Your biggest ever mistake

I don’t know how much they knew about carbon monoxide then so it wouldn’t surprise me if they were. I’d rather take my chances with castor oil.

kwlf wrote:

take my chances with castor oil

Ricin or diarrhoea?

Took off from Muenster, heading VFR towards Cambridge, my planned routing would be an early right turn towards a VRP, climbing to 4500 feet. However I was asked to continue on runway track and did so, nor realising that this meant that I would be staying longer in the CTR and eventually entering Class D (not CTR) as I climbed past 2500 feet. At 3200 feet I realised my mistake, just as the controller was reminding me of the Delta Airspace….. As others have said, departure briefing is just as important as an arrival briefing.

My biggest mistakes was deciding to take my mother up for a flight on a very hot August day in Madrid, Spain. With temperatures in the high 30s if not reaching 40C. On the holding point while doing the power check I received a warning from the tower, “be advised moderate thermal turbulence is expected at low altitudes”.

Seconds after take-off the aircraft started to move around with a couple quite heavy “bumps”. Mother was terrified. Had planned a longer navigation flight but when I looked right at her pale face I asked, “are you okay to continue?” and in a trembling, scared voice she replied “if must be”. So I told the tower I had a sick passenger and they let me cut short in front of the others to bring it down.

I doubt my mother will ever want to fly with me again, sadly.

There have been some small mishaps over the years. Take off with door/window open (Pawnee). Take off with cowling open (Pawnee, and more scary than the door open). Take off without tank lid. Take off with no ASI. Landing at a few fields with the wrong frequency on the radio (and being irritated why no one else use the radio properly)

Take off when the EFIS was set to “glider mode” by the previous pilot who was a glider pilot first, tow pilot second. ASI in km/h instead of knots, alt in m QFE instead of feet QNH. It was really confusing for a while, not the speed because there was a backup steam gauge that I mostly used in any case, but the alt, and the seemingly random numbers on the EFIS.

Take off with not enough fuel, and the inevitable happening. Not exactly my fault per se, but as PIC on a single seater… (Pawnee)

Entering class C without clearance (despite FIS lead me to mistake, but nevertheless my responsibility).

Bathman wrote:

Not one of mine but I filled up a C150 and it took 96 liters to fill it. It only holds 98.

I flew a 152 on a 2 week cross country in a land far, far away after the promised 172 failed to materialise at the last moment. All my planning was for the 172 and the 152’s lower speed and much shorter range took a bit of getting used to. Still, it was a superb ride and the lack of instruments (not even a VOR) was compensated for by Skydemon, of which I was possibly the first user in that country.

As I progressed on one long leg, a large airport came by and the controller actually said “would you like to land here?” or words to that effect. I told him no I would continue to my planned destination, but even as I said that the headwind strengthened. Added to which, a little scenic diversion added to the flight time and the ETA for my destination started to move away… by the time I got over the euphoria of the scenery, I’m still plugging into the headwind only 25 miles upwind of the friendly airport. My destination, not much further, might as well have been on the Moon in that wind.

The decision was obvious, and round I went. The controller seemed delighted when I requested landing after all. Even at 140 kts groundspeed the direct routing seemed to take forever as the wind slackened and then reversed and I was never more glad than when the wheels touched the tarmac. At least it was a straight in. Later, I refuelled carefully, not putting more than a plausible amount of fuel in the tanks such that my FBO would not notice how little reserve I had left when he got the invoice. Certainly less than 30 mins. I’ve never done that before, or since, or ever again!

(In my original planning, I omitted a fuel stop at the friendly airfield because it looked on the chart like a big, threatening sort of place, which they do have with a vengeance in that country. If the controller had not been so friendly on the radio, I might have delayed my turnback decision even later…).

LeSving wrote:

Take off with cowling open (Pawnee, and more scary than the door open)

This happened to me now so long ago that I am just starting to be able to tell about it without getting that sick feeling. Before takeoff, I had the cowl off to inspect something, and when putting it back on, my passenger helped me fasten it. I know what you think of that, but he did it right while I must have been to busy overseeing that he did it right, so the screws I fastened at the back of the cowl were not done right.

Climbing at full power about a minute after takeoff, the back of the cowl spectacularly popped up about 5 centimetres. Trying not to imagine what would happen if it tore loose, blew back and hit the tail, I immediately reduced power, turned back and planned an approach and landing that would not require much power, to minimise the slipstream. It ended well and there was no damage.

I experienced an open engine cowl on a night x/country Biggin to Southend at the very beginning of my night training. It was an AA5B and one half of the split cowl was flapping in the slipstream. Southend turned out the fire trucks which really concentrated the mind on final with all those blue flashing lights.