Learning emergency procedures are one of the most important parts of going through flight school.   Some great new MP3 recordings of T-34 EPs have just been uploaded to the wiki.  A huge thanks goes out to D3West86 for uploading this great new gouge.

• • You can go straight to the MP3 recordings on the wiki: HERE.

Knowing the bold face items cold can make a difference between life or death.  An experience while on detachment in the Persian Gulf taught me the importance of knowing your EP Boldface items cold…I was flying the mighty Phrog (H-46) off the deck of an LHD in the middle of The Gulf.  It was mid day and pretty hot with a high DA.  We were loaded with just one palate of gear in the back  with our two crewmen and I was the second pilot flying with our Det OIC.  She was flying from the right seat and as we turned short final to land, slowing through 70 knots we heard the engine spool down…  shit! that is not a fun sound to hear when slowing down past your bucket airspeed on a hot day over water…   She turned right, aft of the boat, and I was hawking the gauges, calling out Nr and looking closely at the engine performance gauges to figure out what happened.

I pulled out the pocket checklist as I scoured the gauges looking for something abnormal.  Everything looked pretty normal (other than just one operating engine).  She had leveled out the aircraft and was working to get back to best airspped.  While still calling out Nr to her on the ICS I asked the crewchief to come up to the tunnel to be the verification of moving the engine condition levers.  All of this was happening in a matter of seconds, and since we had no indications of a fire, and nothing to signify physical damage I wanted to get that engine started back up as quickly as possible.

I proceeded to rapidly run through the engine restart checklist.  This is where knowing your EPs cold came in.  Because I knew the checklist I could go rapid-fire through the restart with the crewchief (great dude) backing me up and verifying we were shutting down and restarting the correct engine.  We were able to attempt two complete engine starts in rapid succession.  We would listen for a positive ignition and look for a spool-up with anticipation, but both attempts failed.

While I was working with the crewchief my OIC who was flying stated “we’re still descending, we need to dump fuel!”  I looked down at the gauges and responded as a dutiful second pilot “roger that, we are 30 knots fast, dumping fuel.”  She slowed down to the proper airspeed, we closed the dump valves, and leveled off and she turned to me saying “ok, so should we try a restart?’

I was a little dumbfounded… “well ma’am, we already went through two, and both were unsuccessful.”  We had been talking through the restarts on ICS so I had assumed she had at least been listening along while making sure we were at the right airspeed, above minimum Nr, and keeping the aircraft in the air.  Apparently not.

The rest of the story was a rather interesting single engine landing on the ship that I’ll write about later.  I think this story has a couple of good take aways.

• • Know your EPs.  You should always pull out your checklist, but knowing your EPs cold could make the difference when time is of the essence.
  • Even a junior pilot can make a significant contribution when he/she keeps SA, keeps cool, and executes the right steps
  • Use ALL of your crew in the aircraft.  If you are dual piloted make use of both pilots and your crewmen if they are there.

Filed under: Gouge, news by admin
1 Comment »

One Response to “More New Gouge!”

1. snowboarder says:

   February 18, 2010 at 21:43

   What’s up with Sean white crying about his nickname? No one here gets to pick their own callsign! He’s the FLYING TOMATO if you ask me.