Learning Experiences

Airsick Airmanship
We all joke about passengers getting sick in the plane, but what does this risk truly mean in terms of safety and airmanship? I just learned a valuable lesson about both on a recent flight with another pilot.

I was demonstrating high-performance maneuvers associated with single-pilot aerial photography (my hobby-business, which pays for my flying) to him when I realized that the relaxed conversation had evaporated. We had just completed a steep-bank orbit around the photo subject and I was returning in a moderate steep turn back to the site to make sure I had not missed anything. I did not think too much about the lapsed conversation, but continued with…

Sage Experience
I didnt become a pilot until 1987; the man who gave me my check ride then was in the left seat 15 years earlier, in 1972, when the story Im about to tell occurred.

We were in his Cessna 210. His wife and two kids were aboard, and a college friend tagged along on the trip from Gunnison, Colo., to San Jose, Calif. They were off to a wedding, he was to meet a girlfriend and I was going to Eugene by airline.

Gunnison was IFR, so we circled to 16,000 feet to get clear. Off to the west, we hit more overcast and followed railroad tracks to Price, Utah, to wait out the weather.

Once off the ground again, I recall breaking through a partial overcast with a mou…

Driven To Distraction
We have all heard stories of little things leading to big tragedies. Consider Challenger, a terrible tragedy caused by a defective O-ring. Then there was Eastern Airlines Flight 401, a Lockheed L-1011 that crashed in the Florida Everglades on December 29, 1972, because someone nudged the autopilot disconnect but didnt notice it while working on a failed nosegear indicator light. There are many-too many-other examples The point is, accidents and incidents can start from very simple events that simply snowball out of control. Heres the reason I began thinking about the chain of events.

A few months ago, I flew a 160-nm VFR trip in my Cherokee 140; not…

Chain of Events
On a cold, clear night a few years ago, I convinced myself that I needed to re-establish my night currency so I could carry passengers after the sun goes down. In retrospect, I guess I really wanted to prove that I could fly by myself at night. Kidding myself was the first of several stupid mistakes I made.

One of the things I did that night was smart-I arrived at the airport before dark to preflight the airplane I had scheduled. At the time, it was the only plane operated by the FBO with which I was familiar.

After darkness fell, I walked out to it, climbed in and ran the checklist. Soon, the engine was idling and I was copying the ATIS, preparing my ini…

Changing Weather
After a beautiful morning of flying in a 300-hp Cessna 182 from Steamboat Springs, Colo. (SBS), to Telluride and back, my flying buddy and I decided to have breakfast at a local restaurant then return to our home base of Fort Collins, Colo. It had been an incredibly smooth and uneventful flight. The aspens were already turning their fall colors despite it still being late August.

After breakfast, we proceeded back to SBS, pre-flighted and observed some ominous-looking clouds coming from the southwest. The skies over SBS and eastward looked very clear and promising and a call for a weather briefing indicated that our 40-minute flight over the mountains to For…

A Touchy Subject
About a year ago I was practicing solo landings in preparation for my FAA checkride to become a new private pilot. I was at a familiar untowered airport that gets busy and on this particular day it was exactly that. I announced my intent to complete a touch and go, closed pattern and received a reply from the plane behind me that he had me in sight and would land on the same runway.

I approached the runway with 30 degrees flaps and made a nice touch down. Carb heat off, full throttle, I hastened to take off and not delay anyone behind me.

To my surprise, the aircraft (a Cessna 172) sprang into flight at about 40 knots, not a safe speed. I forced the n…

Instead of those pesky mechanics screwing up, it was a pilot rushing through a checklist and allowing himself to get distracted.

The Stormscope and weather radar are good support instruments and should be used only to verify what you already know visually.

Running Out of Gas
Unfortunately, running out of fuel is still not an uncommon cause of private aircraft mishaps. I was flying home from a relaxing two-hour flight with about 30 minutes of fuel left as my home field came into view. When I was five minutes from the grass strip, my engine suddenly quit very abruptly, as if it had run out of fuel-it had. The first thing I did (correctly) was to establish the best glide angle and head straight for the airstrip. When I was less than a mile from the runway (downwind, as it turns out) and 2000 feet high, I started my descent. This was the wrong thing to do. I made a near-perfect power-off glide right down to the ground, 10 feet short of…

On final after the go-around, I felt I was a little high and pulled off some more power. This is where things got away from me.