tralika

Scenario Based Training is one of the things the FAA is pushing recently. Try this the next time your give someone a flight review or currency training. When the airplane is at a comfortable altitude and trimmed up for cruise flight, pull the power back about 300 RPM and tell the pilot the engine is running rough. What I would like to see happen is the pilot pitch and trim for level flight, turn towards the nearest airport and then run through fuel, mixture, carb heat, boost pump, primer. What usually happens is the pilot says "Huh" and continues on the same heading while starting to loose altitude. Then they usually start to mumble about things like "it could be carb ice" etc. I then pull back the power a little more and say "Getting worse". Most of the pilots continue to sort of stumble around until I finally pull the power to idle and tell them they have an engine failure.

I now teach primary students as well pilots in currency training to follow the same procedure for a rough running engine as an engine failure:
Pitch to maintain altitude (rather than best glide), Turn towards the nearest airport (rather than an emergency landing area), run the engine failure checklist. If they have not fixed the rough engine by running the engine failure checklist call ATC or Flight Service and give them the same information they would for an engine failure, What is the problem, where are they, where are they going. Whether they declare an emergency or not makes no difference.

Try it an see what happens.