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John Clark ATP, CFI FAAST Team Representative EAA Flight Advisor RV8 N18U "Sunshine" KSBA |
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Philip,
This is a rule at work that I use with my own personal flying. Once the flight is cancelled (or a NOGO is reached) for any reason, It is not flown no matter how bad I wanted to fly. ORM (operational risk management) wise the brain has a tough time re-engaging on that task. Unless, the process is started from the beginning and all those ?routines? are re-established. Thanks for sharing your experience. I have also done similar things. One of my least favorites was putting my wife?s bran new ipad on the wing, closing the canopy, starting, taking off, landed about 30 miles away to then figure out the ipad was not inside the plane. At least I did not leave my wife. |
I had to modify my pre-start checklist to include "towbar, chocks & tiedowns removed" at the top. Dont ask.
erich |
both of my close friends have taken off with tow bar engaged. 1 damaged, one not. they were both CFI ratings.
I'll tell my quick dumb one that coulda been bad and demonstrates the usefulness of standardized controls- my carb heat and throttle are the same type of lever on my varieze (sold) I was on final and went to add more throttle and nothing happened. thought I had lost my engine! kept pumping it, and finally realized I was moving the carb heat lever not the throttle. luckly caught it before anything bad happened. sometimes you gotta just take a deep breath and engage the brain as some have said. |
Check List
IMSAFE works for me - not only when about to fly but before any task that involves risk - like operating any kind of equipment, driving, etc.
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Being in a Hurry
Once I was headed on a day trip for work and called my brother to see if he wanted to tag along. He's a PPL also. He hurried over to the airport where I had the plane running and waiting. Off we went... Things ran long and we didn't return until 10:00 at night. He had parked his truck in front of the hanger but couldn't find his keys when we returned. We searched the airplane and truck several times. Nothing. After an hour we decide to just push the truck out of the way so we could put the airplane away and go home. Had to climb under the truck to disconnect the shifter to get it out of park. Luckily the wheels were straight so I open the door and start pushing..... hey wait a sec.... There is a note on the windshield....
"Left your truck running. It was almost out of gas. Keys in the FBO". We have no idea how long it took someone to realize it was left running. Imagine having to go to the office at the FBO and ask for the keys back..... "hey I'm the guy that left his truck running all day. Can I have my key back please?" Maybe I should add that to my preflight checklist.... |
I've often heard pilots proclaim that they say out loud what they're touching with each checklist item. I've never seen the need for such foolishness.
Until last weekend. :eek: I took Smokey up for a quickie in the area on Saturday and wrung out some stiffness from both of us. As I set up for a routine landing, I noticed that there were a few planes at the clubhouse ramp, with their pilots and passengers just waiting to grade my landing. I decided to use the parallel grass runway (landing on grass is always smoother-looking than the unforgiving pavement) and made a delicate, picture-perfect landing. If grass could squeak, it would have. I decided to avoid taxiing by the crowd due to time constraints, despite my ego needing a good stroking. A nice taxi with a pilot wave to the adoring crowd would have felt good, I'm sure. I stowed the ego and taxied across the pavement on the other grass runway toward my hangar. As soon as I cleared the active runway, I did what I always do -- I raised the flaps and turned off lights and fuel pump. I know better than to do that on an active runway (not that I'd do something stupid.) I had no more cleared the active and raised the flaps and the engine quit! I tried in vain to restart the engine, knowing that by now the assembled crowd of adoring fans on the ramp were wondering why my engine died. "Bet the idiot ran out of gas," they were probably opining. "Good thing he made it to the airport. Moron." After a couple of tries (the fuel pump was still on, naturally), I decided that I needed to treat it like a flooded engine. Still no go. Then I saw why the engine had quit. Instead of flipping off the switches for the taxi and landing lights, I had flipped the switches for the IGNITION! They're not even on the same panel. Talk about a brain fart. Sheesh ... :rolleyes: Needless to say, as soon as I flipped the mag switch back on and cranked the engine, it started immediately. I'm just glad that I didn't pull that stunt in front of the assembled crowd of adoring fans. I'd have never heard the end of it! :D |
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