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MEP on DA42 report

About my Multi-Engine Piston rating on the DA42 and the skill test, click:
Abeam.be

Abeam the Flying Dream
EBKT, western Belgium, Belgium

Congratulations for your rating and thank you for your report. It is always nice to see an ATO from he inside.
Having to take the MEP to do a CPL is surprising but understandable in a business sense. They only need a simple SEP for basic training and DA42s for all the rest.
What surprises me more is that you never killed really an engine in flight. What do others think about this ? Like Timothy or Dave Philips ?
All I know about MEPs is from YouTube, but I saw several students in several schools practicing engine kills and restarts in midair.
Like here :


Last thing : an ex member of here told me he experienced a power loss and then an engine failure in IMC in a DA42, he killed the engine and diverted safely. But he then realized it was an air intake icing which he could have avoided with Alternate air (or something like that, correct me if I’m wrong). He had not trained much about troubleshooting in flight so he applied the procedure he remembered : engine stop and diversion. Did you train on troubleshooting in flight ? In a twin, you have some time to try it, don’t you ?

LFOU, France

Trouble shooting in flight is a normal part of all training as far as I know.It has been for me including for the DA 42 and DA40.Regarding use of alternate air, you are quite correct, one of the things I learnt on a DA40 and DA42 is to consider alternate air if the OAT gets below 5 degrees especially in humid conditions such as cloud.

France

There is one nasty thing about these DA42 aircraft and that is the 3-green lights. If you turn the knob of the display lights a certain way, the 3-green lights will be dimmed. I know from experience that this is not nice if you are flying at night in IMC in winter time to your destination and just about to land, you find out that you do not have 3 green lights!

During training, I was told many times to be aware, but somehow I forgot, did not have that item on my checklist and it only popped up in my mind after I had landed with emergency vehicles standing by.



Also, since the engines are sitting “outside” on the wings, it is difficult to keep warm in these aircraft in winter time. They do have de-icing equipment (TKS) but the spinners in front of the propellors will easily pick up too much ice and create an imbalance. In that sense, I feel better (apart from the single versus twin-engine discussion) in a Cirrus SR22 Turbo with FIKI in such conditions. But … that is for as long as the one engine keeps running of course.

Last Edited by AeroPlus at 04 Sep 07:25
EDLE, Netherlands

You landed with he gear up ?

LFOU, France

No. I landed with no visible 3-green lights due to a stupid setting. It is in my view a design error. Dim the screens or cockpit at night and you also dim the 3-green lights. As I did not get the 3-greens confirmation, I asked the fire brigade to go to the runway and check with their flashlights if the gear is down, which was confirmed. But if the gear is locked is an uncertainty, so they had some crash tenders standing by, plus ambulances. It is around 9 pm LT at night with freezing temperatures and foggy weather. Of course, I had a good alternate (EHGG) with clear weather forecasted.

Last Edited by AeroPlus at 04 Sep 07:36
EDLE, Netherlands

Congratulations on your MEP.

Jujupilote wrote:

Alternate air

Deep down in the diamond manuals it is hidden that during imc alternate air should be used.

always learning
LO__, Austria

How deep down is it hidden? For FIKI aircrafts, you should have an “icing” checklist, and it should be followed.

EGTF, LFTF

2013 Service Information No. SI 42NG-039/1 for DA42NG

always learning
LO__, Austria

AeroPlus wrote:

No. I landed with no visible 3-green lights due to a stupid setting. It is in my view a design error.

They are dimmed so low that are invisible at night? That is indeed a design issue.

Dimming them down at night is essential, though, and a great gotcha in retractable pipers, where the night-dim is initiated by turning on the panel lights. Best way to simulate the “oh, no three greens” for a student…

Biggin Hill
25 Posts
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