So I am on the apron at Vagar, doing my walkaround inspection and getting soaked.
I am on leg five of my suicidal winter ferry flight across the Atlantic, using the northern route.
Leeds Bradford, Edingburgh, Wick, Vagar Faroe Islands.
Battery on, pitot heat on. Pitot tube cold… Switch battery and pitot heat on again. Pitot tube cold. Checked circuit breaker for pitot heater. Popped.
Reset the breaker and we have heat haze coming from it. Great.
Started her up, let her warm while I mess with the nav gear and took off. Circle around in heavy mist and set course for Iceland. Weather predicted to be four degrees celsius and light rain at Vagar, which is quite correct.
Weather for Keflavik was also predicted to be light rain and two degrees celsius. Good oh. Winds on route were reasonably favourable, with a strong breeze of some 25 knots blowing from the south west, which meant it was pretty neutral.
So on course in rain and mist, so I thought I may try to get on top of the clouds, I had offloaded 100lbs of un needed baggage which should help climb performance a lot, so up we went. The cloud had a surprising amount of convection going on inside, not something to really expect at this time of year, but we continued up. We broke out of the tops at 10,000ft into lovely sunshine. Great.
A look at the indicated airspeed and the gps groundspeed showed we also had a 55mph headwind. Boo. Nothing for it but to find kinder winds below, so down we went again. Levelled off at 2000ft and found I had picked up a 2mph tailwind.
The rain had cleared to occasional showers, and we droned on. Nothing but the ocean below to see. An hour later I was sat there musing, thinking that I may get my baseball cap and kindle, use the hat to prop the headset on top of my head and read my kindle to pass a bit of time, this being a long flight.
As I mused, I did my 15 minute check. Pulled out the carb heat and got a rough running engine. Great we are in conditions conducive to carb icing.
Obviously, I could not leave the cockpit for a second.
At hour two the showers had become larger, heavier and more widespread. The ratio of time, I could see the ocean below to it being invisible was about 10%.
Around this time, I was once again going around the cockpit doing my 15 minute cruise checks. Altitude good. Airspeed good. Direction good. Gyro compass synchronised to mag compass. Oil pressure good. Oil temp good. Fuel pressure good. Tip tanks selected. Quantity ok. Manifold pressure set at 20". RPMs set at 2000 and steady. Mixture set with EGT showing 1400F. Fuel flow steady at 10.1 GPH.
Oh electrical load. Err showing a slight discharge. Pitot heat off, discharge rate improved a little, but still discharging slightly. Pitot heat on, discharge increased.
â– â– â– â– I have another four hours in poor weather to fly. I need electrical power to run the nav systems, electrically powered instruments- Directional Gyro and Turn Coordinator and the autopilot.
Pitot heat off. Hope it does not ice up.
Instrument lights and nav lights off. Nice to have but not strictly needed to stay in the air.
ADF. Off. Another nice thing to have, but not strictly needed.
Out with the manual. Emergency checklist. Loss of Electrical Generator.
-
Confirm discharge indication. Done.
-
Reduce electrical load as much as possible by prioritising what can be turned off without danger to the flight. Done.
-
Check Generator Circuit Breaker. There it was, a popped breaker. Pushed it back in and we are charging at 20 amps, showing a seriously depleted battery.
That is why you do these checks every 15 to 20 minutes. If I left it another half an hour, the first indication I would have of the battery dying, is the screens on the nav systems switching off and the autopilot kicking off.
The pulse raising drama was over and we continued on…
At hour three, 1pm GMT, it is already twilight so far north. The OAT gauge dropped steadily from 4C to 2C and the sleet started. Ah â– â– â– â– , I am in serious trouble. Should I turn back? I am closer to Iceland than the Faroes at this point. I continued on for 15 minutes and noted that the sleet was not building up on the windscreen and leading edges of the airframe. I elect to continue.
Meanwhile, the barometric pressure continues to fall. It started at 1010mb at Vagar and now it is 995mb. Have reset the altimeter three times.
Hour four and about 50 miles out from the south east Icelandic coast. 2pm.
The sleet showers have turned into a constant barrage, but looking out at the wings, everything is good. It is not building. The mixed in rain is preventing it sticking. I cannot see the ocean below and have not seen it for a good half hour.
I reset the altimeter to the new barometric pressure setting I have received. It is now 985mb and I have to climb 200ft to regain an indicated 2000ft.
I am starting to feel seriously stressed. I am in zero visibility. I am in sleet, I have a rapidly deteriating and unforecast weather situation with rapidly falling barometric pressure. I am approaching the coast, is there a mountain on the coastline, right in my path with a summit of 2100ft?
Thousands of airmen have died in exactly these circumstances.
The Yorkshire Pennines and Derbyshire Peaks are littered with airplane wrecks caused by this, I used to go hunt for them.
The GPS shows I am crossing the coast and no sign of any land below. We continue. It would be unlucky to hit something at 2000ft near the coast.
I should have had a look at a topographical map of Iceland before I set out, then I would know the minimum safe altitude to fly at, but too late now.
I cannot see the ground below and letting down a little to attempt to find it is suicide. Its called flying into the glass mountain. You never see it coming…
Five minutes later, I see something ahead. I fly out of the storm into clear air. There is the ground below, so I use the opportunity to go down lower and hopefully remain in visual contact with the ground, before I fly through the next shower ahead.
I hit the next shower and now I am lower, am able to stay in contact with the ground. I have it made, just a hundred miles of scud running through the sleet showers and I am at Keflavik.
Back to clear air for ten minutes and I plunge back into a shower. This one seems different, it seems to have a slightly brown tint to it and it is darker inside.
Ahead in the murky depths, I think I catch a glimse of rising ground and slam both prop and throttle levers full forward into max climb power, pulling back on the stick to climb hard. It was rising ground and it continued rising to 4500ft. I ended up at low level over a plateau that was obviously a large glacier, complete with crevasses. A few huts were dotted around it here and there and the sleet shower had passed.
The next wall of sleet approached, and in I plunged. Immediately, I lost ground contact. Not good. I thought I saw a mountain peak go by to the left and once again, both levers forward and climb another 500ft. I was in a total whiteout. I was now in a snow blizzard, and it was starting to stick to the windscreen and wings. I was in serious trouble now. My bag of tricks was empty.
I needed to get to lower altitude fast, but I was stuck over high ground… I had one more forlorn hope tucked in the bottom of my empty bag.
I looked at the gps and noted a Fjord about sixty miles away to my left and turned towards it. If I can get over it, I can let down safely to sea level using GPS alone, provided there were no power cables strung across it. Or cross the coastline out to sea.
Windscreen defroster to full, I turned towards it, while the ice continued to build on the wings, front of the tip tanks and everywhere else exposed to it.
The autopilot was demanding more and more up trim as it ran out of control authority and the engine was almost at max power just keeping us level.
The airspeed was dropping from 140 mph, to 130mph, then 120 mph. Time to kick off the autopilot.
The pitch of the nose kept rising and the airspeed kept dropping and the throttle pushed to the max. It is called " being on the wrong side of the power/ drag curve" and once there, there is nothing you can do to maintain altitude. Biggles or Douglas Bader at this point are screwed. Human ingenuity is one thing, the immutable law of physics is quite another… There is nothing left to alter what is happening, unless something radically changes.
Still in the whiteout, I could see the edge of the fjord on gps about a mile away, a glance at the airspeed indicator showed 90 mph. No choice, she was about to fall out of the sky. I had to lower the nose a little to reduce drag and risk hitting something or stall out.
She picked up a bit of speed but was rapidly losing altitude, still nose high.
I saw the edge of the fjord in front of me and dumped the nose.
Down we went, like a falling brick. The whiteout cleared to a light snow shower and I could see water below. Pulled out above the water and airspeed back at 140 mph. Phew.
Not phew. The OAT gauge still read minus six celsius. It was no warmer down in the fjord than above. The ice was not going to melt, the drag was not going to decrease, the engine was not magically transformed into a rip snorting powerhouse, it was still the tired old nag it was before, and that airspeed needle will continue to show a steady decline.
All I had done was buy myself a view of the crash site and a couple of extra minutes to contemplate my impending doom. My bag of luck was empty, my bag of experience was also empty.
What the hell do I do?
Well, put her down in a controlled manner while I still could of course. Better to meet your maker with a set jaw and steely eye as you firmly put her down, than hold on to the end, screaming like a girl as you spin into the ground…
So that is just what I did. And walked away. I put her down, wheels up in deep snow, so she was cushioned. The engine and prop are toast, but I bet airframe damage is minimal.
Since I did not die and the aircraft remains in one piece, the trip is not over. She will be recovered, put on a trailer, taken to the Icelandic Air Services hanger, and if the owners wishes it (as i am absolutely sure he will ;-). , be repaired and better than before.
You can see the ice built up on the side window and ( bent) prop blade. Very scary. There endeth the traditional Xmas eve tale of horror.
