As I under stand it.. a "sudden stoppage" requires tear down.. whether the
engine was developing power or not.. the only hopeful out come is that the
crankshaft is not damaged with no power..

I've also been told, that even if the propeller is stopped, a bent blade
requires tear down because of loads places on the propeller hub transferred
to the crankshaft.

BT

"Jack" wrote in message
...


Andrew Sarangan wrote:

Dan Truesdell wrote in
news:40BCCA76.8090409
@ceaPLsofAtwNarEe.cSom:

I saw that in the Valley News yesterday. I hate to see a broken
plane,
but was glad he walked away. A couple of thoughts crossed my mind:

1) Why didn't he go to BTV? Closer to Sugarbush, much longer runway
(with the wind blowing down it if it was from the Northeast).
Military
crash units on the field (I presume).

2) Why didn't he shut down the engine prior to landing?

I'm not trying to be critical. I do recognize that I'm making these
observations from the comfort of my desk, not from a cockpit where I
was
just slammed into the ground hard enough to break my landing gear.



I was in a situation similar to this several years ago. Many people have
asked me why I didn't stop the prop prior to landing to save the engine.
Simply shutting down the engine will not stop the prop. You have to slow
the airplane down to practically a stall before the prop will stop
turning.

That's true, but the engine won't be developing power, which is still
better.

I was an inexperienced private pilot at that time, and I was not
going to attempt something like that. Besides, if I screw up end up
landing short (or long), the accident will become a pilot error. If the
airplane was my own, and I did not have any hull insurance, I might have
attempted that, but I was not going to take such a risk to save the
insurance company money. I landed with the engine running, but cut the
mixture on short final. The prop was damaged and the engine had to be
torn down, but I was told that they did not find any damage to the crank
shaft.

All correct. One thing you could have done was just switch off the
magnetos
rather than the mixture control. This will shut down the engine faster,
and
might cause the prop to stop too when the mags are grounded. Since you
won't
be restarting the engine anytime soon, there is no reason to not stop the
engine with the magnetos.