparently the allergy capital of America.  I found it kind of funny that my Allergy specialist flies a V-tail Bobanza....the original "doctor-killer."

Offline aviator_06

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #22 on: September 23, 2007, 08:05:46 PM »
Anybody know exactly happned to the plane causing the engine failure?

Offline jb8622

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #23 on: September 23, 2007, 09:56:47 PM »
Well, nothing official... but supposedly something caused a vacuum in the fuel line causing the engine to quit. I've heard the FAA is having a field day over the maintenance records... 

Offline KSYR-pjr

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Re: Cessna lands on golf course (KBVI)
« Reply #24 on: September 25, 2007, 08:22:20 PM »

Way down here in Memphis, TN. 

Uh, oh.  Jim probably has a few more gray hairs after today.  From CNN:

Quote

Radar fails in Memphis; hundreds of flights affected


http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/25/memphis.air.snafu/index.html?eref=rss_us

ATLANTA (CNN)  -- Air traffic controllers were forced to use their personal cell phones to reroute hundreds of flights Tuesday after the Federal Aviation Administration's Memphis Center lost radar and telephone service for more than two hours, snarling air traffic in the middle of the nation.