OMG, what is this?

[09El_Boissevain]

OK, I just got a huge problem during flight. I was making a nice, feathered glide with my prop plane, when all of a sudden sometime before touchdown I
lost all power, so I couldn't extract the gear. Shoot! I had to call for emergency because I couldn't start my engines and lost all power, and was in
a cold & dark glide. I still managed the belly landing, but I am now still stuck on the beginning of the runway, blocking all traffic. All pax safe
and they all scrammed outa there (96% satisfaction, quite good though).

But when I went to see the log for any bonus points, instead it said I made a false emergency!!!

Captain El

[ivo]

1) can you post your flight report?
2) what plane are you using?
3) Can you please explain the situation a little better because I don't exactly understand it? So you shut off and feathered the engines in
flight while making your descent? Is that it? And then you tried to restart them while in flight?

[poden]

Perhaps the generators were accidentally shut down and the batteries were eventually drained? I don't think FSP is set up to keep track of
battery/generator status, and so wouldn't have flagged it as an emergency. It is possible to accidentally shut off generators; I've done it a couple
of times myself, and then didn't pay close enough attention to the annunciator panel.

[qdrummer21]

I take feathered glide to mean that you had the engines on and fully feathered. Now I have no experience in variable pitch proppeller
aircraft, I've only flown fixed pitch, but I believe that fully feathering the prop is only supposed to be done during engine failure. Please give
us more information though as I would like to know what happened to you as well.

[qdrummer21]

Just did some research and talked to some private pilots. The idea behind feathering is for twin engine planes in the event of a single
engine failure. In this case the failed engine will begin to windmill and creates drag on that side of the plane. By feathering the prop the
airflow passes over the blades with a Angle of Attack close to zero thus minmizing any lift generated by the prop and ceasing the windmill
and eliminating the resulting asymetric drag. Standard procedures calls for no feathering of the prop during normal operations as it puts
unnecessary strain on the engine. If both engines are shut off/fail there is no need to feather the props to as there is no asymmetric drag
and the plain will not yaw in either direction. However, in this case feathering the props will decrease the amount of parasite drag
caused by the props and give the aircraft slightly better glide performance.

As far as the restart I've found documented cases of aircraft not being able to restart their engines after a full feathering of the prop due to
safety cutouts that detect the prop speed. I didn't get too many details on this. However there are also documented cases of twin props
loosing electrical power after running on one engine with the second unfeathered. The documentation I found was from the faa and can
be found here: http://www.faa.gov/aircraft/safety/alert...-05-51.pdf

If MSFS or the aircraft model you were using acurately simulates the electrical system this is the problem you could have experienced.

[c210]

There is a differance between feathered and beta. Beta is when you reverse the angle of the blades to give you reverse thrust like in the King Air or
PC12 to help in containing taxi speed on the ground. You can do beta approaches on single turbine aircraft but not on twins. Beta appraoch is when you
reverse, NOT feather the prop the give you a very steep but slow approach. Guys in Pilatus Porters do this all the time for various reasons but the
most important ones are that it's WAY cool (you just see ground out the front window) and is an amzing rush. The very short landing distance it gives
is secindary

Now for obvious reasons you do NOT do beta approaches in twins. The reason is that each engine do not go into beta at the same time and if one is
ahead of the other you will most likely loose control of the aircraft at this stage. Even using beta on the ground after landing to slow down cause
MAYOR rudder stomping in the King Air 300 to keep it on centerline :D

YOU DO NOT WANT TO FEATHER A LIFE ENGINE EVER!

[Ceemosp]

If I am not completely mistaking the correct setup for landing would be Props to FULL COARSE - props synchro OFF - autofeather ON (at
least on most aircraft).

The only time you MAY have to feather a life engine is before shutdown but that depends on the manufacturer. The reason for doing that is
to circulate the oil through the prop's feathering gears. General Electric CT-series need to be feathered at idle for at least 30 seconds
before shutdown - two minutes is standard

Greetz Carsten

[SWVA5630]

plus there is a key setup for cranking the gear down manually in case this kind of thing happens.