Citation II type rating - Day 11 - Hot weather day

The main focus of today was high temperature and high altitude performance, or rather lack there-of, with one engine inoperative. But of course the syllabus graciously added a few other things to keep it interesting.

The flight was from Reno, NV to Redding, CA on a summer day. Density altitude was about 6300 feet. Reno's "HUNGRY THREE" (hah!) departure from runway 34L requires a climb gradient of 315 feet per nm to 8400:

This calculates to about a 5.25 percent climb gradient. We used the Citation II performance charts to determine that we could make this gradient, assuming an engine failed on takeoff, at a maximum of 11,500 pounds (1,800 pounds short of the maximum takeoff weight). So, it seems we might have to leave some of our Reno gambling winnings behind...

And so we did. The engine failed on takeoff roll, just above abort speed (V1) and I continued the climb, apparently missing the cloud-hidden mountains all around. Once this were settled down we restarted and went on our way to Redding.

Along the way we had a cabin depressurization and emergency descent. Pitching the plane over for a maximum-speed dive with the speedbrakes out was a lot of fun in the simulator. I bet not as much in real life.

Flying ILS into Redding, we were warned of thunderstorms in the area and possible windshear. And wouldn't you know it, we ran into bad windshear on short final! Recovery procedure is throttles to maximum and pitch up as much as necessary to arrest the descent rate. "As much as necessary" is all the way up to just short of a stall.

Fortunately, we have this to guide us, an Angle-Of-Attack indicator:

Pitching up into the yellow band is recommended for windshear escape. The crosshatched area around .85 is where the airplane will stall. We used this previously during the stall maneuvers and it works very reliably in any configuration - once the AOA gets to the crosshatched area, the plane buffets every time.

We were told that the windshear event being simulated was the Dallas-Ft Worth event that brought down Delta Flight 191 on August 2, 1985. That event really started a lot of the research into windshear and microbursts. Even knowing it was coming, and even being in a simulator, it was definitely enough to get the heart pumping! Fortunately we were able to make a missed approach and fly out of it eventually.

We followed that with a LOC/DME back into Redding. Funny how the windshear also damaged the glideslope antenna. On vectors for this came a "Fuel Filter Bypass" light. Not much of a checklist for this one, but the warning does get your attention (so much they put it in there twice).

And sure enough, one of them did decide to give up on final.

Landed, fixed the engine and went back around for a practice visual approach. Of course that meant a runaway elevator trim problem to identify and disable before it drove us into the ground!

I am feeling way more comfortable in the airplane than just a day or two ago. Even considering everything that happened on the flight today, it was actually a pretty easy flight. Is that a good sign, or not? Don't know!

Tomorrow is our checkride prep day!