Engine Off landing

I ran 7 miles (give or take) this morning. Wore the HRM for the first time in weeks. I kept the pace nice and easy.

Surprisingly my legs felt good even after the 8 miler yesterday so in the middle of the run I went to De Anza track and did 6 hill bounds up that little hill near the finish line.

In the early afternoon I went to Air Accord and flew with Kuzo. We did slow flight over the south valley for about an hour and then came back to RHV to do 5-6 landings. We were over UTC which is about 10 miles out and I did my usual

"Reid Hillview Tower, this is 757 Uniform Foxtrot over UTC with Zulu. Staying in the pattern." That meant I wanted to land and then take off again and do the pattern and land again and repeat and repeat.....

The traffic controller did not respond. Suddenly we could hear his conversation with another pilot about how many passengers he had aboard and could he make the runway. Turns out his engine had failed (ugh). Then the controller said that the airport was closed. Kuzo told me to do a 180 and head back down the valley. After a few minutes we began to hear traffic resuming at thw airport so we headed back. At that point Kuzo told me that based on the call letters, that the plane was Sundowner from Air Accord.

I told him that we would just head back and we could forget the landings and do them another day. I knew he was worried about the plane and the passengers. It was strange. I wasn't thinking about flying anymore but was just focused on getting the plane in and on the ground.

As we closed in on the airport we could see traffic backed up on Story Road and we also spotted the plane, intact with no fire or smoke. The pilot had made it down but short of the runway.

As we came in over East Ridge Shopping Center I was a bit high but I cut the throttle and we came down nicely and seeing white over red I knew that we were OK. The plane settled easily and I just rounded out and flared almost perfectly. I had nailed the landing!

Kuzo turned to me.

"Great landing", he said.

We taxi'd back to air accord and Yuzo came out to tell us that everyone was OK. The plane was intact. They would just have to tow it back in and figure out what happended. (Found out later on that the pilot had run out of fuel and had not switched to the second tank...hmmmm. This is the second time this has happened in NorCal in the past two months.)

As for me, I realized that because I thinking of the other plane and the whether everyone was OK, I had defocused on my own fears. I mean, I was landing with power under almost perfect conditions. It put it all in perspective (at least for that moment and that time).