Engine Failure

I have a really interesting entry in my pilot log today. It reads:

Slow flight, steep turns, power off stall, power on stall, simulated engine failure, REAL engine failure. Landings: 1.

We took a left Dumbarton departure out of PAO in our trusty Cessna 5346D, and went out over SLAC to do some maneuvers. All went well (actually my power off stall sucked, and I busted altitude on my left steep turn, but what the hell), and as I got toward lining up my simulated engine failure landing, Kevin terminated the maneuver -- he was happy with it, so we went full power, and started to climb...then we stopped climbing and started to SHAKE. I vaguely remember thinking we were stalling so I pitched down slightly, but no effect.

Then we realized -- the engine was actually failing. How's that for irony? Kevin took the controls from here. Can you imagine? I'm like 2 flights away from soloing, and my engine fails. I don't want to think about what would have happened if I was alone. Actually I think exactly the same thing would've happened, but the emotional impact would've been greater. Did I say "impact?" Scratch that.

It felt like we were running on 2 cylinders. We could barely maintain altitude, and the plane was shaking like crazy. We went through emergency procedures, checked the fuel, oil pressure, mags (switching to one mag, either side, made things significantly worse). Then we contacted PAO tower and told them the situation. At 60 knots, Kevin was able to get the plane to climb, really slowly (100 ft/min or so), so we circled there and tried to gain altitude, with the plan of getting to about 4000 and then getting over to PAO. We didn't want to go if we couldn't gain the altitude, because we needed to be able to clear all the houses (and Stanford) on the glide if necessary.

Eventually we made it up to 4000 -- the engine got much worse a couple of times, and actually seemed to clear something out and got a little better around 3500. We flew back over and Kevin put the plane down on the runway at PAO.

Several observations, other than the highly obvious "Holy shit, the engine just stalled!" 1) They don't teach you this because they teach you about the case where the engine completely fails, but there is a step in there: If you can climb, by all means, climb. 2) Kevin rocks. I must say we were both cool as cucumbers, though I'm sure I'd have been much more frantic if I were alone. 3) The tower and other aircraft were all very cooperative. The tower basically cleared the runway and held all other traffic off until we were on the ground. Another aircraft, a Citabria, circled over us so that if we did have to make an emergency landing, she could coordinate the ground crews (fire, ambulance, etc). Thankfully unnecessary.

21 hours, and already an engine failure. A doomed flying career, or just good training? I'm choosing the latter. Several things could have been worse in this scenario. For one thing, I was not alone, and had a very, very good pilot in the plane with me. We had an emergency landing site all picked out, given that I'd just done a simulated engine failure landing there. And the engine didn't go completely and did allow us to climb. As my pilot friend Tim says, "A good landing is one where you walk away. A great landing is one where you can use the plane again."

Note: Here is a Google satellite view of the field and the airport; I've marked the field with an X and circled the airport for reference.