I'm alive!

[eagl]

Some of the blistering may be a skin reaction to the fluid, like a chemical burn.  I'm not saying it wasn't hot enough to burn you, but the hyd fluid itself may have also contributed a chemical burn to your skin which will make any thermal burn worse.

I got some hyd fluid on my finger before a T-37 sortie a few years back, and by the time we landed 1.3 hrs later I had a nice red blister on my finger.  The skin is still just a bit thicker/rougher in that one spot, and that was just one or two drops of whatever hydraulic fluid (redish stuff) was used in the T-37 brake system soaking through my nomex glove and being held against my finger for under an hour and a half.

[Tupac]

May have been, but I had hydraulic fluid on my pants, shoes, and shirt and my hand is the only place I'm burned. My shoes I was wearing were black but when I took my white socks off they were red with fluid. My pants smell like it and so does my shirt, that stuff is nasty.

[eagl]

Toss out the contaminated clothes...  Not worth risking ingestion just to save a set of clothes.

For fun, see if they catch fire or burn better or worse than you would otherwise expect

[saggs]

Some of the blistering may be a skin reaction to the fluid, like a chemical burn.  I'm not saying it wasn't hot enough to burn you, but the hyd fluid itself may have also contributed a chemical burn to your skin which will make any thermal burn worse.

I don't think 5606 (which I assume is what a 210 uses) would cause a chemical burn, and definitely not in that short of a time.   It's pretty benign, I've had the stuff all over both arms for an hour and never had any ill effects.  

Skydrol on the other hand can be very nasty, on hot days when your pores open up it will seep in an burn, forget to wash it off your hands before peeing and you'll know a special kind of pain   get it in your eyes and you have to flush it out with castor oil.   I've been told that SOP at the airlines now is if Skydrol gets into a cut or under your skin/bloodstream at all, it's an automatic emergency room visit.

Anyway, well done Tupac, glad you're safe.  

[curry1]

Here's the real time version
http://www.w0cra.org/downloads/Nate-Temporary/DavidWhite_C210_SmokeInCockpit_KAUS_LiveATC_Feeds.mp3


00:00 starts my checkin with KAUS Approach
03:15 after vectors to San Marcos, requesting lights
04:40 phone number offer/refusal
05:40 request CTAF frequency
09:35 just the callsign?
29:45 Approach talking about me to another aircraft because San Marcos is closed then says I'm okay and airport is open.

[Tupac]

 

[M0nkey_Man]

(Image removed from quote.)

[Dichotomy]

Perhaps, and this is just me, Tup was pumping the heck out of that handle and the friction built up.  I know I would have been.  Of course that's just me ol Dicho soft hands and all

[curry1]

Perhaps, and this is just me, Tup was pumping the heck out of that handle and the friction built up.  I know I would have been.  Of course that's just me ol Dicho soft hands and all

I think I figured out what happened he was pumping the old "handle" got some blisters and had to create a cover story.  He made up the part where the gear handle heated up (as it makes no logical sense) and somehow broke the hydraulics.  My theory is he used his shoe laces as a harness of sorts and jumped out of the 210s door.  He moved his way to the engine and broke open the access door.  Then used his iPhone to beat the hydraulic line into submission.

[Golfer]

Oh good, autorefresh is turned on. 

I had a reasonably coherent reply typed out regarding that while I have a theory I'm not convinced the hydraulic fluid would ever get hot enough to transfer enough heat through the manual extension handle to get it up to a temperature that would cause burns like you described.  That and the Cessna RG system on their singles sucks

A leak at the power pack which I believe is mounted inside the cabin between the two sets of rudder pedals provided it's an electro-hydraulic airplane wouldn't necessarily have any hydraulic fluid getting ahead of the firewall but a leak at the nose gear actuator or associated lines/fittings certainly could. A GoPro shot of the ammeter during your flight and hearing the hydraulic pump kick on as it constantly tried to rebuild the required pressure to hold the gear up would be telling.  The gear on the 210 like other Cessna RG singles (the system sucks) is held up by hydraulic pressure alone rather than mechanical uplocks.  If a leak were to develop in the system resulting in a decrease in pressure the pump would kick on to recharge the system to whatever PSI is required to hold it up (750? It's been a long long long long long time) which is normal enough as the pressure bled down over time. The pump kicking on isn't anything that would cause alarm but should a leak develop or the pressure switch fail (this would confuse the pump into thinking the system either is fully charged all the time or always low) you could have the power pack running much more frequently than usual.  There's no question it gets hot if you do this and can have the CB pop if you're doing repeated cycles of the landing gear on a hot day such as touch and go training as it's happened.  Would it get so hot it burns your hand?  Don't know, never tried it.  At any rate, if a leak were to develop which resulted in the pressure being low enough to warrant the hydraulic pump to run continuously consequently heating the remaining fluid up to whatever temperature is required to transfer enough heat through the manual extension handle to burn your hand you're actually lucky to get the gear down at all.  If the airplane was successful in pissing away all the hydraulic fluid you'd have been left with no means of extending the landing gear because the fluid you have in the system is all you've got to work with.  Gravity or free fall doesn't work, the theory of using a tow bar to grab the legs doesn't work if you're solo and frankly the risk far and away outweighs the minimal hazards of a belly landing.  Especially if you only were to get one leg to extend.

Not being there to smell the smoke doesn't help but it's intriguing the normal extension didn't work but the manual hand pump did over a hydraulic problem.  They both do the same thing and unless the smoke was from the power pack motor burning up as a result of the separate hydraulic leak causing it to run/overheat/let out the magic smoke I can't figure off the top of my head what causes that same combination of failures and allowed the smoke to stop generating.  At least not at 2am.

How frequently was the power pack charging the hydraulic pressure? Was the power packs CB popped?  Was the smoke smell electric or was it the smell of hydraulic oil?

[Tupac]

The smell of smoke was the smell of hydraulic oil, not electrics. I should know more tomorrow and I'll let y'all know what we find. I agree, the Cessna retract system is really complicated (Im not a fan, atleast not anymore)I like the Piper design where if you lose hydraulic pressure the gear just drops.

The emergency section of the 210 POH has this to say about emergency extension of gear with fluid loss.

"The system reservoir is arranged to retain sufficient fluid to extend the gear with a hand pump if a failure between the engine driven hydraulic pump and the reservoir results in fluid loss."

[colmbo]

The emergency section of the 210 POH has this to say about emergency extension of gear with fluid loss.

"The system reservoir is arranged to retain sufficient fluid to extend the gear with a hand pump if a failure between the engine driven hydraulic pump and the reservoir results in fluid loss."

The pickup tube for the powered pump is higher than the pickup for the manual pump...insures a reserve.  However if you break something downstream you'll just piss it overboard regardless which pump you use.

[Golfer]

So is your airplanes hydraulic system engine driven or electrically driven?  I'm basing my assumptions on electro-hydraulic but that excerpt seems to say otherwise.

Flying an old bird.

[saggs]

So is your airplanes hydraulic system engine driven or electrically driven?  I'm basing my assumptions on electro-hydraulic but that excerpt seems to say otherwise.

Flying an old bird.

I actually have most of the single engine Cessna AMMs and IPCs on a flash drive.  I though about looking up the hydraulic and landing gear system on a 210, just have to know the year/serial #.     But I decided to be lazy instead. 

I'm sure Tupac and his mechanic will figure it out. 

[Golfer]

210s come either/or depending on their year as you know. I don't remember the cutoff but I think it's 70-something where the switchover from engine driven to electric power pack occurred. Based on the snippet from the POH he posted it seems like an older airplane with an engine driven pump. I don't believe I ever flew one of those but it makes more sense for a fluid leak forward of the firewall.