On my first night flight the instructor asked where I would go if engine failure. I argued the only flat thing I could see was the river (over henley on Thames, point N at EGLM), as there was some reflection. She seemed quite susprised but I think I’d stick by it. Couldn’t see anything on the actual ground.
The case of a forced landing at night is another can of worms. In the RAF we were taught to bale out (in Chipmunks) and eject in anything with a hot seat.
But then in general aviation circles I have heard the consensus seems to be to head for the darkest bit of land you can find and approach it into wind, one instructor even suggested keep your landing light off so you don’t see what you are about to hit! Any words of wisdom on the night forced landing technique?
At night, it’s a bit like this
The Alps, FL150 
If you just set up a glide and hope, you will most probably die unless you are very lucky. So a decent topo map running on a GPS will help your odds. But there is no really good answer to this, which is why night flying raises more questions to do with risk management.
In Europe, there is extremely little GA activity at night, so statistics are not plentiful.
one instructor even suggested keep your landing light off so you don’t see what you are about to hit
That (often quoted phrase) is of course totally tongue in cheek and dumb! In reality, your landing light might just help you avoid hitting something really bad.
I have done quite a lot of nighy time instructing in SEPs and I always imagine that water or roads are the best. Water is low risk for third party, we always try to wear life jackets during night flying so we could go for water. Roads is high risk to third party so it depends on how populated the area is. You will probably hit the lamp posts but otherwise it should be good. I would not aim for anything else unless I was left without choice. A decent GPS will help you.
Peter wrote:
But there is no really good answer to this, which is why night flying raises more questions to do with risk management.
Sweden, being a bit further north than most of Europe, sees a good deal of night flying with SEPs. About 10% of my flight time is night flying — much more than the proportion of my overwater flights. There is no abundance of engine fail accidents in darkness here. In fact, I can’t remember having read about any. On the other hand there has been some accidents due to human factors. E.g. the black hole effect and misreading the altimeter by 1000 ft.
My 43 hours night solo have been wearing a lifejacket, and likely to be able to land on water.
A Robin on a night instructional flight had an engine failure. The instructor successfully landed on the Cromarty Firth, and both got out, but they were not wearing lifejackets, and left them in the rear in case the aircraft trapped them The student drowned, although a rescue helicopter was exercising nearby.
The instructor found the downwash from the helicopter a problem, swimming with no buoyancy. He said water temperature was not a problem for him.
The cause of the engine failure in the almost new aircraft was a carb jet jammed by parts of an insect, left inside the carb at assembly. (i.e Not post purchase new.)
I want to take up night flying as soon as is feasible. Maybe this winter even. As my new Base will be in an urban area, I think the best bet for an emergency landing at night would be on a piece of Autobahn in my area. Sure, the risk of collision with cars is pretty high but I think you are still more likely to survive that than flying into a built up area or forest. Cars might see you and brake or evade, trees or houses won’t…
EDIT: As for the original topic question: I too would have thought that always landing with the gear down would help to dissipate energy and thus be advisable. Anything that gets broken by the crash that isn’t you leaves less energy for the crash to break you.
I think the argument for raising the gear on a forced landing on a rough surface is to prevent it catching and inverting / cartwheeling the aircraft, which tends to cause really bad injuries.
Depends on the type of rough surface. Gererally I’d leave the gear down, even if I was sure it was going to break off. Landing gear up on anything but a rock solid surface is likely to see the nose dig in and a cartwheel.
I think the main argument to leave the gear up, is landing on thick standing crops. Then when the aircraft is still flying, the gear hits the crops first if down. This causes a brakeing acting at the bottom of the aircraft, when it’s still flying, and runs the risk of flipping the aircraft while still flying. I’ve no idea if this is what happens in practice.
I was “Pax?” with a low hours Group member, who made a perfect crosswind landing, close to the upwind side of the runway. It was intended to be a full-stop. He immediately firewalled the throttle, the aircraft turned 45 degrees into wind as the into-wind wing lifted, and we left the runway, onto rough grass.
I took control, and tried to lift off. Every grass tussock brought us back down. With full power, and stick hard back, we were not gaining speed. Immediately the mixture was pulled, the aircraft tipped, then settled back. The prop had stopped before it touched the grass, and no damage was done.
At touchdown speed, with no propwash, I think the aircraft would have flipped over. If I could raise the undercarriage, I’d do so before landing on rough grass, bushes, heather, bog, or water. I’ve no retractable experience.
