Yeah, that’s an old night flying joke regardless of aircraft.
Wayne was quite confident with rotor wing emergencies and I think most of his were at night. I think the reasons it always worked for him were many. For one thing most police rotoring is at night, at least his was, so he knew the areas very well and it doesn’t take a very large opening in the high wires to get through.
Where I do most of my flying is pretty open country so the open fields are plentiful. I was trained to watch for open fields when flying VFR and sort of have a mental inventory of possibilities as you move along. If just flying around enjoying the scenery with no specific destination and I think of it, I will pull the power to idle and glide down to a field I have selected. I don’t land but you don’t have to get real low to know if it would have worked. It’s good practice. IFR is a different kettle of fish. You just have to keep the aircraft in good repair and keep fuel going to the engine. If you do that, the chance of losing power in a modern aircraft engine is remote.
02-17-2020, 10:59 PM
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