Page 26 - Volume 16 Number 12

Push the propeller handles to high RPM: When an engine quits you feather the propeller to reduce drag. In an Emergency Descent, you advance the prop controls fully forward to maximum propeller drag—and increase your rate of descent.Extend speed brakes: If the aircraft has speed brakes, extend them to add additional drag. Speed brakes substitute for propellers in turbojet airplanes.Extend the landing gear: Maximum descent rate results with the gear down. If you’re above gear speed when the need for an emergency descent arises, throw the gear out anyway—you’ll decelerate and enter your descent at gear extension speed. The worst that will happen if you extend the gear above VLE is you may lose a gear door. This isn’t a consideration when you have to get down now.Extend APPROACH flaps: Why not full flaps? Unlike the landing gear, where gear doors are the weak point, if you fly faster than the top of the white arc with flaps extended and a flap separates from the airplane, you will probably enter an uncontrollable roll. At full flaps it would be too easy to exceed flap limiting speeds.Pitch to a nose-low attitude: And they mean real low, to attain VLE. There’s a whole lot of ground in the windscreen! The attitude alone can be disconcerting; you24 • TWIN & TURBINEDECEMBER 2012