Flight Time–Multi-engine Flight #3

Today I completed my third flight in the Duchess. The flight was all about single engine operations.

I arrived at the airport at 8:30 am and reviewed as much as I could about single engine procedures. I crunched the weight & balance and performance numbers, then went out to preflight the plane. I was happy to find very little water in the fuel this time. It was raining lightly at that time, and I got a bit wet, but to be honest, it felt much better being cool and damp, than the normal hot and sweaty.

The preflight and run-up went smoothly and we departed Runway 9L. I was told to fly over Runway 5 at midfield, so I turned right soon after taking off. I climbed to 4,500, passing by a thin cloud layer on the way up.

Once at altitude, we discussed the plan, then Nick pulled the throttle back on the right engine. The nose dropped a bit and I added right rudder to counter the yaw. Nick walked me though all the things to do. Basically, we pushed all levers forward (right to left) to try to regain power, cleaned up the plane (gear up, flaps retracted) to reduce drag, and ensured that we had fuel (pumps on, selectors on). With that completed, we moved on to securing the dead engine by reducing the throttle of the dead engine to idle and verifying no loss in performance and feathering the propeller of the dead engine to reduce drag. Then we banked slightly into the good engine and adjusted the yaw with the rudder to further reduce drag. We didn’t actually do all of those things because the “dead” engine was still running, so part of the process is only simulated.

After running through these procedures three time, Nick set me up for an actual engine out and air start. The procedures were the same, but this time, he pulled the mixture of the left engine to idle. Due to the windmilling effect, the left propeller continued to turn and the plane yawed much harder to the left than it did during the simulated engine out. I pushed everything forward (except the left mixture; we didn’t want to restart the engine yet) and did the other checks. Then I pulled the left throttle to idle and there was no change in performance. I then pulled the left prop lever to the feather position. The strong yaw to the left reduced dramatically and the propeller stopped turning. As you might imagine, this is not something you want to see during normal operations.

Left engine not running, propellor feathered

Next up, we performed an air start. I set the left mixture to full rich, opened the left throttle a little, then moved the left prop lever to high. The left propeller started turning, slowly at first, then became a blur as the windmilling effect brought it up to speed. The engine started and we returned to normal flight.

By this time, it was time to head back. I started a slow descent down to 1,500 feet and weaved my way through the light cloud layer on the way. Tower told us to make a right base entry for Runway 9L and report two miles out. I landed on 9L and taxied back to the FBO.

Today’s flight was difficult. There are a lot of things to remember and I have to work very hard to control my urge to “just do something” instead of doing the right things in the right order. I struggled with this when I got my multi-engine rating and I struggled again today. On the bright side, the process started to make more sense each time we went through it, but that said, I will need a few more hours for this to really sink in and become natural. I’ll have to decide if I want to focus on this, or focus on IFR for my remaining hours. Hopefully, I can do both and master both in my remaining time. We shall see.

The flight track is below. Unfortunately, I forgot to start the recorder in Foreflight, so I had to resort to FlightRadar24.

Flight track

Flight Time: 1.4 hours
Multi-engine time: 22.4 hours
Total Time: 598 hours