Search Results for: Cessna 172

About 30 minutes into these touch and goes, one requested a stop and go. I could not have five aircraft doing touch and goes with one doing a stop and go; it would mess up the pattern and Id be making student pilots do a lot they didnt need to. So, I come back with, Unable. I have five of yall. He came back with, Well we need to do stop and goes for training. I thought about putting that one airplane on the other runway, but I had started to have a line of departures and arrivals. Unable, I repeated. I thought the matter was closed, as it should have been.

At FL400, the autopilot started porpoising and was turned off. Afterward, the aircraft would not trim properly. The crew diverted; it was difficult to keep it pitched down while descending. During the final phase of flight, the yoke was very difficult to input pitch changes, but was okay in the roll axis. After landing, troubleshooting duplicated the problem. Elevator servo (p/n 4006719914) was replaced with serviceable unit.

According to the pilot, he was delayed about 10 minutes by traffic before completing the engine run-up and takeoff roll with no anomalies noted. After the pilot lifted off and retracted the landing gear, the engine stopped producing power about 300 feet above the runway. There was no time to perform remedial actions to restore power, so the pilot lowered the landing gear and touched down on the remaining runway. The airplane went off the departure end of the runway, down an embankment and across a road before coming to rest upright 384 feet beyond the runways departure end in low brush.

Following a scheduled oil and filter change, the technician noted lower-than-normal oil pressure at idle. The new filter (p/n CH48110-1) was replaced and oil pressure indication was normal. Examination of the replaced filter noted some paint chips had been removed in the flange area. The submitter suspects that a paint chip could have contaminated the filter, causing it to go into bypass. These filters are packaged in cardboard boxes. There was no damage noted to the box containing the filter.

I used up my entire allotment of blunders for the year in our July issue, where 1) I incorrectly referred to a Robertson STOL conversion as Robinson; 2) I said that the small forward lifting surfaces on the Robertson Wren 460 (a modified Cessna 182) were nicknamed “Wren’s teeth,” when in fact that name applied […]

If there were some way I could make a series of trips back in time to change things, one of the stops on my itinerary would be to somehow infiltrate the small cadre of early pilots and airplane designers to convince them to use a word other than stall to describe what happens when a wing exceeds its critical angle of attack. The word obviously has numerous other applications, and using it for this purpose has confounded student pilots and television news anchors ever since. That said, Im not sure what should replace it, and remain open to suggestions.

This sounds like malpractice on the part of his FBO and possibly flight instructor. How can a student pilot in primary training with about 20 hours get checked out in a different aircraft with that little training? I remember that being approved for solo flight in my FBOs 172 was a big deal, like it is for most students: you do some landings with the instructor, then he or she gets out and tells you to do it yourself while observing from the ground, something that apparently didnt occur in this case since the instructor was with him for that sole hour of dual. Im even wondering how the students insurance company would have covered him (or if he was covered at all…).

Writing last month’s Aftermath column about a fatal accident that resulted from the pilot’s mishandling of a balked landing, I reflected that I had never assessed the behavior of my own airplane in that maneuver. As I have said before, my idea of flight testing is to take trips and wait for something strange to […]

As the oft-paraphrased aphorism goes, all is well when the ties that bind us are stronger than the stresses that can separate us. The same goes for parking an aircraft. When we properly secure it after a flight, its reasonable to expect itll be there when we return. Once we release the ties that bind it, our aircraft will again provide us with reliable transportation. Most of the time, that is how it works. Other times, just a little inattention and improper securing of the aircraft-or improperly reversing the process during the preflight inspection-can and does lead to accidents.

“You OK, Honey?” I asked immediately after the 172 had taken a respectable shot of turbulence. The Cessna responded with a quick 30-degree roll to the right before I could correct. After a second or two of silence, my wife replied over the intercom, “Yeah, I’m fine.” Even though she was seated directly behind me, […]