markjen wrote:

Allen, first off, you did great. I would be pleased if I had done so well.
So don't take this as anything but monday-morning quarterbacking.

Hi Mark,

I appreciate your Monday morning quarterbacking, as I have been doing it
myself.

I think your story illustrates that you don't want to get so absorbed in a
emergency that you end up having an accident for something unrelated to the
condition that caused the emergency in the first place (in your case, almost
overshooting the runway).

You are right, not to get so aborbed in the emergency. When I saw that
my initial approach into 18 wasn't going to happen, I broke off the
approach and just moved to the downwind side of runway 35, and "flew the
plane". The engine at this point had been running rough for 15 minutes,
and not knowing if the noise would stop, I figured altitude was my
friend. Knowing I was not getting full power, a go around was not an
option, so my goal was to make the field. Like you said, the plane
belongs to the insurance company should I bend it, and I figured hitting
trees at ground speed rather then airspeed in the air would be better
for my hide.

The general rule-of-thumb in engine-running-poorly scenarios is to assume
the insurance company owns the airplane at the first sign of trouble, then
fly the airplane using the engine for whatever its got left, to as normal a
landing as possible at the nearest airport with plenty of runway and good
weather.

When I was inbound to Covington, I had three choices for airports,
Slidell (kasd), Covington (l31) and Hammond (hdc).

When the cylinder ate the exhaust valve, Slidell I ruled out immediately
due to the proximaty of the thunderstorm. Fligh****ch had reported
thunderstorm in vacinity when I got my inflight briefing 10 minutes
before. I could see the rainshaft was about 5 miles to the east of the
Covington airport.

Hammond is about 23 miles to the west.I considered this airport as I
knew it had a much longer runway. I ruled this out, as I did not know
"exactly" where the airport was in relation to where I was (I knew to
head WSW, but this was not good enough for me), and in my mind, "fly the
plane" did not include fiddling with the GPS. In addition, with a 200
foot loss per minute, I wasn't sure if I would had made the airport.
Since I had Covington in sight just about 8 miles out, and I had been
here many a times, I figured, not to fix what worked in the past. I
knew exactly in the terrain where the airport was.

It is very likely that your engine would have continued to make reasonable
power for many, many minutes after the initial failure, perhaps
indefinitely. (There are lots of reports when folks have been over water,
had an engine drop an exhaust valve, and then flown for hours.)

20 minutes was long enough for me *smile*. After seeing the damage to
the cylinder and piston head, and experiencing the vibration I did, I am
amazed the engine ran as long as it did.

advice would be to continue to fly the engine at whatever power it took (or
would make) to get to the nearest airport with a reasonable runway and good
weather. Then fly a normal approach and land, just as you always do. IOW,
keep things as normal as possible.

The main reason I flew a higher approach was simply I did not know if
the noise would stop. When I rewind the events, I would have extended
my downwind for about 10 seconds more. I knew I could lose altitude,
and had I extended the downwind, and had a longer final, I would have
done some shallow S turns to lose altitude.

Something I did not consider, was that maybe in downwind, I should have
done those shallow S turns to lose some altitude, but in my mind, I was
focused on making the field. Once I knew the field was made, I figured,
slip it down and work with what I got. Looking back, technically, the
only thing I know I did "wrong" was to lower the nose over the runway.
I recognized it real quick, but in that short time, I lost valuable
runway real estate.

If you go to http://www.airnav.com/airport/L31, you can see that off
field options were not that many around this airport. I was able to
stop and turn around in the grass before the white area on the north end
of runway 18. My wheels I believe touched down just north of the
"runway 18 aim points".

After I get my plane back, what I will do for sure is practice more
"power off" short field landings.

Allen