EMERGENCY! Failure in the Silver Bullet - Return to Airport

on March 11th 2024 I was flying this airplane from Florida to Ohio and had to make an emergency landing so I have a gear issue but I'm going to share with you what was not on that video I started flying about 4 years ago and have acquired my Private Pilot single engine rating my commercial pilot multi-engine rating all with instrument and about 500 hours of Total flight time I've owned and flew seven airplanes in the last four years a Cherokee 180 a Cherokee 6 two beachcraft sieras this Lance air right here a piper Apache the Silver Bullet the 310 and the blue tarp special a piper Aztec now despite the anti that you see on my show I take safety extremely seriously and honestly that's why I'm so handson with all the maintenance and repairs of these airplanes look I know I'm at a higher risk than most people just because of the nature of the airplanes that I deal with these are old airplanes that have had some questionable maintenance history and many of them haven't flown for quite a while for those of you that have not followed for the past couple of years around this 310 let me give you a quick update it started when I bought these three airplanes in Pennsylvania and this old 310 came out of that barn and because I lost the coin flip thus began save the 310 many of you really wanted me to save that airplane so I started to GoFundMe and you generously gave $35 ,000 in that time we spent that money a lot all of it disaster disaster disaster just to get to the point where we found and discovered there's more corrosion in that airplane than I would feel comfortable flying and I definitely would not feel comfortable other people flying in that airplane so we donated that airplane to a fantastic School here in Lakeland so that other people can learn how to repair and work on airplanes so to fulfill my obligation for the save the 310 I found the silver bullet and I paid $35,000 for that once we got it back to Florida I spent another at least $35,000 on it getting it ready to go to Oshkosh since I've owned that airplane it has served others and helped them get their multi-engine license and training it has brought the crew around to the different projects that we've been working on it has served a great Mission however the reason that I was taking it to Ohio is because I'm selling it for a one penny no reserve on airspace auctions you can see the link in the description below but that's not why we're here you see I'm going on a trip to the Bahamas in May and this airplane none of my airplanes even this one back here this one only seats two people the 310 only seats realistically four people and I've got five people in my family so I can't take them on this trip so I have to find something bigger speaking of the Bahama trip I want somebody to join me May 9th through the 13th every $5 you spend on Save the 310.com get you one entry we're giving away a trip to join us and to go with us you don't need your own airplane we just got to get you to Fort Lauderdale and and then you can hop in with us and we will take care of the rest for you uh you can go into save to 310.com get all the details there if you just want to make sure you get your spot and go with us to the Bahamas then you can just sign up and pay the Bahama Department of Tourism directly again all that stuff is on Save to3 tun.com the technical there is no purchase necessary for how that works go read the fine print at save the3 t.com now back to the rest of the video doing YouTube videos I have to continue to get newer projects in the door because let's face it once you see this project a handful of times people start losing interest in it and we have to get find in a new Mission and keep moving and getting new inventory in and that's just the Natural Life of this YouTube Project world and I did find one up in Ohio that you will see on the very next video and it's pretty freaking awesome had a bunch of things that I was not aware of cuz I in Jimmy's World fashion bought it sight unseen but we'll get into that video later this one's about the 310 my biggest fear in the entire world is that someone will be flying one of these airplanes that have been saved on Jimmy's world and will crash and hurt themselves or even kill themselves so before I sell the 310 I found the number one twin session shop in the entire world T in Defiance Ohio and they have agreed to go through the whole thing to make sure that it is as safe and as everything is up to Snuff as much as humanly possible so that's why I was taking it to Ohio to have them go through it to give it their stamp of approval so you know and every everybody knows that that airplane has been gone through by the best of the best and the most scrutinizing eyeballs known to man which brings us to the faithful day on March 11th 2024 a little voice in me was saying Jimmy check the landing gear I naturally did not listen to that little voice inside my head and that was my first mistake I did not trust but verify anytime I fly I always check three things myself the weather and the airplane and I only give myself three strikes and I'm out so if I'm not feeling good if the weather's questionable or if there's an issue with the airplane I'm out on this day I was feeling really good so person wise me I was good there was no extra stress on me I wasn't in a hurry to get any place or nothing like that good to go there check the weather it was fantastic weather all the way from here to Ohio which you do not get in March by the way uh there was a bit of a headwind about a 15 knot headwind but not the end of the world not too crazy but clear as could be I mean not a cloud between us and Ohio which is very rare indeed that's why I chose that day to attempt to go then the airplane there was a couple of issues here number one one the airplane has not been flown for about 8 months that's a big strike because it you don't know what's going to happen you can pre-flight it all day long but you don't ever know until that thing gets in the air the second thing and the most dangerous thing is that it was the first flight after maintenance anytime you read all these other channels that do all these airplane crash things if it's not the weather it's because it was the first flight after maintenance is when a plane crashed and and this one had been sitting for a while and it was the first flight after maintenance that was two strikes took off here from Florida no problem everything worked great flipped a little switch up no problem flew all the way a little bit of a headwind like I was saying but other than that everything worked fantastic landed made a normal Landing everything was great pulled in got fuel checked the oil looked over the airplane really good again looked in the landing gear looked in all the places the flight control everything money and everything was nice and good I even took my time when I landed and got a you know little candy bar and drank a bottle of water went to the bathroom and just kind of chilled a little bit cuz I was making normal time and wanted to make sure I was not in a hurry time for takeoff from fuel stop number one everything was going up air speed was alive all the engine instruments were in the green great pull back it starts lifting off go to hit the gear up switch it goes and then I noticed it took a little longer before the white light came up showing me that the gear was up and locked and as soon as I noticed that it was taking a little bit longer I got a smell of burning electrical wires things started moving but the light never came on and I got a a burning electric smell the number one fear of all Pilots is a in cockpit electrical fire because that can go really bad really fast I immediately pulled the gear breaker to stop any power from going to that gear motor and thankfully the burning smell went away quickly after that so I knew that my risk of fire was taking care of I wasn't worried about that anymore however the gear was not all the way up and I could look out and see in the mirror and in the reflection because sparrow hawk those guys are awesome and they polished the sucker up so nice that it was a mirror and I could see all three gears still down about this far they they hadn't made it all the way up and closed yet so everything was still kind of open and a lot of drag on that I also knew that the way the manual gear work on this the gear crank it only goes down you can't crank the gear up with the hand crank you can only let the gear down with a hand crank and that all happened within seconds of taking off it happens really fast okay so going over my options number one am I going to catch on fire no because the fire smell went away and the breaker was pulled second what's going to happen when I push that thing in and see if the gear motor will work again or if something bound up in the gear I didn't know if something physically popped in the gear because of the work that had happened on it previously or just because the motor burned up I didn't know I didn't know why that motor burned up worst case scenario is I'm going to have to belly land this thing in cuz the gear is stuck and can't go down which also means a massive ball of fire because I just filled up the gas tanks so I now have to burn off all kinds of gas before I could even think about Landing so here's my options of where to land I could go back and land at the airport that I just took off from but I'd have to Circle it for 3 hours or I could go to my next fuel stop which would have been further away from home and honestly there's not a lot of services at that airport so I would have been stuck there if it would have either belly landed or landed and I would have just been stranded there so I didn't really want to be stranded there unfortunately I did not have enough fuel to make it all the way to T otherwise frankly that's probably what I would have done because they're the people that were going to be fixing it anyway so might as well just fly it to them let them fix it the third or the final option is turn around and fly all the way back to Florida where I just came from and that's what I decided to do because I had a Tailwind helping me a 15 knot headwind turned into a 15 knot tail win I also knew this is where all of my resources are so if I was going to have an issue this is where I would want it to be and I know the airports I also know that 7 miles that way is a huge 10,000 ft Runway that has all the fire trucks and everything you could ever imagine so if I was going to belly crash something in I wanted it to be over there and I had 3 hours to think about all of the possible scenarios that were going to happen if I'm honest my biggest fear at this point was putting the gear down and then having an engine issue because this airplane will not climb if the gear is down and I have to turn off one of these engines that means I am going down whether I like it or not there's nothing I can do about it if the gear is down and I have an engine issue I'm going to land somewhere very quickly that's why I made the decision to leave the gear up as much as possible so that the airplane could still be as aerodynamic as possible so that if I had an engine issue that it would give me more options to potentially be able to make it to an airport to land safely those three hours gave me time to refresh my memory on all of the emergency procedures for the 310 which I did as a pilot and knowing this airplane really well you already had a lot of that drilled into your head but I had three hours to kills no pun intended so I might as well refresh my memory on all these emergency procedures cuz I was getting ready to use them I mean I started thinking about the worst case scenario right I come into land something happens whether fire or it catches or something goes wrong and I for some reason get seriously injured or killed what do I want to say as my last words and since I had GoPros in the airplane here they are if for some reason I'm not able to make it Evie I love you very much and it is truly the love of my life isus you're going to grow up to be a wonderful young man you already are gently little fire use that fire for good and Noah full tilt Noah you're going to have lots of friends and you're going to do a lot of big things in life and I'll see you soon coming close to home getting ready to make my initial pass here's the plan I was going to fly over the airport first to have the guys on the ground look up with binoculars to see if they could see anything physically binding on the on the gear or if there was a door or something that was jammed which I still didn't know if they found something we could deal with it if they didn't find anything next pass was going to be to crank the gear down manually and get it to lock if there was any question about whether all three gears were down and very locked like I everything felt right and he had all the right noises and feels and everything else if there was any question then I was going to fly over again let them look just to confirm whether it was locked and all three of them were locked if for some reason there was still any question I was already headed straight to Lakeland and I was going to call the tower and let them know what was going on so they can roll the fire trucks foam that Runway and I was going to Skid however far this airplane was going to Skid whenever I landed there now that would have meant some Amazon packages being late I admit but at least I would have been alive probably Runway one Z Plant City Echo Bravo 76 us looking at your gear too um once you're a little closer we'll have a visual hey appreciate [Music] it left pipeline inside no Factor Plant City Unicom 310 Echo Bravo currently my gear is partially down but I will be look going around I'm just I'm going to try to do a manual gear extension and then uh if I get a green come in and land Plant City Plant City we're just Northwest we get the final let's get into a down thankfully cranked on that thing all the gears came down it got really hard at one point and that's what I was thinking something was bound up in there and that's what caused the issue and I got a crank like crazy and make sure I don't get slow full stop back oh golly something just came unstuck oh golly go that is hard to do okay I've got a green cuz I was cranking and I was pushing I I knew that that handle is not super super strong it's supposed to just fall down almost and the handle if you let go of it just goes so it was supposed to go down really easy but man it got to one spot that was really tough to crank and finally something popped a little bit and got it to crank and go all the way down it gave me a nice solid clunk nice green light clunk clunk and because sparrow hawk did such an awesome job polishing it I could see all three landing gear in the reflection of the tip tank out there and see that all three looked like they were down down and locked which meant time to make a normal Landing okay I've got a green and it went as far as it could over the road we got the airport in sight green is down traffic 51 to the we're going to land like normal all right pumps check gas those pumps are on gas is in the right things all right underc carriage I think is down and locked we got mixtures are up props are up bring our power kind of get that settled in there we go we got our wind is already checked we got a direct crosswind that's fun I knew that I had to make as perfect of a landing as possible to be real easy on the gear because any sudden jerks to it that gear could collapse and then all this would have been for not all right here we go plan City traffic 310 Echo Bravo short final 10 plan City fingers [Music] cross look down the runway [Music] woo [Music] soar are good and let's keep it straight and this thing feels like it's all [Music] Sly City 76 left base one all right mixture is back for fuel pumps are off if there was any gear issues it would have happened but thankfully praise the Lord it stayed up on all three and then I made it to the end of the runway slowing down pulled off on the wheels we're going to be very gentle as we make this [Applause] turn all right plan City traffic 310 Echo bravoo clear of Runway 1 Z Plant City woohoo brought it over to the hang here and this is what we found here comes the big reveal hold on I want to ready [Music] yep so these right here are the brushes oh right there that's the problem that wire came off of the brush that little thing down in there is the brush so the electricity goes to this which sends electricity to this which then through some Witchcraft and Magik does things with like electromagnetic fields and stuff right there is the problem so this one and it's a spring on there that pushes it in so right there is the brush and you see how it's connected to that one right there that side is not connected yeah right there that's the problem and if this is just a spring so we open it up get out there it is that and you have an Armature inside and a commutator that that runs on oh man that is dude that's got some chunks missing out of it oh yeah I smell from here yeah that that boys and girls is what we call broke two more Landings that's all I needed that's what's the difference as broke is not broke is old and busted like your mom we got the motor Replaced inspected we're doing it all legal like now comes the critical part we got to make the gear go up and down and we're going to do that a bunch of times if this works we can zoom on North to T to go drop this off because they're going to look over it and then to look at the other airplane that I bought if this doesn't go well then I don't know honestly so let's just get at it and see what happens okay silus here goes nothing take the gear switch and go up [Applause] [Music] that is beautiful okay and gears coming down go ahead yeah coming down should be easy there's [Music] no green light go ahead and gear upar [Music] [Applause] [Music] up all right down [Applause] [Music] looks good to me my friend looks good to me I feel much more comfortable because the last time I did have that little that little Spirit you know that little voice inside saying Jimmy you should do a gear swing before you leave you should do a gear swing before you leave and I'm like no it'll be fine what could possibly go wrong and I found out what could go wrong actually and it [Music] sucked

Channel: Jimmys World

Views: 250,033

Keywords: airplane crash, general aviation, cessna 310, airplane crash investigation, emergency landing, plane crash, emergency landing plane, emergency landing cockpit view

Id: p-36OfldnsM

Length: 24min 49sec (1489 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 29 2024