Saturday, September 19, 2015

Same Old, Same Old..............

It seems that I have written about the type accidents that are occurring over and over again. Things like forgetting to lower the gear, or crashing alongside or off the runway in the weeds because of inattention. No one wants to read about them again. And, I don’t feel like dealing with them now either. So I am just going to relate some flight adventures of my own. Yes, maybe I will repeat myself.

Remembering some of my earliest flights as a young student or a neophyte private pilot, makes me laugh and groan a bit. For instance shortly after getting my private ticket, I invited three of my buddies for a short flight to the coast. Taking off from Tewksbury, MA., on runway 21, I dutifully turned south according to the DG (directional gyro). After a short while I noted the hills were getting more prominent and wondered why. Finally cross checking the DG with the compass I figured it out. I had set the DG off by 180 degrees. Nowadays, many DG’s are automatically linked with the proper magnetic heading, eliminating this sort of error. By the way, the trip finally went well, and we landed at Cape Cod and had a good swim.

One other incident remains solidly embedded in my personal flight computer. I was making a flight check for my instrument rating with an instructor friend of mine, in an Aztec. We had done several approaches and touch and go’s and were on a final flight. This had been a no gyro approach to simulate instrument failure. I guess the additional stress of doing something unusual contributed to my forgetting to complete my pre-landing check list. As a result as I was about to touch down the instructor calmly said: “ Aren’t you going to put the gear down?”. Wow, did that make an impression, as I added power and went around. I never again failed to complete the pre-landing check list and drop the gear. Yes, I firmly believe in check lists. Just keep them as simple as possible, and use them faithfully.

That’s it for now. Fly often and safely.