Engine Explodes In Flight - Turbulence will not be at Airventure 2023 | Turbulence Emergency

Rochester approached experimental 707 Mike Mike out of 22 000 feet catastrophic exploded engine failure gliding to your field it's physics math and engineering machine it draft it build it test it break it every time something new gets built the entire world advances laying in bed at night it's designing new parts designing new suspension designing new wings foreign Sky condition 4 100 scattered a ceiling five thousand broken six thousand broken temperature two three two point one four altimeter three zero zero three you expect the visual approach to Runway three one Runway three one is shortened with a displaced threshold for the first thousand feet of the approach into the runway Mike will make the attempt for Runway 3-1 well guys it started out as a really exciting fun day going to Oshkosh to see everyone who loves Aviation and every cool new Aviation Gadget um beautiful day beautiful weather climate diversion to the north to go around sales stay for the most part VFR most of the day um that's certainly not how it ended so not sitting in a hotel parts are everywhere holes out the plane holds in the Wayne shrapnel uh the brushing the leading edges of the wing and the tail with pieces of metal in it um I tell you what this engine didn't talk to me normally if engines are not doing well they whisper quiet little things temperatures pressures um power vibration this one was just a silent ticking clock so uh you have time to just relax it's been several hours get to a hotel room call my family tell them I love them and just kind of think it through a bit so Rochester just checking back with you 15 000 feet on the Glide in Fountain Legacy seven Mike Mike Roger flooding one three zero will be effective for left downwind and uh I would like to circle the bill so keep me tight if you would I have one shot at this thanks I might Legacy seven Mike Mike Roger I tell you what probably the thing that besides the giant explosion I told someone on the ground and sounded like I I hit a deer filled with TNT um it was just a loud violent Bang and uh of course I was doing at the time 411 knots and uh the engine didn't slow down it just stopped at 30 000 RPM to zero in a fraction of a second um Parts exploded out everywhere um when you go from 411 knots with the kind of power it takes to hold you at that speed and then autopilot on smooth sailing crisp air above the cloud layer and then zero that's that's a heck of a yaw and uh it's startling like a C7 like Mike Roger and uh left or right turn whichever works out better for you it's approved thanks for that making left turns here zero five tracking one a zero zero via vectors for uh traffic that's uh trying to come in the field of uh without an engineer and uh zero Fox Echo uh left turn to a one zero zero what made it worse is while I'm trying to grasp what just happened um the cabin filled with smoke and the windshield covered in oil um that smoke scarier than knowing the engine just quit right then um what was going through my mind is well certainly not am I going to try and restart this thing there was no question it was done it was absolutely done um you know shrapnel shooting out into the edges of the Wayne and tail is a sign smoke is a sign the loud bang is a sign and the prop shopping is a sign it's not going to restart but I started thinking about a fire so instantly what's going through my mind is I need a Runway and I need a long Runway despite his erasers not build the land on a dirt field my Approach feed is 140 knots indicated my over the fence speed is 120 knots indicated and I need to get out of the mid flight levels to the ground before whatever is making the smoke becomes a fire or is already a fire and is going to become a bigger fire seven mic mics now IMC it's just a standard rate turn over the fields with it all those simulated engine outs all those what if it died here what if major quit there whatever that you've trained over and over and over do it do it again be ready um and certainly don't kid yourself that it may not happen [Music] or will never happen to you and uh start I'm going to uh shoot for three one but these turns might not work out so if I could have all runways cleared for any direction if needed to take a non Edwin Landing let's see something like Mike uh any Runway you can make will work fine for us wind is three two zero one four the reality is it probably will never happen to you that's the likelihood be ready that's all I'm gonna say all right here's coming down we're gonna shoot for three one of my money Mike must have you state my frequencies you have to deal with that thank you it is unlikely it's never going to happen but be prepared train practice I'm gonna step up my game I want to be more focused on safety in every aspect of flying car from Rescue five do you have an aircraft type and souls on board and Fuel and when things are calm at a very professional and appropriate time ATC was amazing so thank you guys that phrase comes up you never want to hear how many Souls on board you know I really wanted to say one um having that happen and having someone else in the plane my heart sank because it's real when you got one of your very best friends sitting next to you and they asked that question and you have to say two or four or ten or fifty if you're a commercial pilot yeah it gets real and you should be ready for it and know you did everything you can to train your practice for that question if it ever comes may I never how many Souls on board that makes you think and uh I only thought about it for a moment but it definitely was a momentary distraction that person next to me is one of my best friends and I talked to him every day and Josh builds airplanes with me and makes videos and goes mountain biking and riding and scooters and he's sitting next to me and you hear that question that's tough so Mike Mike down on the ground clear over the runways onto the taxiway thanks for your calm voice and we are safe on the ground uh doesn't appear to be a fire we have a little visibility out the window but appreciate your help thanks in my mind that's great great to hear glad to hear your safe [Applause] what's up thank you guys well guys not the way I wanted to start Oshkosh but I'm here I get to go home to a family and I'm still going to Oshkosh to see all my family of aviators so we all know we practice for this and you just never really know when it's gonna get you today I had an engine failure catastrophic I just got the plane in the hangar so um it feels weird to record this right now but I'd rather just record it while I'm standing by the plane and tell you the emotions I'm feeling kind of what went through my head as we're flying along one of the greatest most reliable engines of all time highest safety record period yet things still go bad this engine is an engine approaching near its time to overhaul however a lot of aircraft even certified that this plane came out of a dash 42 they'll put it on What's called the more program and go several thousand more hours this plane's been purring like a kitten absolutely running like a dream all the tests all the checks have been perfect it just came out of annual I'm sure this has nothing to do with that but we did everything oil changes and Screen checks filter checks everything that can be done and I hired a mechanic that specifically just does turbine engines to have another set of eyes do all of that to make sure it's good and I am completely confident it has nothing to do with him I wonder if there's something that this engine has in its history that never made the logs maybe a pilot that didn't know how to start up a aircraft like a King Air like it came out of with dead batteries and maybe it's been hot started and it had internal problems maybe ingested sand maybe it was in the desert I don't know it's the only thing I can figure right now because these engines just don't fail like this one did 27 000 feet on the way to OshKosh I think I was 30 40 minutes out setting up for the approach everything loaded and uh no warning pressures temperatures fuel flow speeds you would expect even a speed to drop off that something catastrophic was happening turbine engines usually don't just quit they give you a lot of warning and I mean not a lot of warning like 10 minutes they give you like months of warning of this slow trend and uh I experienced one of the most rare things that ever happens with the pt6 it sounded like I hit a deer going 400 knots which is what I was doing I think I was doing 411 knots and it was one giant instantaneous explosion just boom I mean it was loud and the plane just got peppered with chunks of metal this is a catastrophic failure of a turbine engine I can honestly say I have never ever heard of happening and that's oil and in there is a puddle this big inside there this close to a hot lead and a ground lead of 24 volts of power that was shot out with a shotgun basically so we're here we're on the ground I need to get a new engine guys I got to tell you I think I'm gonna I've been doing a lot of race and a lot of stuff I think I want to focus maybe a little more on Aviation on the safety side maybe I should do a video about proper care and startup of turbine engines because I have personally watched people start their engines wrong tell me oh it's fine I do it that way all the time and I cringe and I get sick because I know what's happening when they start wrong or they introduce fuel when the n1's too low and those burners are just cooking the can and they think they're fine these engines should go for 10 000 hours no effort they're set to go 3 600 hours because they know guys like us go out and fly them and guys like us make mistakes and sometimes we hot start them um I can honestly say I've never hot started an engine but I can see how it happens when you got a low battery if you're not paying attention you don't shut it down you will maybe this had a series of bad hot starts maybe how to bad history it's not Pratt Whitney I think it's owner operator from possibly 20 years ago it's an old engine I love you guys be safe be cautious take care of your Motors take care of your planes don't shortcut the front of the Wings are hit so hard that it's gouged into the carbon all the way back to the tail and I just repainted this plane for Oshkosh so it's not bugs Rock chips or rain at 400 knots um I've got metal chunks that hit the tail the wings everything so when that happened it was just instant freeze for one second I knew the engine was gone there was no question that prop already just stopped and I instantly keyed up I said I'm declared in an emergency I've got a catastrophic engine failure and I'm on my way to an airport I need an airport guys were great help me out started asking about what's the nearest airport give me a heading I started turning One Direction Just because naturally on the Garmin screen which I love about Garmin it shows all the big airports and the 27 000 feet I can make it about anywhere so I started turning and going okay I see a big airport area this way and and then ATC was pointing out another airport quite frankly about the time he was talking my mind moved into something totally different so I probably asked repeat double check questions quite a bit but what started going through my mind is okay is there a fire how fast do I need to get down could a fire start how close is my airport and now it literally just went to math mode a lot of great features on the Garmin screens showing me how far I can glide I had plenty of distance so I wasn't worried about trying to pitch for Best Glide of 120 I was going I'm at 27 000 feet and my batteries are going to die that was what was going through my mind I gotta tell you um Sean Howard shout out to a couple great companies Garmin you freaking made a product that just takes care of so much workload in a critical moment it was unbelievable and I gotta tell you one specifically was going through my mind for 20 minutes probably I don't know how long that Landing was but um I had just put a brand new set during annual of Earth X batteries two of their jumbos and in my mind I literally was sucked electrical system shut down shut down shut down both for fire for the the oil was everywhere I didn't know if there was fuel in that the smoke we had and in my mind I was like okay now I gotta I gotta baby shoot an approach or Circle through the clouds which is what we ended up doing and I need these batteries to last long enough to keep my radios going avionics up GPS alive um potentially an approach and then still run my landing gear and um I shut all the systems off and the whole way down I'm just watching the bolts what's my bolts and um guys you Garmin they'll tell you right where your vote where your screens go off you know where it is and in my old school lead acid batteries I would not have gotten down we're going to get down no matter what let's be clear gravity is going to get us there um I don't know whether the batteries would have made it that long and um the thing I was really worried about is am I going to have radios and gear and everything when I get on the way there and got to go through the cloud layers um I got down and we had battery to spare the voltage almost didn't even drop so I'm running big high output radios and talking to everyone and my voltage was almost still topped 20 minutes later so while ATC has given me some helpful advice I'm doing shut down shutting off lights shutting off my fuel pumps I think fuel pumps is where I went first I was like if my avionics die I don't have someone to talk to if my Avi if my batteries go dead I lose my avionics but I also lose my gear it's electric hydraulic and the gear extension has an emergency system that turbulence has but you don't always count on it sometimes they don't want to swing or you don't get them all so I didn't want to lose that so I started shutting down systems the first one I went to was fuel pumps several reasons one I wanted to shut the fuel off that engine done I was there was no not even one second thought to go do I try and restart this like I was like declare an emergency my engine's gone I'm heading down the land where's an airport I mean that's all I could think in my mind there was no restart procedure this that the other did I run out of gas in the tank like something silly no this thing was burned like a kitten tons of fuel and it exploded so it just gave up so I started shutting everything down and aiming for an airport and uh we're vmc on top so there was a cloud layer underneath us uh IFR Flight Plan up in the flight levels and I start heading for an airport asking for Runway lengths what's the runway elevation the things I need because I'm a numbers guy and all I want to know is how many feet to the ground what's my descent rate going to be how many times am I going to be able to Circle and how quickly can I get down safely in case some fire starts up because this explosion was an explosion like I didn't know if there was some smoldering little something in the engine so fuel off and get me on the ground worked out great ATC was amazing ATC all of you on there switching me off handing me off thank you for the support calm voices clear Direction you guys are awesome I'm sure you've saved a lot of Pilots lives with that calm professional Direct concise answers and just given the options that I have and then letting me pick from those options so I selected the biggest airport with the biggest runway happened to be an International Airport honestly I don't even know where I am right now I'll look it up but uh somewhere not too far west of Oshkosh well it's probably a long ways from Oshkosh I was doing 400 knots so a couple hundred miles from Oshkosh I'm sure um and uh and then I was just worried about how many runways what what direction is the wind I definitely wanted to take the headwind landing even though I had a big Runway I knew that I want to land a little bit longer you don't want to come short in a plane that's going to touch down at 120 knots the touchdown speed of turbulence it's a racer it lands faster than most planes fly at top speed that you learn to fly in so it's like going Full Throttle at the ground you don't want to land short and so that was the goal how do I get the headwind and how do I get um about a quarter of the way down the runway and come to a stops as I was approaching I felt really good I could get there but in my mind I thought here's these other great big long Runway going the other way last thing I need is someone on that Runway and everyone's professional they already had it cleared been them in my mind it's a double check I knew if I was changing up runways and going to need to land a 13 knot plus gusting crosswind on a shorter Runway it would be a last second choice last thing I need is a plane parked on it or near it so um of course their response was it was our good to go all runways were mined any direction so that was calming just helped set the stage came into final everything shut down I could on the systems except for keeping my radios and my instruments up watch my air speeds once I knew I was plenty High plenty hot but could visually see I could get my target I sent the gear first even though typically I'll put in 10 notches of flaps slow and then get the gear I want to just leave my flaps as my final fine tuning so I waited got slowed down enough to get my gear out and then see okay what do I need for a slip I was coming downwind and then making a left base just a continuous turn left base to final as I was pacing the wind that headwind two things that was in my mind is this aircraft if the engine is running you may go to Idol you think you've done simulated engine outs and that it's going to be the same you need to keep in mind it's not and I've done a lot of practice with various aircraft and all of you are doing the same um that practice and that training you're doing pays off but when you pull an aircraft to idle that is still running depending on what an engine it still produces thrust on some piston engines it's actually turning the blade slow enough that it's creating drag like a giant circular disc where an engine off if the prop actually stopped some might windmill you might get a better Glide so you need to kind of know I knew that this engine because of where the flight idle power is when I go to flight Idol on the turbine that this would still be producing a lot of forward thrust and with the engine off I'm going to have a fraction of that simulated engine out that I've done lots of training in this aircraft in so I wanted to stay extra high I threw out the gear everything was looking good um I wanted to make sure that my Approach was going to be a slip so that was the plan be high never short I turned in and I started to move the flaps and I just paused as I was making that inbound turn because I instantly could feel that wind what was a 13 knot Tailwind coming downwind to a 13 knot headwind as soon as I felt that drift push I left the flaps tightened up the turn and and pointed at the runway Tighter and then used my flaps to finesse it down and once I got where I knew I was assured made I used slip final it out and rolled it out and hit about I don't know 20 I don't know what it was maybe a thousand fifteen hundred feet down the runway of a 13. thousand foot wrong Runway it might have been two thousand I don't know but felt like about a quarter of the way down stopped somewhere around Midfield um thank you the rescue Personnel it was great I had asked if they could I remember asking ATC if they could have rescue Personnel ready um just anticipating maybe I won't make that Runway I'd rather have a bunch of fire trucks lined up and guys with gear on coming out to me short and a ball of fire at the end in a ball of fire and hopefully not either but I remember asking ATC could you have them get the rescue Personnel ready like in my mind this this isn't a simulation we got one shot and his voice was I don't remember what he said but it was calm direct professional they've already been advised or they're already there or something um I knew that the rescue carts were on the roll or already waiting for me so that just took one more layer of concern off my mind and then it was just fly the plane go for it stick The Landing so that's what we did I think when you're hyper focused it makes it easy to grease it so we kind of greased it in um right as I was Landing I had it made I think I turned to Josh who was with me who was absolutely the best co-pilot quiet calm pulled up airports looking at the Glide path asked if I needed anything and that he would sit and be there if I need it so thank you Josh for being a great great con professional helpful co-pilot because that just made it great I can't imagine if I had the opposite are we gonna die Maybe stop talking maybe if you keep talking so uh everybody ATC the tower the rescue team was great uh just kept my speed up and aimed for the taxiway so I get clear and make sure the runway's got going we got off circled off the the clearing and all the way out onto a taxiway airport plane started taking back off it's a commercial airport so there were airlines waiting on me oh also thank you all you uh airline pilots and crew and everybody that followed me on my declared emergency to the ground it felt good clear the runway for obvious reasons I'm gonna go home to my family but also just our family of fellow aviators all the pilots in the air the captain's holding short the airliners all waiting for this knucklehead to find his way down through the clouds which I don't know if I even mentioned had to go through some imc's anyway everybody the fellow Pilots everyone holding short everyone keyed up the mics and said congratulations good job nice work nice landing and and that looked like a great landing and just whatever they all said it was just Mike after Mike congratulations good job welcome back um we have a great family of aviators we have a great family of Pilots Air Traffic Control Towers everybody out there wants to see you succeed they want to see you make it they want to be there for you they want to help you it's a family I'm so happy to be part of it love you guys I gotta find an engine then back to work and go hug my family go hug your family tell them you love them see you soon all right guys so this is the kind of stuff that I have been dying to know turbulence's engine exploded yesterday and I caught a commercial flight home and Garmin is awesome they have the ability to put in a chip which I always leave in my aircraft to see Trends and monitor the engine so I pulled the Chip And it did exactly what it's supposed to and it gives me every flight every second it puts up a tick and shows me anything I want to know where I was on the GPS what's my ground speed what's air speed density altitude every number that your Garmin is displaying is put into this simple format where it just lines them all up you can select them and read through them so this is what we've been doing for the last little bit is just going through to see did I miss a trend like was there a Telltale sign that was saying something's about to go and um as far as flight turbulence is a a clean airframe it's smooth as silk yeah we're doing 411 knots ground speed uh turbulence was probably flying close to 365 knots um true air speed summer and uh heavy with fuel it can go 385 winter and light so everything was right in line with what we expect this time of year temperatures are perfect um and I was telling someone at the airport you know what happened after I landed and they're like oh you're Racer oh man that engine has probably been run hard and hot and I thought to myself I said actually I didn't even have to think about it no that's the purpose of turbulence when I built it was how do I build a faster triple prop in the world foreign by putting the right engine and airframe together so that it runs part 135 book temperature specs if it were in a 135 King Air Charter airplane which is what this air engine came out of this engine normally when I fly it to save fuel I can save eight gallons an hour flying it at slowing it way down to 350 knots true AirSpeed so normally this plane flies at 350 knots it's 711 degrees 710 to 720 Itt um I was flying out to Oshkosh and I was running closer to normal King Air temps which was upper mid 700s and I pulled it up to see kind of was the temperatures moving and I can see it right here absolutely and we went back for hours none there was no variance of any kind this thing went from Full temperature and in one second so when I say an explosion everything went at once off you come right here scroll over look at N1 my N1 right where it should be 98 and here you got three seconds one two three seconds from the explosion 92 69 53 well that engine stopped immediately when it exploded but the prop Free Will down for a few seconds so three seconds kind of spooling down that leads me to believe what I was wondering if maybe the gearbox blew up when I first looked at the plane and found pieces of metal under the gearbox they must have just shot forward with the explosion out of the side of the can as my guess but there was metal under the gearbox made me think maybe the gearbox gave up blew some metal out from underneath it sees the shaft and then blew out all the blades that ejected off a stopped shaft from my pt1 pt2 Blades of the hot section of the engine seeing that the props pulled down and that I could still move it I don't think the gearbox was the problem at all just me throwing out every crazy idea and then I also thought could have been the compressor section definitely wasn't that because then I got a closer look at the PT blades pt1 was all the blades were there but they were beat up from the pt2 blades all the pt2 blades are missing and they beat up the bt1 blades that's that are about that far apart on their way coming apart which my point is that the pt2 blades are the closest to the exhaust pipe Downstream or Upstream I guess is the right way to call it is the pt1 blades and then down further the first thing the air comes in is your compressor section so your T CTS the CTS if they came apart they would have destroyed the pt1 and the pt2 but since my pt1 blades are not destroyed and my pt2 blades are gone I'm going to give it an over 90 percent we'll find out we're going to send the engine to Pratt Whitney I'm going to give it over 90 chance that the pt2 blades in the hot section one of them are came off and bound up and wiped out all the rest and just 30 000 RPM it's just gonna go and molten metal shot out of that airframe so we found pieces of those PT blades I've got one in my pocket it is turned into a like a round wire and curled up so they just exploded and went through at least I think it's a BT blade it's about the right length but it looks like a Molten bomb hit it so um anyway so all the numbers oil pressures perfect right in the middle of the green oil temperature spot on turbulence has always just been perfect so um turbulence has got like a thousand hours built it five years ago the airframe itself it's been just the most reliable perfect airplane um my just cross-country commuter that happens to do 365 to 385 knots true here's the big change my business partner is a great guy a lot of time flies twin turbines um he had a a day he regrets he feels horrible we can all do it and he hot started not this motor the motor that was in it just before this and uh we weren't going to fly a hot started motor so that motor came out and was either going to be used for parts overhauled take care of whatever happened during the hot start and then put back in another plane but we didn't want to wait while that engine was being worked on for turbulence and I have another project I wanted another Dash 42 motor for so the motor that just blew up went in five hours I had five hours of flight on it and we went out on this trip and gave up so we took a good look at the logs the logs were good um we got this motor from Pratt and Whitney they're a great company the engine had good times the engine is coming close to an overhaul if you didn't want to put it on a more program but still had several hundred hours before it would even be you have you can go 400 hours over on just uh 135 ticket for Charter this engine was close to overhaul could go another 400 hours plus if you Trend monitor it you can go even on a certified airplane part 95 you can go several thousand more hours on a lot of people do they'll take them to six seven eight thousand hours which means this engine had thousands of hours to go and it's experimental you could go beyond that I wouldn't I I like to fly the engine buy the book buy the temps period it's a race plane that can go fast because of the motor in the package not because of racing it like a Reno racer or one of my pass Racers where you boost it and give it all it's gotten know you might heard it this was this is not that plane um so five hours on the on the motor not one sign of anything to come the temps didn't move ITT pressures N1 and two no vibration no anything there was just before the bang there was just the start of a little tiny vibration like just enough I almost had time to say did you feel anything like it was just like the tiny one of the ones if you're flying at night you think you hear over and over and over again like is that something or not something um it was just a fraction of a second of is that something and then boom that was the warning the Garmin card shows everything 411 knots over the ground temps I there was no four there's no forecast this was this was uh 411 knots to zero thrust full hard yeah loud bang smoke um was not ready it was smoothest silk flight that's one way to wake you up so um all the flights that I have recorded which is just since this motor went in um are perfect start to stop start up shut down temperatures perfect nice ice cold starts so I don't know I think the bottom line is be ready for anything um I still am digging to go is there something more I could have done and all I can think is buy a brand new motor but a million dollar motor for a plane when a engine that can go thousands of hours more just doesn't make sense um certified maintained I don't know be ready go train practice be prepared um I think I'm one of a very very very small handful of people that have actually had a full grenaded catastrophic failure of a pt6 engine um five hours on this airplane engine in this airframe and they were all a good beautiful five hours till they weren't so guys I don't know be safe love you guys let's get back to work [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music]

Channel: Mike Patey

Views: 1,310,948

Keywords: Air racing, turbulence, Draco, mike patey, STOL aircraft, Bush Flying, Flying Cowboys, Mark Patey, Mike Patey, Pylon Racing, Patey Twins, Fastest Turbo Prop, Turbine Lancair, Turbine Legacy, Hillside Landing, Crosswind Landings, Water Landings, Water ski airplane, Best tugs, Grip lock ties, Back to work, Carbon Fiber Molds, Carbon fiber layout, how to carbon fiber, custom parts, world record aircraft, experimental, super cub, engineering, how it's made, red bull, aviation

Id: pgpf5ktKVBc

Length: 42min 9sec (2529 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 23 2023