Engine failure - which immediate action?

Peter wrote:

Glide range is a circle only in zero wind.

Well you are at the center of the circle only in zero wind. But if your strategy is to maintain “best glide speed” whatever the wind (which is the basis for the SkyDemon circle) then glide range is still a circle, only you are not at the center.

If you know how to take advantage of the wind – increase speed against, decrease a little downwind – then the range “circle” will not be a perfect circle.

Trim for best glide.
Pick a field and get going
Diagnose.

Clearly these elements can/do overlap.

Keep the prop turning. Carb heat in UK. Mixture. Electric fuel pump on. Change tanks. I did all these locally. Engine kicked when pump on, and ran normally when tank changed.
Moved hand, but didn’t touch carb heat and mixture at altitude over Utah. Same result. Both smooth loss of power.
If misfiring, vigorous leaning can clear plugs. Did that W side of Mull.
Try one mag if misfiring – never had to do that so far.
In windy conditions, a parachute which cannot be released doesn’t appeal.
In mountains, lake or up-hill slope.

Is this thread now haiku?

When the engine stops
Lower the nose and pray hard
Maybe it restarts

Wrong format for Haiku.
I was hurried as I could hear the microwave chiming that my food was ready, so I cut sentence structure. Was the meaning of the message clear?

Very first immediate action: assess. If climbing or at low speed in general, I agree with Cobalt: the first action will always be to lower the nose. Whether the second action should be to pray hard should depend on circumstances. In cruise, continously selecting possible off-airport landing spots is of course very good, and I tend to do it since I started flying in gliders, but apart from when flying very low, or over inhospitable terrain, I find that the best first actions are to maintain altitude while trimming to glide speed, turn away from water or cities if required, and perform the cockpit drill by heart. The cockpit drill usually (if you know it) is done in seconds, i.e. is done by the time the speed has been reduced from cruise to glide speed, and then (having hardly lost any altitude yet) it is time to look for the best landing spot. What happens next depends on time/altitude. Turn downwind to search the most acreage in the remaining time and at the same time establish a well-known scenario (the final approach from downwind), make radio calls, dial 7700, brief passengers, do the drill once more from reading the emergency checklist, and lastly secure the aircraft.

The thread title is engine failure. Failure is also what is in the training syllabus, but much more common than a complete failure is partial loss of power or a rough engine, and to most PPL pilots that will trigger the same reflexes as a complete failure. Spending time trying to select where to land while the carb ice gets worse is not desirable, so change tank and (for those to whom it applies) carb heat on should always be done first except at very low altitude like just after take-off (where those two actions should be unlikely to help anyway).

JasonC wrote:

I assume it was asked for post-AWE1549.

I’ll check, but I don’t think it’s on the syllabus – just nice to see in the sim.

Peter wrote:

Glide range is a circle only in zero wind.

AND Only if the terrain is flat.

Or it can be a circle with wind a no flat terrain.

Sorry, it’s just a nitpicking exercise!