The difference between real pilots and armchair pilots, in other words.

I appreciate that it was technically legal, and arguably safe, however you were only 8 miles from your home airfield. The risk from an unknown electrical discharge problem is significantly higher than getting a ride back 8 miles to your home airport then sending your mechanic on a 20 minute journey to look at the plane. Edit: To another extent, if your fuel pump is required equipment for takeoff, and you have a low voltage situation already...sure it works on the run up, it works at Vr, but now you're Vy and the pump dies. I think the point myself and a number of other pilots are making here is you're compounding the getthereitis here. If you're willing to sacrifice safety for the most minor inconvenience you could have experienced, what will you do when you're stuck hours from home? When you encounter unexpected fog when you're 15 miles from home and aren't IFR rated/current? Edit 2: When you uploaded this, you probably expected to get some criticism. Your research after the fact was great, and you discovered that realistically, there was no critical problem preventing you from flying the airplane. You look like you handle it well, and flying is extremely enjoyable, so keep having fun. That said, the vast majority of the comments here saying this was problematic behavior are from pilots. There's not a ton of GA pilots out there, and you being a fairly famous one means you unfortunately get held to a much higher standard. Your defensiveness to these comments is good from a, "here's the thought process we used to arrive here" point of view. However, it's terrible from a learning prospective. Criticism might hurt the ego, refusing to learn from the criticisms, especially in GA, can kill you. No one here wants to read that news article.

You can also turn your iPhone sideways with Foreflight running , then bring up synthetic vision. It won't have the most accurate instruments, but any port in a storm.

Famous last words!

As a maintainer, I used to have to refer to the MEL (minimum equipment list) or MESL in the military. Those things are pretty well thought out. I think you made the right call. Safety should be paramount, but there is a point where it becomes overblown. If you really wanted to be safe as possible, you just wouldn't fly.

If Scott is leaving your airspace the only appropriate sendoff is Fly Safe. Its also professional enough to actually say to a pilot on air

Yeah, Scott can fly a plane ✈️

I see some Dymo Tape labelling in your future Scott! Fly Safe!

@@AaronTureRonAbrahamsson157 in this case, he flew recklessly...

@@christianwendt7852 oh my god

I think the problem with this plane was that none of the owners were aware that the checklist they were using was in error. I agree that the warning/indicator of low/decreasing voltage is an indication, possibly of an alternator issue, but in this case it was an indication that the alternator was _not_ engaged to power the instruments and charge the instrument battery. The diagnostic of checking the systems, reviewing the pre-flight and operational checklists against the aircraft owners manual (which may have other translation errors, so that may need to undergo further review) then reviewing the wiring diagram, and finding the information that was missing from checklist(s) and manual, and documenting the missing information, updating the checklist, and passing that information on to the other owners of the plane shows a far deeper interest in the pilot solving the problem than the pilot reporting the problem to some maintenance tech, not at his home airfield, that the pilot hopes knows more about the plane than the pilot should. And whether it's a dymo or a brother label maker, or someone with a penchant for etching bras plates to fit to the key switch assembly and provide a more permanent mark of the switch positions, I suspect that's going to happen and let pilots know one more thing that they need to make sure is correct before they take off. (At least I don't expect anyone is going to be trying to start the plane in flight for most normal situations.

I fly all the time with an 'alternator failure' mainly because there is no engine in my GLIDER. Mechanical gauges, portable GPS if I want to use it, radio, and an emergency backpack parachute. I have flown several hundred miles in one flight, and reached 24,000 feet during another. Oxygen equipped, of course.

@@paulmoffat9306The view from up at 24k must have been awesome!

Well said and yes he is still learning. I am happy he made it through the experience intact.

No one asked and the joke isn't funny, sorry​@paulmoffat9306

I wish it were a Lancair

Lanceairs are sweet

@@scottmanley Given the accident rate numbers for Lancairs cited on the Complete Walkaround channel, I bet your insurance provider is happy it's not!

I thought it was a lancair at first too.

You need a lot more hours under your belt for a lancair its catastrophically unforgiving. Landing that without a working airspeed indicator will kill you.

Yes, I noticed that as well, he has a death grip on that stick. With fingertips on it he would have a better feel for trim issues also. Great video.

I'm only guessing from other videos but it seems like the simple all-mechanical controls on these Eastern European made aircraft make it necessary to have a fairly firm grip. There does not seem to be enough leverage in the controls for a light touch at least as my vast armchair piloting experience can tell 😜

Hear hear!

But clicks. It certainly fooled all the certified flight instructors in the comments.

The title is clearly intentional

In aviation it may always refer to losing engine power, but in social media it is clickbait. And in Scott's case, his plane needs a lot of clicks ($$$) to maintain operations :)

I concur with you sir ... I was taught 43 years ago as a youngster, you report you have Electrical issues when your electrical system is misbehaving and that you need to get on the ground soon. Telling the world you are "losing power" means the big donk up the front is no longer behaving reliably and you MUST get on the ground ASP. But Scott, you should NOT have taken off again until you had the issue figured out. The back up battery is let you get down soonest and safely Scott. It is NOT a means taking to the air again when you have no idea how much life is left in it.

@@CumulusGranitis That's ridiculous. You don't need a battery to fly VFR

The charge light only illuminates when the battery is charging from the engine, the only time I've seen it come on is when starting the engine.

@@scottmanley From what I found "Loss of alternator output is detected through a zero or minus values reading on the ammeter and warning lamp CHARGE coming on", which seems to fit your description of it coming on during engine start

@@christianwendt7852 Beat me to it. The only time it is NOT charging from the engine, is startup. I've seen many diode failures (rectifier) on those.

New fear unlocked...

There are some lights illuminated, but it seems hard to find pictures from this cockpit layout that would allow to decipher what they say. There were really bad decision made in this flight. It was less "fly safe", more "nothing bad could happen to me", which has killed a lot of pilots.

i guess it would be better to have an instructor present when something like that happens, given that such a problem could happen anytime you´re in the air and when you´re on your own.

Well, it would devolve to VFR from 1924, when pretty much the instrumentation was the pilot and his eyes. Would suggest a good upgrade would be to add in a standby compass, standby altimeter and a standby airspeed indicator, as a minimum flight instrument list, that will help in case the ancient Garmin decides to brain fart, as they are well known to do with some combinations of a complex map and some locations. All 3 can be bought used, and simply sent in for a certification, and then the standby compass will just need to be swung with the aircraft in flight ready configuration, to adjust the 8 cardinal point compensation screws. Memories of 3 hours in the swamp, in the compass bay, acting as the intercom link between my instructor melting in the rear, and the 2 pilots and flight engineer melting in the cockpit. After the 10 full circles to get the newly repaired fluxgate sensor aligned perfectly, the others decided to drive back on the tow tractor, while I elected to stay on board, and fly back with the 3 in front. They still had 3 hours of fuel left, but only needed an extra hour to complete flight hours for the month, so they did a little trip out to sea, and there I got to see them doing an aerobatics show with the 16 ton helicopter, doing all the daring moves, that are limited to 0G to +3G, that are permitted with a helicopter when you want to avoid chopping your own tail off, or having the main rotors separate. Sitting in the door, hand through the strap, and looking up at the ocean above me, and the sky past my feet, as they did a few barrel rolls around 1km offshore, with the closest place to swim to being the offshore oil platform. 2 very happy and now cool pilots.

The instructor is hinting about the danger but gets talked back into flying by the owner/operator who 'doesn't want to be stuck'. It worked out fine in this case, the thought process was understandable, but the CRM and the gethereitis are holes in the cheese for the future.

Lose not loose.

The adhesive will get sticky and come off over time with heat and sun. He needs an etched aluminum plate with callouts, like on Cessna and Piper mag switches. He can do the graphics on his computer and have a local shop do the rest.

Especially on such a short flight, better safe than on the local news with nothing but your tail section sticking out of the ground.

That is a very good point, I personally would be uncomfortable flying a plane with no stand by instruments and knowing I have only a battery running my equipment.

“I cannae change the laws of physics.”

@@yankee1376 "I just cannae do it Captain, I don't have the power!"

yeah without backup analog instruments I feel like a backup battery/circuit to power instruments should be required. It surprises me that with the additional reliance on the primary electrical system in modern aircraft that they don't require redundancy there like they do with the magnetos/engine ignition system. An ipad/iphone does not strike me as sufficient backup instrumentation but if he'd lost power that's all he'd have had, that and the mk 1 eyeball...

Many instruments that are critical do have battery backup. In the plane I fly, when you shut down the plane, the gauges keep running with 45 minutes of battery left if you press the button.

There really should be an addition to part 23 to require analog standby instruments in the albeit very unlikely eventuality that you lose all the fancy glass

​@@throwback19841in most aircraft operated under part 91, the battery is the backup

@@silaskuemmerle2505 or another electrical generator for all the glass. with analog, vacuum (i think) is the power source for your gauges, so it makes sense to use one other backup power supply.

He didn’t. Watch at 07:44 again.

For me, the issue here was that there was a real possibility that he lost all instrumentation and means of communication. That's more dangerous than a blown out bulb. One single instrument like the airspeed indicator would be bad enough, but lose speed, altitude and attitude indications, and you need a lot of luck to rely on...

@@mirador698 that's the footage from "previous", because the camera ran out of power. They discussed it at 7:20, on the ground, and took off afterwards.

@@mirador698 Yes, they flew back. listen at 7:52

@@christianwendt7852 there was no risk he calculated the state of charge left in the battery and system demand giving him half an hour to return and he was only 5 minutes away. no risk taken.

For real. I'm only a student and yet my instructors were very quick to put me through tough situations. It's like some of these folk are too dependent on technology instead of raw stick and rudder skills.

I am very pleased to hear that Australia still has the toughest pilot's training in the world and what you described brings back memories of tough tests I went through at Moorabbin back '81-'82 to earn my license. Back then you needed 33 hours for Restricted PPL... then you had to do an additional 21 hours of Cross Country navigation training (15 dual and 6 solo) for your UnRestricted PPL ....which would let you fly solo anywhere in the world. On top of that you then need five x-county flts that were 5 hours long to qualify to sit the CPL flight test. But his was 43 years ago. Sadly as I just read on the CASA website, the PPL has now been watered down to just 5 hours X-country time and 1 solo x-country flight for the PPL license. How things have changed over time.... sigh...

I would say oil pressure, if that goes south, you're landing really quick. You can fly the plane by wind noise and feel.

@@bernieschiff5919 I dunno, oil pressure comes with a pretty quick acting audio visual alert system ;-)

Airspeed. Your landing maneuvers are directly dependent on airspeed. (PS: Non-pilot, just semi-educated guess.)

It's kind of the (sometimes grim) medical explanation of "all bleeding stops eventually." Factually true... but...

Yes, that mag/start switch needs an etched background plate with callouts clearly labeled. I'm surprised there is no label at all. That would never pass US certification. I would get that done ASAP.

@@bernieschiff5919 Right? That's what I thought. The fact that the key position doesn't come labeled straight out of the factory seems like a major design flaw, and not a small, inconsequential one, either. I wonder how the plane was approved for production seeing as how aerospace is generally thought to be very tightly regulated.

Leaving a comment to hopefully increase this comments visibility... Here's hoping Scott sees yours. 🤞😞🤞 Sorry to hear that... god speed!

Yes thanks. My time is running out according to my urologist and oncologist and I’ve never taken all 3 of my daughters to visit California, even if they’re heard 1,000’s of stories! Basically the only reason I left this comment was because after doing countless numbers of searches to contact Scott I couldn’t find a single thing. We’re going in June so there’s still time to get this to happen. And may you be safe and healthy.

@@thomasfholland I tried messaging him in his pinned comment, but either... YT removed it due to it hating me these last 6mos (removing so many of my comments), or, he saw it and then removed it so that it didn't clutter his pinned comment. Reaaaally hoping for the latter. 😞

That’s why it’s always better to buy a NEW plane / Car.

@@bravo_01 just not true, old aircraft can be flown perfectly safely, lots of GA aircraft built in the 40s-70s are up and flying great. it just depends on your maintenance, and when you encounter an issue like in the video using the proper ADM to keep the flight safe.

I agree, better to be grounded at an airport you don't want to be at than to fly with the possibility of no panel. Even if its an easy plane to fly, the risk factors go up. Take care of the problem on the ground.

​@@bravo_01it is not in fact always better to buy a new plane.

Unfortunately, in this case he'd have lost the attitude indicator as well

@@christianwendt7852 in VFR the attitude indicator is out of the window. You have to think where is the nose of the aircraft in relation to the horizon? Look left and right think what are my wings doing relative to the horizon? It’s not hard

Totally agree. (I'm a gyro pilot)

How could he know the “problem” if he had never experienced it? Are you saying he should have understood the wiring diagram before flying? Is that what commercial pilots do? Honest questions, no snark.

@@twm4259 He realized there was some kind of problem. That should be enough. If I was pilot in command, I would not have flown the plane without fully understanding the problem and solved it, or knew the potential risks of the flight. But this is really a common problem in aviation. Too many pilots have encountered similar issues that cost them their lives.

@@BradM73 The video was made after the fact and I guess I didn’t hear him say he knew that there was a problem before he experienced it in flight. I guess I will have to rewatch it.

I’m sure the display showed battery voltage around 12 volts, that’s what they were looking at on the ground. Charging batteries would indicate around 13.8 volts. They decided to fly home with the possibility of losing power to the 3 glass panels. The engine does not need the battery to run it has 2 independent ignition systems. If while flying back though and the engine stopped the restart might not be possible because the battery is too weak. If you’re thinking the propellor will just windmill, not a Rotax 912 engine and that tiny prop they just stop instantly.

Yup. There's a subtle difference between careless dismissal without a thought and a cool calculated risk analysis based on understanding of the systems.

It was “safe” to fly. Except if he’d have lost power, other planes in the air would not been able to detect him without the transponder. He would be relying on everyone keeping a good look out for him.

@@Liofa73 Keeping a lookout is a 2 way street. If you rely solely on the transponder to broadcast your presence and can't keep a lookout on your own in clear VFR conditions then you shouldn't be flying in the first place. That kind of over reliance on technology can kill you as well.

Me too! No way in the world would I ever fly with him!

Did I hear: We are losing power. Things aren't going correctly? Let's fly?!??

@@jamescollier3 *Electrical* power to the avionics. Not the power that keeps the plane in the air.

It's not a Boeing plane, so it is safer than others.

@@moi01887 the avionics are important. No speed, no altitude, no attitude without them.

@@Marinealver dang. That made me chuckle.