I like to pride myself on survival skills and fast decision making. Being a former skydiver with over 1000 jumps, AFF jumpmaster, and tandem-master, many people have put their lives in my hands and have come back safely. Today I made some decisions that I'm not too proud of.
I had flown up to the Hilltop Lakes Fly-in and enjoyed the BBQ and RV talk. I had several people compliment me on my -8 and that always feels good. After a while people started leaving and I decided it was time to go. I did a good pre-flight and pulled the plane clear of the line of planes so I wouldn't blast anyone as I started to taxi. I had flown up on the right tank so switched to the left. Started up and taxied about 50 feet to the runway. One plane was rolling for take-off as I got to the edge of the runway and then another took off. I was then called "yellow RV, position and hold".
I did a quick run-up and was cleared to depart. I rolled the throttle forward like normal and the A/C accelerated as I would expect. I pushed forward on the stick and the tail came up. About 5 seconds later, the engine started stumbling. It was very rough and I was totally caught off guard. I knew I should abort but couldn't make the decision. After several more seconds went by, I had used too much runway and was committed to flying. I had airspeed and started climbing. The plane wasn't climbing or accelerating the way it normally did (duh!), I would estimate I was getting about 1/2 power. The planes in front of me had turned right so I turned left to get some clear air. I checked the throttle quadrant by putting my flat hand against the levers and pushing forward on all three levers. To my amazement, the mixture moved forward quite a bit. Several seconds later the roughness and stumbling quit and I had pretty much full power. I continued to climb and kept an eye on the runway in case the roughness came back and I had to land. I climbed thru 1000 ft and continued on a Southerly heading on my way home. The rest of the trip was uneventful (except for the rain and thunderstorms around Houston).
Now for the Post-Op. Here are the things I did wrong and will try to learn from my mistakes. I am posting this "story" so that others will hopefully also learn from my poor decisions. So, here's the list:
1. I didn't abort. I had plenty of room to abort and had brought my tool kit. I should have aborted and taxiied back, run up the engine and checked it out.
2. By habit I leaned the engine after starting to keep the plugs from fouling. It was not needed this time because I was very near the runway and had a very short wait to take-off. My run-up was also pretty sloppy and I didn't catch that the mixture was leaned about half way back.
3. I can't remember sumping the tanks (actually I'm pretty sure I didn't). I always sump them before flying and I got out of my normal routine because I was loading my tool kit, a chair, my camera bag, loading the destination on the GPS and doing some other things. Since I didn't use the left tank on the way up and the engine run was very short before taking off, its possible there was something in the tank that didn't reach the engine until half way down the runway.
4. Not real current. This really bothers me but I can't fly as much as I would like. Our budget is kind of tight and I only get to fly 3 or 4 times per month, at the most. Because I don't fly much, I don't tend to practice emergency procedures as much as I should. If I were more current I might have recognized the problem earlier and made the right decision.
There's probably more stuff but these are the things I came up with on the drive home. So, here's hoping that anyone that reads this will do an interal audit of their decision making and possibly go practice some emergencies... I know I will very soon.
Karl
I had flown up to the Hilltop Lakes Fly-in and enjoyed the BBQ and RV talk. I had several people compliment me on my -8 and that always feels good. After a while people started leaving and I decided it was time to go. I did a good pre-flight and pulled the plane clear of the line of planes so I wouldn't blast anyone as I started to taxi. I had flown up on the right tank so switched to the left. Started up and taxied about 50 feet to the runway. One plane was rolling for take-off as I got to the edge of the runway and then another took off. I was then called "yellow RV, position and hold".
I did a quick run-up and was cleared to depart. I rolled the throttle forward like normal and the A/C accelerated as I would expect. I pushed forward on the stick and the tail came up. About 5 seconds later, the engine started stumbling. It was very rough and I was totally caught off guard. I knew I should abort but couldn't make the decision. After several more seconds went by, I had used too much runway and was committed to flying. I had airspeed and started climbing. The plane wasn't climbing or accelerating the way it normally did (duh!), I would estimate I was getting about 1/2 power. The planes in front of me had turned right so I turned left to get some clear air. I checked the throttle quadrant by putting my flat hand against the levers and pushing forward on all three levers. To my amazement, the mixture moved forward quite a bit. Several seconds later the roughness and stumbling quit and I had pretty much full power. I continued to climb and kept an eye on the runway in case the roughness came back and I had to land. I climbed thru 1000 ft and continued on a Southerly heading on my way home. The rest of the trip was uneventful (except for the rain and thunderstorms around Houston).
Now for the Post-Op. Here are the things I did wrong and will try to learn from my mistakes. I am posting this "story" so that others will hopefully also learn from my poor decisions. So, here's the list:
1. I didn't abort. I had plenty of room to abort and had brought my tool kit. I should have aborted and taxiied back, run up the engine and checked it out.
2. By habit I leaned the engine after starting to keep the plugs from fouling. It was not needed this time because I was very near the runway and had a very short wait to take-off. My run-up was also pretty sloppy and I didn't catch that the mixture was leaned about half way back.
3. I can't remember sumping the tanks (actually I'm pretty sure I didn't). I always sump them before flying and I got out of my normal routine because I was loading my tool kit, a chair, my camera bag, loading the destination on the GPS and doing some other things. Since I didn't use the left tank on the way up and the engine run was very short before taking off, its possible there was something in the tank that didn't reach the engine until half way down the runway.
4. Not real current. This really bothers me but I can't fly as much as I would like. Our budget is kind of tight and I only get to fly 3 or 4 times per month, at the most. Because I don't fly much, I don't tend to practice emergency procedures as much as I should. If I were more current I might have recognized the problem earlier and made the right decision.
There's probably more stuff but these are the things I came up with on the drive home. So, here's hoping that anyone that reads this will do an interal audit of their decision making and possibly go practice some emergencies... I know I will very soon.
Karl