i3dm

My Feedback: (51)

Hello guys,

Here is a cool video from 2 days ago (Saturday) where Tal Levi was flying his T-45 at Dimona, Israel - and suddenly had an engine cut (due to tygon tube inside the fuel tank falling off the brass nipple) - he threw the Tx in the hands of my friend Eli Gil and Eli pulled off one of the best saves i have ever seen in a harsh dead stick condition such as this !

Jet was in the middle of down wind, low and fast, and Tal started a hard bank into short base leg before throwing Eli the controls. looking back, the quick hard bank (while opening the gear BTW) was a mistake. Eli was limited to a large radius turns as this model does not like hard elevator pulls (it tip stalls easily if elevator is pulled hard).

Eli calmly and professionally brought it down, and Here is the result in HD:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qcmS0akrOc[/youtube]

Enjoy

sleepless.ch

Great job! But it's a lot of luck too.

rpm303

My Feedback: (18)

Lucky there was a nice dirt road to make it back too or it could have been much worse.
Great job with the Save

ravill

My Feedback: (11)

Nice!

That happened with my F-18c. I landed dead stick with gear up in the middle of a dirt road with trees on either side! [X(]

I dusted it off, found out what the culprit was and flew 15 minutes later.

Stobe777

My Feedback: (1)

Good save. I once had to land an Elan to a pot holed sand road after the P80 quit. I aligned it ok, but made the mistake that I lowered the flaps in the flare. It bounced and cartwheeled, but the damage was minimal.
Its good to remember the emergency landing areas if those exist...
TP.

InboundLZ

My Feedback: (10)

Good work, heads up flying for sure.

One thing me and my son do when we fly at a new site is take a few minutes to discuss emergency operations. We look the site over to determine where we are going to put an airplane if we have an issue. This is a good practice and has save us an airplane one one occasion. Its the callers job in these situations to give as much information as possible to the pilot when events like this happen.

On a side note, I just cant believe how long some of the runways you guys fly off of. With real-estate like that I cant see how a dead stick is even a problem.

i3dm

My Feedback: (51)

its a full size runway

SCALECRAFT

My Feedback: (13)

Slope soaring experience also helps preserve the model in dead stick landings/ditching.

Steve

i3dm

My Feedback: (51)

Definitely.

Personally, im a former UAV instructor and in the UAV training we teach the trainees exactly how to land in engine cut conditions from each point in the pattern, and we practice it many times until its a "no brainer", but - this was quite different:

1. jet wasnt flying in a normal pattern - it was low and fast on D.W
2. pilot (Tal) started a hard bank thus shortening D.W leg, and lowered the gear - before handing Eli the controls
3. These Hawks really dont like to be "pulled" hard.
4. Eli never had any "official" training for these conditions. he just knows this model well (had one before).

Overall, a great save and one happy pilot got his model back in 1 piece.
Moral of the story: check your fuel tubings.