I Learned About Flying From That: It Couldn’t Happen to Me

Bob Tymczyszyn

Tuesday, July 02, 2013 at 10:12 PM ET

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Key Takeaways:

An extremely experienced pilot narrowly avoided crashing his antique 1931 Buhl Bull Pup "flying bathtub" during a public landing, despite his decades of flight experience in various aircraft.
He attributed the near-disaster to complacency, insufficient recent flight time in the specific aircraft, and conflicting muscle memory developed from recent helicopter training.
The incident served as a potent lesson, even for seasoned aviators, emphasizing the critical importance of respecting an aircraft's unique characteristics, avoiding complacency, and ensuring adequate recency and preparation before every flight.

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My family has owned a 1931 Buhl Bull Pup single-place, open-cockpit “flying bathtub” since 1969. I was 16 when I won the youngest-pilot award at Merced’s Antique Fly-In in 1970.

I’ve been flying this little antique airplane all my life. A few weekends ago, I came as close as you can to rolling it (and myself) up into a ball right in front of about 2,000 people (and 2,000 cameras) at the FlaBob Flying Circus — as close as you can come, that is, without finally doing so. The little Buhl, thankfully, is unscathed. Not so my ego.