My wife getting scared

On Oct 1, 11:20 am, Jay Honeck wrote:
Sadly, I have to admit that our fear of harming our engine has far
outweighed our fear of an engine-out landing. There is simply nothing
you can do to your engine (in normal use) that is worse than simulated
engine-out landings, so we do them very rarely.

We used to practice them regularly in rental birds...


Jay,
If you did practice emergency engine-out landing regularly in
rental birds, you must have believed that it was something useful, so
why doing it very rarely in your own bird?
I have stated it in a previous post (when you mentioned that you
did not practice short field landings in your bird either) that IMHO,
no amount of money is worth life or my limbs ;-). We spent $15K
overhauling our engine few years ago; the total cost including labor
was over $20K. I fly my Cardinal the same way as I flew training
school planes. We practiced emergency procedures and short field
landings regularly. Last month, we learned a great way to fly from an
instructor who specialized in Cardinal flying. One of the maneuvers
we learned was the spiral emergency descent. I could not believe how
we could do steep spiral 2000' over the number, dropped like a 'coke
machine', executed a super slip, kicked it out the last few seconds
and landed as soft as a butterfly right over the number. I had only
done it once on my own after the training but plan to do it more
often. I don't believe in shock cooling and seriously doubt that such
maneuver can harm my engine. Even if it does shorten the life of my
engine, I will continue to practice it until I can execute it
flawlessly all the time. I may never need to use the skill for real
but knowing that I am ready to do it in any situation boosts my
confidence tremendously. Besides, it is sheer exhilaration practicing
the maneuver. Definitely worth the price of the engine overhaul ;-)

Hai Longworth