Plane accident off Venice airport onto the beach.

[John Schmidt]

You've probably seen this on the news, plane loses power after takeoff and tries to land on the beach. From the looks of things the pilot had tried to turn around and make it back w/o power. If you don't have any altitude that's a no-no, just land straight ahead or to one side. Years ago, my former wife(also licensed) and I would sometimes fly to Venice, land and taxi to the end of the ramp where we would park for the day. At that time there was no fence around the airport, so we would simply walk down to the beach. Now, it's all fenced in, has a golf course surrounding the end of that runway and no place to park the plane out there.

Just looked on Google Earth to see if a little grass strip south of the Lakeland Linder a/p was still there, right next to rte. 60. Appears to be, it's a residential fly-in community and the strip looks quite a bit longer than when we used to fly in to visit a friend that lived on the premises. He's gone now but the memory still remains. Especially a couple times when I had to sorta "mow" the grass with a couple high speed taxis. They didn't always cut the grass and if it got realy tall it made take-offs a bit difficult....couldn't build speed as fast. Always had to wash the grass stains off when we got back.

Times, they are a changing.....guess I am too.  

[Grumpy]

I don't know the level of training for emergency's now but when I was learning my instructor really preached handling engine out scenarios.  Always pounded it into my head, don't worry about starting the engine, pick out a place to land, set up a glide, then try to get it restarted again. He was bad about pulling surprises. One weekend we were flying around Alton Ill, circling a refinery fire. I leveled out to head back to the airport and the engine quit. Did as taught and picked out a field and setup a glide to land there, then started checking, carb heat mags etc, he had shut the fuel off while I was looking out the window at the fire. Hard way to learn, but it sticks with you. I always was thankful for his level of training, saved my butt a few years later when I blew a oil line and landed on a service road in southern Mo. Flying is great fun, but has a few pucker moments that happen sometimes.  The little strip south of lakeland is still used, mostly gliders now and ultra lights, My friend Jeff and I have used it for touch and go's a few times.

[John Schmidt]

Yes Bill, I got the same thing drummed into me. Plus, my instructor loved to suddenly slap a cover on a bunch of instruments, often when in the pattern. He wanted to inpress upon me the value of knowing your plane, rpm/speed relationship, how fast that might bring you down. He'd cover the speed indicator, VSI, often the altimeter and the attitude indicator(the ball). Then tell you to go ahead and set up for a landing, and he would do this before you had any flaps in or gear extended if a complex a/c. Saved my bacon a few times when caught in IMC such as on top and needing to come down for fuel and there weren't any holes in that puffy stuff. He was always slapping a visor on me, tell me to look down and shut my eyes, then put the a/c through a wringer. Then tell me "ok, you're a/c" and you had to recover solely on instruments. Got pretty good at it after a while so he'd simply change to a larger or smaller a/c. But when I took my check ride, I got the inspectors attention. He wanted to know where I was going to touch down and wanted me to hold pattern altitude until the last minute. I told him which two lines I was going to hit and held alt. until the last second, then let that little 150 float down like a falling leaf under full control, showing about 45 indicated. I hit the mark and suddenly noticed he started breathing out loud again. I passed!