Michal: simple but good, couldn’t you have taught me that a week ago when i actually lost my pen?
At the threshold, chechking “controls free and correct” put your left thumb up, turn the will (or move the stick) to the left and the thumb is pointing to the aileron that should go UPWARDS … then turn right and the thumb will again point to the aileron that goes up.
Carrying only one key for the plane, and leaving it in the luggage door until all preflight checks are finished.
For airplane owners:
Open one of he inspection covers and tape a second ignition key to the inside of the cover. (you can open the doors of your spam can with about every fifth airplane key)
Cirrus:
Take only the door key with you and attach the ignitiom key to the ring of the safety pin of the CAPS handle. This way you cannot forget to pull out the safety pin for the parachute
When flying IFR in ADF equipped airplanes with old fashioned rotating heading card/scales on the ADF clock, it has become second nature for me to use the scale to show any assigned altitude/level. I.e. when cleared FL 70 I set the scale to show 070 degrees at the top. The workload is very low and there is no ambiguety. Much quicker than to write it down, and the number is right in front of me to see.
huv wrote:
use the scale to show any assigned altitude/level
interesting idea… I use the ring of the stopwatch for that
Useful trick for adding oil without a funnel:
Oddly enough I discovered that one independently… it’s really good!
But the other day somebody showed me another equally good one. Do you know why the oil bottle nozzle is offset to one side
rather than being in the middle, like this
If you pour it with the nozzle uppermost, you get a much better angle on the bottle
than if you pour it with the nozzle at the bottom
because the latter method results in a lot of oil running down the outside of the bottle – because the oil starts to come out much earlier as the bottle is tipped.
… the next one somebody could have shown me earlier, that’s a GREAT trick, I love it. Will try and film that one too …
Carrying only one key for the plane, and leaving it in the luggage door until all preflight checks are finished.
But please do so only with aircraft that need the same key for the ignition. (A colleague of ours used a similar “trick” but forgot the key in the baggage door earlier this year. The airstream ripped the little plastic tag off the key which went through the engine causing over 30.000 Euros of damage to the fan and stator blades. Plus one week of ground time for the aircraft. In every other company this guy would have been fired on the spot.)
And a little trick of mine, talking of keys: when going flying, only ever have one key with you. I learned this trick the hard way when once my car key slipped out of my pocket and disappeared under the seat of a Cessna 421. It took a mechanic over two hours to remove the seat and some floor panels and extract the key from between the control cables. How does it work: I leave my house key in the car, the car key in our hangar office, the hangar key in the aircraft and when I leave the aircraft, e.g. to go to the hotel, I only take the aircraft key with me. Or even better: Leave it with the handling agent.
