When everything stops working.

Today was my last preparation flight before Monday’s departure and Janaya put me through my paces by revising emergency procedures.   The flight was not as long as my last couple of flights but I had to work 10 times harder on this one.

Practising emergency procedures is something that is done regularly by all pilots regardless of experience.  The more it becomes second nature then the better prepared you will be should it happen for real.

Today our engine failed on take off as well as in cruise over some interesting terrain.   Strangely some of my instruments and navigation systems shut down at random intervals.  Coming into a busy controlled airport my radio picked the worse time to fall silent and I had to rely on light signals from the tower to get clearance to land.

My electrical system stopped working for a short time so I had to land with no flaps.

Miraculously everything was working again after we landed :)

Lastly we added in some precautionary landing practice - that is landing away from a normal airport due to concerns with the aircraft or unexpected adverse weather.   This will be particularly important while in the Top End and was made a lot more real with the actual weather helping with the scenario and providing a great backdrop (We had landed at this point!)