Taxiing to the hold with a cup of coffee on the wing root….
Before my IR in Australia flying through the mountains west of Sydney with my wife and baby in lowish cloud. Was terrified. That is when i got my IR.
On one of my first glider cross country flights I thought that the clouds looked so good that the next thermal needed to be at least as good as the (very strong) previous one and flew at the corresponding high speeds. When I finally got more conservative it was too late and I had to land in very difficult terrain, choosing a sloped field of about 400ft length. It took about 450ft to get stopped but there was no ditch or anything at the end of the field and I got away with no damage.
Pressing on in bad weather twice in 25 years, both times with forecast CAVOK. The first occasion I still don´t understand, I´ve never seen the phenomenon again. The second time I ended up flying a low level holding at a relatively good spot for 40 minutes, the only alternative being a controlled off-airport landing.
Then I thought taking off on a very long runway with just a very, very, very little amount of frost on the tailplane would work. It didn´t, could not get the tail up. Fortunately I was clever enought to reject the take-off in time instead of continuing in disbelief of what was happening.
Ignoring the density altitude on my home airfield on a very hot day was not too clever too, but fortunately the trees behind the runway had not grown too much.
So you couldn’t climb because of clearance? I’ve flown a da40ng to much higher than that in a hot summer day and it still climbed really well at altitude
Back in 2010, after 4 days of flying across the Atlantic from Florida with my ferry pilot and my Saratoga, we landed in Chambéry. The day after I had to fly alone to Lausanne.
No big deal, but I was somewhat scared since I had a low time on that type of aircraft (turbo), and I was more tired than ever after that incredible week.
The flight was VFR, wonderful weather conditions, I was so happy to finally land and have my family to greet me at last.
Abeam Evian, I tune Lausanne ATIS to get the active rwy which was 36, then the airport AFIS freq. and announce myself coming in for landing via the regular Sierra sector…
No one on the frequency, nor in my sight, I announce leaving South sector for final, and prepare the aircraft for landing when suddenly I see a piper cub right in front of me at almost 1NM which had just taken off from the opposite runway 18…
Right break turn, go around and calling myself the stupidest a******* or even worst for having done this…
I look at the radio, and found that I had tuned a wrong freq. 122.3 instead of 123.2, and to my despair, the ATIS info (and runway) had changed few seconds after I listened to it…
I landed successfully, and excused myself to the C desk. Lesson learned, i now know what fatigue can cause.
Stopping on an active runway, waiting for “vacate” instructions. Caused some trouble at EDDH.
At the time, I wasn’t too used to flying into busy controlled airports and whenever I had done it before, I received “vacate via B” or similar instructions. This time, the controller was too busy and I didn’t “dare” to pick my own taxi way because I didn’t want to interrupt the ground traffic flow. Flawed thinking, I know.
Still, there’s two lessons here IMHO:
My Familiarisation Flight on a very very old PA 30.
3 instructors on board (myself included): at landing gear down selection we heard the noise, we felt the drag and I checked the mirror. All good.
I noticed that the green lights were very dim (at least for my taste but, I had no idea if that was the norm) but did not say a word.
During the flare, at idle power selection the gear horn came on…me and the other instructor on the right seat we slammed the power levers….
Turned out that the main gear did not extend correctly…took us an hour to do a manual gear extension. In the end we landed safely.
Lesson learned…if it feels stinky it is probably stinky…
Not tightening enough the oil cap after a quick oil check during preflight.
5 minutes after take-off, oil trails started to appear on the lower-right side of the canopy.
Landed back with very little spill.
My biggest mistake was flight into icing with DA40. I checked the weather only with Ogimet, which didn’t show the front on planned route. Front moved faster than GFS predicted and surprised me over my destination.
Other minor mistakes:
- not tightening the fuel cap on Extra. Took off and watched it unscrew from vibration. Turned back and landed in time.
- planned too little fuel for a short VFR flight with Extra. It was longer due to active military zones. Landed with less fuel than I’d like to publicly admit.
- cycled gear down/up/down very quickly on the TBM. This gave a “gear unsafe” light which didn’t want to go away. Had to do emergency gear extension, fly over tower to check gear down and land with firemen waiting. Embarrassing.
Maybe not my biggest mistake, but surely my most embarrassing one:
I was a new PPL (≈50 hr TT) training for the night VFR rating. I was to do a solo cross-country to another airport in a Cessna 172. My instructor was an airline pilot and got the bright idea that I could make my flight at the same time that he was flying in his airliner to the same airport. Once there, we would do a couple of ILSes together and then we would both head home again in our respective aircraft. He was going to monitor my flight using the second radio of his aircraft. I was young, enthusiastic and still had a slightly naïve trust in my instructors so I happily agreed to that arrangement!
Everything went smoothly until the lift-off. As soon as the wheels were off the ground there was a loud BANG in the aircraft. This was shortly followed by another BANG and then yet another. The aircraft handled normally, so I announced that I would return immediately for a landing. My instructor later told me that he almost got a heart attack, sitting up in the air and not being able to do anything — not even help me if I should crash.
After landing, I got out and examined the aircraft. I found the left fuel cap loose and hanging in the chain that secured it to the wing. Once airborne it would dangle in the airstream and repeatedly hit the wing surface. Of course, in a C172 the wing root is just by your head so it is like having your ear next to a giant drum!
I secured the fuel cap and took off again. The rest of the exercise went smoothly…
I wrote before about getting iced in a warm front with my DA40. Now I have a new one, attempting to land at Monchengladbach EDDL in a cold front with TBM. Long story short, I got shaken like never before and ran away in panic. Pics from the time:
