jwn57030

Does anyone know of any training software or simulation software for the Garmin g3x system? I know its similiar to G1000 and there is plenty of training materials for that, but it would be nice to see something specific to the G3X.

Great discussion. Really makes me think about how I would escape from my plane. In the case of flipping on land I am not sure how I would do that. In the case of water I am not sure it matters if its a low wing or high wing. There is a nice video from AOPA telling the story of a man in cananda that survived a crash in a river with the plane inverted. He went on to start a company that trains people in escaping from planes underwater. http://www.aopa.org/aopalive/?watch=43djhyNzqknG7WzpJR6Jl82jqqEPngZp . In the video he explains how difficult it is to escape from that situation. As to the plane I fly it does have an emergency canopy release. In the water this might help to totally release the canopy from the plane. On land upside down this might not do much.

I believe I experience carb ice with the rotax 912. The weather that day was around 40F and 40-50% humidity. Before I took off I had gotten the engine to the min temperature of 120F. After that I still had to keep the oil heat on for most of the flight. I was doing a short cross country to an airport about 40 minutes away. About half the way there I noticed the oil temperture had gotten to 200F so I decided to turn off the oil heat. The engine seemed to be running fine up to that point. At the point I started decending towards the airport I noticed the oil temperture had dropped all the way to 150F. At that point I turned on the carb heat and oil heat. When I was on final I got a little hiccup from the engine. After I landed I taxied and parked for about 15 minutes. Unfortunately its all the time I had before I had to get back. Durring that time I felt the carburetor and it was ice cold. Before I took off again I restarted the again. It was running a little rough, so I let it idle with the carb heat on. As I did this it seemed to have some more hiccups. Interestingly the fuel pressure also jumped up while this was happening. Still in the normal range but much higher than I had ever seen it. After a few minutes of idiling the hiccups seemed to go away and the engine began running normally and the fuel pressure went back to normal. I did a run up and the engine seemed fine so I flew back home with no further incident. I did keep the oil heat on the entire time to make sure I kept the engine temperture within normal operating range.

I had a very similar experience a couple of months back in a similar model plane, a Gobosh 700s. Not sure if the canopy locking mechanism is exactly the same, but both have canopies that rotate up from the front. One big difference in my situation is that it was partially caused by the aircraft design but overall it was pilot error and my inexperience. My experience was even better because it was on one of my solo's as a student pilot. On the gobosh when it gets really cold the canopy tends to warp and becomes very difficult to align correctly with the fuselage when closing and locking. I am sure the left side was locked correctly, but looking back I am pretty sure the locking mechanism was not seated correctly or only partially seated on the right side and I did not spot it before I took off. Since I knew it was cold I even pushed against the top of the canopy during my run up to be sure it would not open. I however did not push on the left or right side to make sure both locks were in place. So I took off and about 5 minutes out of the airport I started to feel that rush of air. Out of the right side of my eye I spotted sunlight coming through where there shouldn't be. I turned my head and I could see about a 1-2 inch gap between the canopy and fuselage. I looked to the left and saw the same thing. As with the story above my canopy was being held 1-2 inches above the fuselage by the lower air pressure. Immediately I tried to close the canopy as well but realized the air pressure would not allow that. So after my second of initial panic I returned to flying the plane and took a second to think. I did not know if it was an urgent situation/emergency or not. So I decided to call Pan-pan to be on the safe side, and the controller cleared to me land at the runway I had just taken off from. Not knowing how the canopy would react to the forces on it while being open I slowly turned around and reduced my speed in hopes of reducing forces acting on it. I slowly came back to the airport and did the second softest landing I've ever done to prevent the canopy from bouncing. I didn't notice when because I was focused on landing the plane, but the canopy had settled back down and was sitting on the fuselage normally. I assume as I slowed down in my round out and flare the canopy slowly settled back down. Thinking about it afterwards I did realize it probably was not that unsafe as part of the published procedures for emergency landing include opening the canopy before touch down. So it was designed as well to be able to fly with the canopy open.