Skymaster Arctic Circle Ditching.

[Ernie Martin]

Good post from Gmas, and the arguments for partial refueling with jet fuel sound persuasive. One point I want to make is that in a standard Skymaster, without after-market engine monitoring instruments, the EGT guage isn't very informative. If you look, you will notice that there is no scale; it says 25 deg/div, so you can use it lo lean in cruise, but it doesn't tell you actual EGT. And although you might remember where it typically is, a lower reading can easily be attributed to the lower outside temperature.

Ernie

[Skymaster337B]

I put diesel fuel in a regular cars once. It only ran for about 5 mins. So I wonder how the airplane was able to fly 3+ hours on Jet A?

[Diamond Service]

We refueled in CYQB saturday late afternoon. All four tanks were refueled at that point.I dont recall the quantity but close to 200 liters. On Sunday we flew to CYWK without using fuel from the AUX tanks. The flight was 2 hrs 30 minutes. The MAIN tanks were refueled in wabush with 174 liters. I was up on a latter and checked that the AUX tanks were full. This means that if they refueled the MAINS with jet fuel the mixture in the mains would be about 50/50. About 1 hour 30 minutes into our last flight I selected AUX tanks on both engines simultaneously and flew for 1 hour before selecting back to MAINS. I noticed a slightly lower EGT on this last leg than on the previous legs. All magnetos were overhauled during the time the aircraft was in the shop for avionic work. I never heard any misfiring and the mag checks were always good. Starting performance was also very good both hot and cold engine.

Troels

[Paul462]

The classic JetA mis-fueling scenario is: take-off, and then the engine(s) quit at about 200 feet AGL.

Is it possible to run 1.5 hours on one set of tanks, then 1 hour on another set of tanks, and then after all that time have a mis-fueling engine failure?

[Diamond Service]

Today the Canadian NTSB send me a copy of my fuel slip from Wabush. It stated that I uplifted 174 liters of 100LL.

I want to finish my story so here it comes.

Standing on the 10 times 5 meter big piece of ice we started our 18 hour struggle to survive.
Time is hard to tell when you dont have a clock but about 1-2 hours later the first aircraft appeared and we got our hopes up that we would be found very soon. We were not able to show ourself in any way since we did not get this equipment with us from the aircraft. Most unfortunately the small lights on our life vests did not work. Several other aircraft and helicopters searched for us during the night and they were very close about three times.
I blamed myself that I did not have any signalling equipment. I think they called of the search when the ceiling got too low. I dont know how to describe it but it is extremely cold and the wind is blowing the cold air right through your bones. We worked hard for a long time to fight the cold and finally the daylight came.Now they will come back and find us we told ourselves,but nothing happened. We saw the shoreline in the distance and decided to jump
from one peice of ice to the other in order to reach dry land. After doing this for about 1 hour a light flashed in the horizon. We stared in that direction for a long time wondering what that couldt have been.We continued our walk on the ice for some time but then the light appeared again,and a little closer. We realized that the light must come from a ship so we turned around on the ice and walked towards the ship waving our life vests over our heads.Suddenly the light was pointed directly at us and after a while we heard the signal horn from the ship. WE ARE BEING RESCUED. The feeling of relief is hard to describe.

I am trying to figure out what happened to my engines and I have a few ideas. I want to share my ideas with you folks in this forum but it is getting late now so I will be back tomorrow.

[brianvon]

By the way, I spoke this week with my sailing friend in New England who does a lot of work in freezing salt water, and he said that it is _very_ fortunate that the wing was lying on the ice. Without the wing on the ice, it could have been nearly impossible to get up on the ice from the water even in a survival suit. Congratulations to the pilot at managing to keep the wing on the ice through the ditching process!

Best regards,

Brian

[skymstr02]

Originally Posted by Paul462

Is it possible to run 1.5 hours on one set of tanks, then 1 hour on another set of tanks, and then after all that time have a mis-fueling engine failure?

No, it is not possible. Jet fuel weighs more than avgas and the jet will settle to the bottom or near the outlet pipe. Jet fuel and avgas will not mix.

This is not a misfueling case.

[brianvon]

Dear Troels:

Thank you for your description of the flight. I was wondering if you read the outside air temperature at 11,000 feet during the cruise portion of the flight. The absolute minimum I would calculate would be -10C at Wabush minus 3C per 1000 ft = -43C assuming dry adiabatic lapse rate. Given the moisture at the departure, the actual ambient temperature could have been higher, perhaps between -28C and -43C at 11,000 ft altitude.

Did you see any variations in fuel flow before failure?

Regards,

Brian

[WebMaster]

Patricia Bell, of CBC News sent me a link to a story she did on this. It includes an audio of Troels speaking to Patricia.

Of note, there are comments by two different crews who spoke to them when they declared their Mayday.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story...-survivor.html

The comments are located here, and linked to in the above story

http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourbeststuff...ayday_rep.html

[Diamond Service]

The indicated OAT at 11000 feet was -31 C. I did not see anu variation in fuel flow. The engine never misfired or vibrated up until the point of failure.

Troels.