Engine out in IMC.

[EnDSchultz]

Well, my reckless neglect of the Accusim Mustang finally caught up to me today. I want to preface this by saying that everybody who flies an Accusim aircraft enjoys it in their own way. Many like to take ownership of the machine, baby it and treat it well, as if the aircraft were their very own; and that's fine. Me, I like to abuse my Accusim aircraft. I love exploring the depth and detail of the simulation and experiencing the myriad ways things can go wrong, and the best way to do this is to treat my aircraft poorly and watch them degrade. And then, I have the opportunity to hone my skills and decision making as I try to find a way out of the trouble wrought by my carelessness! As in the unfortunate (though entirely avoidable) sequence of events described here:

During a climb eastbound over the Great Lakes, I noticed my fuel pressure was fluctuating, often dipping into the red before slowly recovering to the green over the course of a minute or so. Intrigued, I turned on the boost pump and figured I'd press onward to see how Accusim would play this out. Passing through about 27,000, the fuel pressure began to fall again, but this time it continued to decrease all the way to zero. The engine coughed and died. I disengaged the autopilot and pitched for about 150 indicated, going through my flow to try and get the engine started again. With no luck, I checked the GPS for the nearest suitable airport. Conditions around the Lakes were overcast in all directions with variable ceilings, so with little time to lose and no ATC to advise me further (I often fly offline with the default ATC disabled), I elected for the nearest airport with an ILS: CYQG - Windsor, Ontario, about 30nm distant. With restart attempts unsuccessful, I secured the engine and pulled the prop to low RPM to try and improve glide performance. The manual puts best glide around 125, and with an estimated headwind of almost 50 knots, I revised my airspeed to about 140, which gave me a descent rate between 1000-1500fpm. The GPS put Windsor at 10 minutes away. Altitude was about 24,000 at this point. So far, so good! The prop continued to windmill, and as long as it did so I would still have some hydraulic pressure and enough RPM to keep the generator mostly functional. Still, I turned off the lights and unnecessary electronics just in case.

Weather at Windsor was reporting an abysmal 4sm of visibility and 800 overcast. Great. But without any ATC to help advise me of nicer alternatives, an airport with a long runway and a localizer seemed my best shot. I scrambled for the ILS frequency online and tuned/identified it. Sadly, the received signal was nonsensical and although I guided myself onto the localizer feather with the GPS, the CDI never gave me sensible guidance. As I realized I was coming up long and only had the GPS to help me at this point, I started deploying flaps and the gear. I knew these would dramatically increase my drag and descent rate, but even then I wasn't prepared for the extent. I came diving out of the clouds around midfield with nearly a 4,000fpm descent rate and almost 20 degrees nose down. The airspeed had also decayed to around 100, and so I didn't have enough energy left to fully round out. I had just enough energy to reduce the descent rate to perhaps 1000-1500fpm before slamming down three-points in the grass in the middle of the runway complex. The Accusim Mustang doesn't model gear collapse but with a touchdown like that, I think that at the very least the gear would have been toast. The pilot would have probably been worse for wear too, but I suspect with the gear to absorb some of the impact it would have been survivable.

As for the Mustang, it turns out that fuel filter I had left in a RED state for 50 hours or so had finally strained its last gallon. I was blown away by the fidelity with which this failure occurred. It wasn't like the flip of a switch where Accusim just decided "Well, looks like the fuel filter is at 0%, time to cut the fuel pressure!" - instead it was a gradual, organic event, where the fuel pressure fluctuated in and out of the green several times over the course of minutes, screaming of impending failure before finally decaying to zero. I am confident that no other light aircraft on the market for any platform comes close to the level of handcrafted detail present in A2A's offerings. Thank you to everyone at A2A for all your passion and hard work. It really shows!

[Lewis - A2A]

Good stuff, excellent account and glad you enjoyed your Accu-sim experience and ownership aspect

cheers,
Lewis

[Scott - A2A]

EnDSchultz,

Thanks so much for this post, as it reads just like an actual in flight emergency. It's these challenging moments that define part of us as pilots, and like I you I enjoy the aspect of a simulation forcing is to scramble and think the best we can do make a bad situation come out OK.

In your case, yes, as we modeled the fuel delivery system the physics of that fuel filter slowly destroyed the airplanes ability to deliver fuel to the engine.

Scott.

[DHenriques_]

I've always said;

If you are visiting a flight simulation conference someday and watching sim pilots sitting at monitors flying aircraft produced by various developers, look closely. The sim pilot with the auto-pilot engaged drinking coffee is a happy camper for sure.......... but look around the room a bit more. Find the sim pilot who looks alert, sitting on the edge of their seat and sweating just a little bit. THAT sim pilot is also a "happy camper.............BUT.........chances are THAT person is flying an A2A Accusim aircraft!
Dudley Henriques

[AviationAtWar]

The Accusim Mustang doesn't model gear collapse but with a touchdown like that, I think that at the very least the gear would have been toast.

I had one main gear fold on me during an around the world trip a couple years ago.

[EnDSchultz]

The Accusim Mustang doesn't model gear collapse but with a touchdown like that, I think that at the very least the gear would have been toast.

I had one main gear fold on me during an around the world trip a couple years ago.

I suppose I could have been more clear. I know it is possible for the gear to collapse due to not being locked or a malfunction, but in spite of many catastrophically hard landings I've never seen landing gear in working order become damaged by impact. At any rate, glad you all got a kick out of my little AAR. This is definitely up there with my favorite experiences in Accusim to date, because it's the first failure that was both unexpected and not the result of a direct action by me. I've oversped and jammed the flaps before, I've knowingly taken off with way too little oil and lost oil pressure. But this was the first time something just came out of the blue. I'd accrued over 100 hours on the plane and that filter had been red for as long as I can remember, so after a while I came to assume that it would just result in a long, slow, protracted decrease in average pressure readings over many flight hours as the filter became more and more saturated. I had never guessed that I would go from business as usual to catastrophic fuel starvation in a matter of minutes. And it's brilliant because that's just how complacency gets you in the real world. Something looks or feels a little bit off, but doesn't seem to cause a problem so you dismiss it as nothing... until one day that red flag you chalked up to your imagination suddenly escalates and you find yourself gliding in the soup with a dead engine, like me!

[MkIV Hvd]

Well, my reckless neglect of the Accusim Mustang finally caught up to me today. I want to preface this by saying that everybody who flies an Accusim aircraft enjoys it in their own way. Many like to take ownership of the machine, baby it and treat it well, as if the aircraft were their very own; and that's fine. Me, I like to abuse my Accusim aircraft. I love exploring the depth and detail of the simulation and experiencing the myriad ways things can go wrong, and the best way to do this is to treat my aircraft poorly and watch them degrade. And then, I have the opportunity to hone my skills and decision making as I try to find a way out of the trouble wrought by my carelessness! As in the unfortunate (though entirely avoidable) sequence of events described here:

Holy Crap Man that's awesome and good for you! I can't even imagine!! In ~5000 hours RW flight time, I went through two in-flight emergencies and the last thing I want to do in the sim is THAT! Again, good for you in being the guinea pig in proving the amazing accuracy of A2A airplanes!

If you are visiting a flight simulation conference someday and watching sim pilots sitting at monitors flying aircraft produced by various developers, look closely. The sim pilot with the auto-pilot engaged drinking coffee is a happy camper for sure.......... but look around the room a bit more. Find the sim pilot who looks alert, sitting on the edge of their seat and sweating just a little bit. THAT sim pilot is also a "happy camper.............BUT.........chances are THAT person is flying an A2A Accusim aircraft!
Dudley Henriques

After having logged 4300 hours FSX time over the last 10 years for my VA in types from singles to warbirds to historic jets and heavies, I would never have believed this…they’re all basically the same. After 45 hours in the A2A T-6 over the last 6 weeks I completely understand!!! Thank you so much A2A…I know I will never fly another non-A2A airplane!!!

[AviationAtWar]

I was also thinking about Dudley's quote about an hour ago. I installed a GPS in my new A2A 172 (my first GPS experience) and was flying around Chicago figuring out how it worked. Midway gave me a crosswind landing on 4L (Active Sky real world weather), by the time I was on the runway my hands were sweating and hand was hurting from how hard I was gripping the stick.