Stupid mistakes and omissions I've made while flying

[Paul Salmon, MD]

After reading Birdy's post concerning his incident where the ground failed to maintain the proper distance from his machine, it occurred to me that people learn from each others mistakes. So I decided to discuss some of my "less than brilliant" moments in aviation. I hope that others learn from my mistakes and contribute some of their own experiences. 1. Check your gas caps. I have had refuelers either leave the cap off, or not tighten it up. This little development will drain all the fuel out of the tank in a very small amount of time. My 182 cessna has long range tanks (75 gallons usable - burns about 12.5 per hour= damn near 6 hours of fuel) however, I was about 1 1/2 hours into a 2 hour cross country when I noticed my right tank fuel gauge was indicating "Empty". My first thought "damn gauge must be bad" But just in case, I reviewed available airports along the remainder of my route and finished out the flight. When I arrived at my destination, I learned that the cap was still there thanks to a keeper chain but it had indeed been left off. Now when someone refuels my aircraft, I insist on being able to check the caps myself. Don't rely on the lineman to get it right. 2. Was flying my gyro from Columbus, OH back to Cape Girardeau, MO. I had a 5 Gallon fuel can with 93 octane secured in the rear seat. I brought it with me just in case I was unable to get MOgas as planned. I arrived at a small airport in Eastern Indiana where I had planned on obtaining gas and found a note on the door that said "Gone on a flight, be back in a couple of hours". So I put the 5 gallons that I had in the can into my tank, secured the now empty can back into the rear seat and departed for Bloomington, IN. I figured I would get enough fuel to make it to my next stop where MOgas was available. About halfway to Bloomington I noticed a truck stop that had a huge grass field next to it, I figured I would give it a look to see if I could land there to obtain fuel. I throttled back and started a descent, when I tried to pull the stick aft to slow down to get a better look, IT WOULDN'T MOVE AFT. It seems the gas can had pivot around the seatbelt and wedged itself against the stick!! I immediately applied full throttle and was relieved that I had enough aft stick travel to actually gain altitude. I diverted to an airport approximately 10 miles to the east. On the way to the airport I adjusted the throttle settings to figure out what rpm would maintain altitude. I also tried in vain to reach the gas can and move it but could not reach it. Upon arriving to the field, I set up a long final approach with a slow descent. I was forced to use the throttle for altitude control and subsequently performed a run-on landing at about 55-60 mph IAS. After arriving at the FBO, I gave the lineman the gas can and told him he was the "proud owner of a new gas can." Since then I don't fly with a gas can in the back seat anymore. 3. One night I was flying my gyro to work (47 nm trip each way) I fly over the Interstate at night for about 40 of the 47 miles. This limits the amount of time that I am over "less than optimal" landscape. If I lose an engine my game plan is to land in the grass between the lanes of the interstate. (An EMS helo I flew on did just that one night) Before departing on the flight, I refueled the aircraft (Magni M-16). I didn't notice that I had spilled a small amount of fuel during refueling that ran down into the body of the aircraft. The filler cap is just behing the rear seat. The fuel was located in the very rear section of the fiberglass body. When you are on the ground the aircraft remains level so the fuel didn't run forward. However after departing the field and climbing to an altitude of 3500 ft. ( I like altitude at night, it gives you more options if you lose the powerplant) I then leveled off, at that point the nose of the aircraft assumes a slightly down position which allowed the fuel to make it's way forward to the front of the cabin. I noticed it when I moved my legs around to stretch them and discovered a slippery substance on the floorboard of the cabin. I reach my hand down to see what it was and then smell my hand. To my suprise it was GASOLINE. Now what to do? I descended to 800 ft MSL.(my self assigned minimum safe altitude that clears all obstructions along the route) I figured if it lit off I wanted to be able to get on the ground as fast as possible. The thought of making an emergency landing on the Interstate at night didn't seem hellaciously appealing either. So I turned off the strobes,the power unit of which by the way sits right under where the filler cap is located. And waited for the gas to evaporate, which usually occurs over seconds, but this night it seemed to be magical gas with the slowest evaporation rate ever seen!!! Luckily the gas finally evaporated before it found an ignition source. When I refuel at night now I push the aircraft back over to my LIGHTED hangar, and dont rely on using a flashlight to inspect things. 4. Don't let the lineman put oil in your aircraft, I was on a cross-country flight in a Cessna after having oil added in missouri, I stopped in for fuel in southern indiana and noticed that the entire left side of the aircraft had oil down it. You guessed it, they left the cap off or loosely put it on and it came off. This resulted in about 1 1/2 quarts of oil lost to the great blue yonder. Once againg a keeper chain on the cap prevented the loss of the cap. I filled it up with oil and replaced the cap. 5. I was flying a PT-19 (open cockpit tandem taildragger) to St. Louis from Cape Girardeau, MO. To start the aircraft requires one person in the front seat (ME) and another person to crank the hand crank on the side of the engine. The airplane was particularly hard to start and this took quite sometime. Finally, it came to life, the other passenger jumped in and we departed the airfield, after running the preflight checklist, etc. What I hadn't noticed, and what was not on the checklist was seatbelts! You guessed it again, I hadn't secured my seatbelt. I discovered this when we encountered some relatively moderate turbulence, but enough to raise me off the seat an inch or so. I think I left my fingernail marks on the stick from the deathgrip I had on it. Luckily I was able to secure my belt before our dual flight turned into a solo one. I am sure I made other dumb mistakes in the past, these are the ones that I could recall quickly. Let's hear from the rest of you!!!!

[dragonflyerthom]

Well Doc

I think you are the only one this has ever happened to.

No not really.. Left the inspection door open once. I still wonder where that thing went to. I figure it is somewhere between St Pete and Lakeland Florida.

lol


Thom

[bones]

Townsville Nth qld is one of the biggest bases in Oz for the black Hawke helios in the Army/Air Force, and they regularly fly over the town, one of the major shopping centres in town called a plumber to find i leak in the roof after a rain storm, what he found was a 40 shot fully loaded magazine for ak 47(i think it was) had punched a hole fair through the roof, so now the Hawkes are not allowed to fly over the town with side doors open..

[Hognose]

Helicopters. I was at SOT (which evolved from Blue Light if anybody cares what that was) and I had a little instamatic camera. We weren't really supposed to take pictures, but this was a pretty rare chance to play in the copters... so there we are at about 1100 AGL enroute to a target. We were gonna kick out ropes and rappel down, do the target, and then clip our STABO harnesses into the ropes and get hauled off about ninety feet below the chopper.

So I leaned out of the chopper to take a picture and dropped the camera. I didn't even think about it but coiled to jump and grab the camera.. when a buddy grabbed my harness... I would have shot down that rappelling rope to the end and off and would have made a Wile E. Coyote dust puff in the compound's scrubland.

And I didn't even have an "Oh, No!" sign to hold up.

I've had moments of bozosity like that in airplanes too. There's a reason that the line guys fly with crews, and that the military takes a plane that civilians fly single-pilot, and makes it a two-man bird. (Those guys prang less than us... we should be paying attention to the things they do differently).

Most oversights are no big deal.

TWR: "Contact approach 124.4, good day."
Me (confidently): "Twenny-four four, 98X g'day."
pause
Me: "Boston Approach, 96X is with you at 2,000 climbing to sixty-five, VFR Laconia."
TWR: "96X, change frequency 124.4 FIRST, then call approach."

Er... yeah. I knew that.

Ever catch yourself doing a checklist item and it was already done... cause you never changed it at the last checklist? I've done that. I've taken off in single engine planes with the engine leaned (not due to altitude; one mile out Runway 9 is the briny Atlantic). I've also gone to turn on a landing light and been mortified to discover that I've had it on for the last four hours (d'oh!). I haven't run a fuel booster pump that long. Almost that long.

I've never committed a landing gear violation in the airplane. I have done it in a simulator... after, of course, being introduced as "the only guy who figured out the IMC spin the first time and didn't get a secondary spin." I blasted off in a military L39 full-motion sim and the instructor waited for me to notice I'd never cleaned up the plane. D'oh!

I generally have good checklist discipline, so these occurences really bug me. No harm was done, but you can certainly kill yourself and passengers (and any unfortunates underneath) with a single missed checklist item. Even airline crews have done it.

I've seen other pilots do resoundingly dumb things in this vein (did you know you CAN take off with full flaps in a 152, if you have the two-mile-plus runway at Pease?) but I want to keep this focused on True Confessions, as Paul started it.

What bends aircraft and kills their occupants is usually not a lack of stick and rudder skills. Instead, it's bad judgment, or simple oversight/carelessness, almost all the time. Some people have recurrently bad judgment, and their mishap is a matter of "when" not "if"; my preference is not to share a cockpit with those dudes. But an awful lot of accidents happen when a good pilot makes a bad decision or an uncharacteristic mistake.

"Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment." and another aphorism to go with that: "Experience is a mischievous teacher; it administers the test before the lesson."

cheers

-=K=-

[PW_Plack]

Kevin, a C172 will also take off with full flaps, and reasonably short, but it won't leave ground effect if near gross.

I flew my daughter and her husband to dinner. While pre-flighting for the flight home, I lowered the flaps to check, and the excitement of the social occasion caused me to forget to put them up after I started the engine.

The takeoff was so smooth, it was hard to tell exactly when the plane left the runway, but then it just hung at 10 feet. Fortunately, I realized what had happened a couple hundred feet down the runway, and gradually raised them and climbed out.

I've learned how to avoid that one happening again. Instead of trying to go through the checklist while passengers talk to each other and to me, I have my right seat read the checklist. Makes them feel more involved, and keeps me focused!

[gyroplanes]

Happily heading to a vacation in Wisconsin's Northwoods and very happy to be above a solid overcast, we were smoothly purring along in a rented Cessna Cardinal RG, when the radio squelch was broken.

I was about to be handed off from Chicago center to Green Bay center, the controller called with the frequency and altimeter and approved the freq change.

I responded in the usual fashion and asked if my buddy, Chris, was working east-low today (I had just been hired as a controller trainee at Chicago ARTCC and Chris was a veteran ATC controller and gyro bud)
he replied that Chris was just coming on duty and that he'd tell him "Hello" for me.

After some switch flipping I called: "Green Bay Center, Cessna 52949 with you level at 6,000"

The reply "I'll also tell Chris you forgot to change the frequency"

[mskup]

while doing a cross-country i did the same thing as PWBlack did. took off with full flaps. My saving grace was that it was a 172sp with 180hp in front of me and i was solo. It went up like an elevator. Cleaned it up and circled flaps on my checklist.

[Chopper Reid]

A bloke I know flew down to Adelaide to pick his daughter up from school holidays, apparently water melons were on special in town so he grabbed a couple and put in the baggage compartment, on climb out over Adelaide suburbs, he hit a bit of an updaraft and to his horror, the baggage door came open, he asked his daugter to climb back to see what had 'disappered thinking a bag or two might have evacuated but the bags were there but not the 2 watermelons !!

Would have been interesting to see the imact they made !!

[Chopper Reid]

I only had probably 60 or so FW hours up, had a fresh unrestricted licence, was flying around here with a mate in a old Piper 180 horse 1969 model when another mate of mine heard us flying around and asked if we could 'pick him up', hadnt landed there before but said a C 172 had landed there a year or so ago so we had a look, it was a one way strip as there was a sand hill 20 ft high one end and it had a 40 ft pine tree on top of that, should have aborted any attemp to land rright there and then but if a C172 got in and out of there, so could I !!
The other end of the strip was about 50 yards wide haveing been cleared of mallee scrub, anyway, it was tight but landed, hopped out and the strip looked worse than it had from the air but hey, the C172 had got out of here, stepped out the strip and it seemed okay, the three of us got in and I got back as far as possible, put ont he brakes and run it up to full throttle before letting go the brakes, acceleration seemed slow and by the time 60 knots came up, we were a long long way down the strip, too late to abort takeoff now so I pulled the nose up, the 180 horses were working hard and the ASI only climbed to about 65 knots and there it sat, I was unable to let the nose down to gain airspeed, we were so slowly gaining altitude but by now we were in the cleared section of the strip and the tops of the trees were still higher than us, the end of the cleared section was coming up fast, I eased just a little more pressure on the controll and we cleared to the tops of the trees by feet, I was able to relax the pressure on the nose and the airspeed strted to gain ever so slowly, 80 knots appeared and I started to breathe....again, my mate sitting alongside of me was doubled up with his head on his knees......he had faith in me didnt he ??:o my mate other mate in the back was silent...I guess we had been flying for 10 minutes before anyone spoke and I think it was me telling the owner of "the strip: that I would land at home and drive him back to his station, he didnt argue.

Took probably six months of nightmares reliving that takeoff to stop before I slept soundly.
I have never forgotten just how close I was to killing my two best mates.