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Old 10-19-2016, 11:40 AM
  #25  
Bravo77
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Montreal , QC, CANADA
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Most turbine flyers are very conscious safety wise . Most are very smart people as well . With a few thousand of their dollars at stake they take all necessary precaution for safety , but you are right we can become a bit complacent and walk a thin safety line sometimes , Thanks for reminding us that we should be safe , Advice well taken from my point of view .

Originally Posted by LGM Graphix
Gentlemen,

I was going to leave this alone but I thought why? This is a smart topic to discuss so while I don't post often, I thought I should post this.

Our turbine engines have become incredibly reliable, we are very used to being able to simply fuel and fly without much concern. Unfortunately this has led to complacency with the operation of these engines.

At a recent event I noticed things have changed a great deal, much for the good, but some for the bad.

As mentioned our engines are reliable like crazy now days. They almost always do what we want them too. Sadly, what I witnessed (and finally said something about) is that during startup in particular a few critical aspects of the start up are being overlooked.

1. Extinguishers. I witnessed a number of starts where while extinguishers were present at the starting area, they were not within arms reach of the jet. In the case of a fire, particularly in the case of an engine seizure where fuel keeps flowing for a moment, we want to be able to get that fire out ASAP. Having to look around to where the extinguisher is, run to it, pull the pin and then use it takes precious time and could be the difference between a minor incident and a fireball.

2. Start zone safety, it always used to be a general rule that when you started a turbine you had nobody in the "blast zone", being in line with the turbine wheel or behind the jet. I witnessed a number of starts made with the tail pipe of the jet parallel to the runway, this left jet blast going into the pit area and the turbine wheel pointing directly towards the spectator area, now the spectator area was plenty far away from the start up area that even in the event of a catastrophic failure it is unlikely anything would reach the spectator area but when turned that direction it is very easy for somebody to be standing in closer proximity than they should be to the side of the airplane. On a less critical note for our safety but still an important consideration, at this field running the engine in that direction was also blowing up dirt from the ground and sending it back towards jets in the pit area.
The flight line at this event was also plenty far from the start area, and without thinking I made what I feel was a bad judgement call. I had started my bobcat multiple times with the tail pipe pointing towards the runway with pilots standing there. The P70 while blowing towards them, just didn't really have any affect, nobody seemed to notice and I didn't either. However, when I started my Olympus and ran it up to full power, the spotter that was on the flight line turned around and motioned that he was getting blasted. I didn't even think about it, it's all too easy to forget how far a jet blast on a big engine will be felt. I hopefully will never make that mistake again.

3. Monitoring during start up. Over the past few years I have seen a number of jets started with all the hatches on and the pilot just standing there and going through the start cycle. The engines are good, but they are far from perfect. Having your data terminal plugged in while start up is the safe and proper way to do things. It may allow you to catch a problem before a start up goes bad. When we had to start our engines with air, and use propane for start gas we never started anything without the data terminal plugged in. Once onboard starting gas and electric start were introduced we began getting lazy. Forgetful even. Again, I will admit to making a stupid mistake that fortunately nothing bad came out of it. Years ago I was having a great weekend flying my Kingcat with a G Booster 160+. The engine had been absolutely flawless and I started the airplane without removing the canopy, it started without fail and I flew an entire flight. Upon landing I couldn't find my data terminal, that's when I remembered I had plugged it on for shut down on my last flight and forgot to remove it from the jet before this flight. Fortunately it's flopping around inside the jet did not damage anything or cause me any issues but again, it taught me that no matter how good our engines are, there are many variables that could cause a huge problem, us being the big one!

4. The last thing I watched and realized afterwards that I too fell victim to is after start up, and everything running successfully, I would set my brakes and walk away from my jet to move extinguishers, data terminals etc. Transmitter sitting next to the jet or in my hand, it wouldn't really be all that hard to accidentally bump the throttle without realizing and those little wheels and brakes won't keep a jet at full throttle from hitting something.


I don't mean this thread to be a "the sky is falling" issue or anything like that. Safety amongst turbine modellers is very good and is part of the reason I am proud to be part of the turbine fraternity, but we all get complacent at some point it seems, maybe something very minor but if we remain vigilant in all starting procedures we minimize the risk of any real problems so lets take a minute to look back and ask ourselves, "do I really do everything according to the book and if I don't, I need to change that".
Despite turbine modellings safety record we are still sadly under the microscope by a lot of people, we don't want to "add fuel to the fire" for any reasons.

Just my opinion.
Jeremy