Do the RNZAF practice landing with one engine shut down?

[sputnik767]

Just watched an Orion on long finals fly over home with the port outer engine prop feathered.
With all the coverage about the engine failure recently, do they practice approaches with one engine down?

[ErrolC]

They used to practice them in Bristol Freighters, that is a lot of noise over your house for quite a while!

[angelsonefive]

There have been two shutdowns of malfunctioning engines in Orions in recent times, as I recall. This latest event makes the third as far as I know, and resulted in the aircraft turning back from a flight to Kiribati to search for missing fishermen.

www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11943025

[isc]

I you went by the first site I looked up on the latest incident, they would have you thinking that the aircraft was operating on one engine, had to look at another site to find the one engine had been shut down.
On the Orion, are different services powered from individual engines, or can electrics, hydraulics etc be operated regardless of which engine is out of action. isc

[tbf25o4]

The port outer engine on the Orion is regularly shutdown on long patrols to extend the range of operations. This is part of the operational requirements of the aircraft and so the generators to provide
essential services are located on the other engines. There is no problem with landing the Orion on three providing the MAUW is down to accepted levels. It has even been known that an RNZAF Orion
has taken off with only three burning.

[camtech]

The main reason that the port outer is shut down routinely is that there is no generator on that power plant. There are 4 generators on board - the 4th being attached to the APU.

[horicle]

Continuing the theme of P-3’s on three engines.

It was at Denpasar (Bali Ngurah Rai International Airport) on the Vanguard deployment of September 1972 according to my passport. When the P-3 started up for the Denpasar - Tengah leg there was a chip detector light on one of the engines so everything was shut down. That meant nobody left. The P-3 captain worked out that a three engine take-off was within limits and the impress Officer heaved a sigh of relief and eight Skyhawk pilots and a C-130 full of maintainers cursed their luck. I am still trying to find the photo (colour slide) I took from my end of the runway. But all eight aircraft duly departed, just a little late.

There is a foot note given to me over a few beers. When the P-3 got to Tengah it was given a straight in approach. A few miles before threshold the controller told the captain there was a wind change and he now had a three knot tailwind on that vector, was he happy with that?. The reply was “affirmative, and for your info we are landing on three engines”. The ever polite Controller responded with “Do you wish to declare an emergency?”

All the Captain is reported as saying was “Negative. We took off like this”.

[isc]

The airforce got practice with the "best 3 engine transport" the Hastings, that was just leaving the RNZAF when the Orion was arriving. isc

[kiwithrottlejockey]

Nov 12, 2017 19:59:01 GMT 12 isc said:

The airforce got practice with the "best 3 engine transport" the Hastings, that was just leaving the RNZAF when the Orion was arriving. isc

I actually posted the following to another thread about an hour or so ago, but perhaps it is appropriate to post it to this thread as well:



Talking about three-engine Handley Page Hastings transports, the following tale is a fascinating (although hair-raising) read....


• FIVE GET LUCKY by Brian Spurway

[isc]

I don't know the cockpit possitions in our Mk III hastings(someone will), ours may have been saved by having a few more HP in the Hercs. I'v always like the Hastings, as it was the first aircraft I flew in from Dunedin to Woodbourn, and back, a few months before joining the BES in 1964. isc
ps,Info from "Short History of the RNZAF". The major incidents of RNZAF Hastings were when all engines went out, seem to remember it was a lubrication problem.

[suthg]

And from Wikipedia on the Handley Page Hastings ... "During the period that the engines were having problems with their sleeve valves (lubricating oil difficulties) RNZAF personnel joked that the Hastings was the best three-engined aircraft in the world."

Handley Page Hastings Transport

[isc]

On three engines - or two - this mighty transport could outperform most comparable aircraft of its day.
isc
"RNZAF A Short History", by Geoffrey Bentley.

[Peter Lewis]

My understanding was that the Hastings engine problems were largely attributable to the RAFs use of recycled engine oil at that time.

[tbf25o4]

Peter you are mostly correct, it was the use of an oil that was not compatible with the Hercules engines, and once the problem was eventually recognised and
the switch made to a compatible oil, the problem went away. For some reason the RAF had listed the incorrect oil in their maintenance procedures which we
adopted when the Hastings were introduced.

[isc]

The RAF at the time were using non-deturgentoilon their MkI & II hastings, the Mk III of the RNZAF required a deturgent oil. I remember some trouble with out IO-470 in the C185s having similar problems. isc

[skyman]

I recall having read or being told that the Hastings had a "crash cut-off" switch in the nose which would cut-off all electrics, including to the engines, in the event of a crash. In "our" Darwin crash I was informed the aircraft had a bird-strike on the nose on take-off which actuated this cut-off switch thus stopping all engines. I may be wrong, but that is what has stayed in my mind over the years.

Al

[noooby]

For the Orion.... #1 Engine had no accessories on it. #4 had a Generator. #2 and #3 had a Generator and an Engine Driven Compressor (EDC) that supplied air for air-conditioning and pressurisation. The P-3 (unlike the C-130) does not use bleed air for pressurisation.

Also unlike the C-130, the engines do not have hydraulic pumps. All hydraulic pumps are electrically driven on the P-3. #1, #1A and #2 pumps are AC electrical. #1B is DC and is used for the wheel brakes. There is also no battery switch on a P-3. If the battery is plugged in and you turned on a DC electrical switch, then it would work. So lots of breakers were pulled after flying and the battery was disconnected at the end of the day.

#1 engine is regularly shut down on patrols. Sometimes #2 would also be shut down if they were doing photography work out of the rear door instead of the photo window up front, but not often.