What bone-headed maneuvers have you pulled while flying?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

In a GQ thread, Broomstick asked:

Why not? I’ll start…

I had been training in helicopters for quite a while. I had already made my “circuit solo”. (In helicopter training you have two solos: the ground solo where you come into a hover and maneuver based on what your instructor says over the radio, and the circuit solo where you take off and fly a pattern.) So I knew my way around an R-22 pretty well.

My instructor, Peter, told me to preflight the aircraft and start it up. Everything was fine until I tried to start it. The engine cranked, but it wouldn’t catch. Peter came out and we tried again. And again. And again. Peter got out and fiddled with the engine while I tried to start it up, but to no avail. This was odd, since the helicopter had flown earlier that day. I had fuel. The air intake was unobstructed. I had spark.

Finally I decided to do something – I don’t remember what – and reached for the mixture control. It was at idle-cutoff. :smack:

Two intelligent guys, one with quite enough knowledge to start an engine thankyouverymuch, and an experienced instructor, and we both missed that I had not set the mixture. :smack: :smack:

Peter said we shouldn’t mention this to anybody and we continued with the lesson.

Later that afternoon there was a little get-together at the hotel across the way to celebrate someone’s earning his instructor’s rating. My first instructor, Jack, was talking about Bell 206s. He said the thing about turbine engines is that you have to know how to start them. Once you knew that, the Bell 206 was much easier to fly than the R-22 Peter and I flew earlier. Peter and I just looked at each other with rather sheepish expressions on our mugs.

Now go back in time to before my circuit solo. I was getting anxious. Man, I wanted to fly solo! But I still had a habit from flying fixed-wings that neither I nor my instructor had figured out. (I did eventually figure it out, of course. When I made a nice landing, Jack had no idea what suddenly “clicked”. I’d figured out the problem and fixed it, but not before spending a lot of money.)

Anyway we were practicing landings, flying without doors as usual. Jack gave me a throttle chop (unexpectedly twisting the throttle to idle and exclaiming, “Power failure!”). Even though I had undergone numerous throttle chops in the past, I botched this one. I jammed the right anti-torque pedal down and lowered the collective as I was supposed to… except I didn’t get the collective down fast enough ans slewed the helicopter around. Good thing we were wearing belts, otherwise Jack would have departed the aircraft. He gave me “The Look”. “The Look” is a look that instructors save for especially inept students. It wilts. It makes you feel very small. I got “The Look”.

I looked at Jack, smiled, and said, “Well I said I wanted to solo today!”

2

You know, my job is normally relatively uneventful. With what I’m anticipating seeing here, I feel so, well, needed…

Not that thats a good thing, either…

3

OK I’ll throw my minor one in.

I was a student, in preflight I found a bad brake. When my instructor came out, I told him the plane didn’t pass preflight, the left break was out. He said no problem been flying all day like that, he said put both brakes on, and hold the rudder to keep the plane straight. So we went. When I landed, I touched down about 1/4 of the way down the 3500’ asphalt strip.

Now we roll, and roll and roll. He says hold the brake, I say I am. I have the rudder jammed and am fethering the right brake, we are still rolling along. He tries, no better, we finally stop at the very end of the runway. When we turn, we are both suprised that our nose wheel doesn’t go into the grass. He says, wow, it got worse, I think to myself, next time I’ll make the call.

I did get to see a student pilot crash on landing at Big Beaver in MI. She came in hot, bounced hard about 4 times, the last time, it went up at about a 45° angle, and back down at about the same. It landed on it’s front wheel, and prop, where it stayed. The Airport guys came out in a truck, threw the tail in, picked up the trash, and towed the plane off. About 15 min later, we took the active. Nothing but pride, an engine and metal hurt.

4

I have been asked this question before (Specifically “What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done in an aircraft?”) during the interview for my current job.

So, here goes…

It was during pilot training (USAF type). I was in the T-37 phase (Tweet photo here ) and I had an afternoon sortie, a solo to the area no less! This means that I got to take a Tweet out to a practice area, practice acrobatics until I couldn’t stand it (or until I ran out of gas!) and bring it back for a few patterns before the full stop. With my whopping 35 hours of Tweet time, I set out alone to conquer the skies of west Texas.

Everything was going by the book…my jet was ready to go, I took off on time and managed to find my way to my designated area. Now for some fun! I jammed the throttles forward and started doing everything I could with that Tweet…loops, barrel rolls, Immelmans, Cuban 8s, cloverleafs…oh, man was it fun. But after about 15 minutes I was TIRED. So I leveled off and decided to do some sightseeing. Anyone who has been to this part of Texas knows that there is nothing to look at, so I noticed…some clouds. In fact, what looked like a deck of clouds right at the bottom of my area (6,000’ MSL, about 5,000’ AGL).

Intrigued, I descend down and find that the clouds run staight and level about 100’ above the bottom of my area. So I set up and do a high-speed (well, high-speed for a Tweet…250 KIAS) pass above the clouds…kind of cool, getting the sensation of speed. And here’s where I became an idiot.

I think “Wow, wouldn’t it be neat if the clouds were ABOVE me? Then I could speed along below them and I’d have the clouds racing by on top of this nice bubble canopy.”

The gears start churning in my head…churning…and out pops:

“Wait a minute! I’m in a Tweet! I can just fly over those clouds UPSIDE DOWN! Sweet!”

So I, god’s newest gift to aviation, line up on the clouds, get up to 250 knots and roll inverted just as I reach the cloud deck. Wow! Two impressions: the clouds look really cool, but MAN is it hard to stay level while upside down! I push on the stick, get thrown UP in my harness and descend a little. This cycle continues for about five seconds until…POOF! I’m in the clouds. :smack:

OK, no problem…I’ve had a few classroom lessons about flying on instruments and two whole simulators…now where is that ADI? (Artificial horizon). OH, there it is…uh oh. The ADI on the Tweet is ancient, and does not handle acrobatics very well. Needless to say, after all of my enthusiastic flying earlier, the ADI had tumbled and was no use whatsoever. :eek: OK, then, I’ll just go with the basics…altimeter and airspeed.

Hmmm…that altimeter is unwinding pretty fast. I hope I break out of these clouds pretty soon. We had minimum ejection altitudes in these areas…if you reached 2,000’ MSL and were still “unrecovered” it was time to punch out. As the altimeter went past 4,000’ I thought to myself “Wow, only 2,000 more feet and I’m going to have to eject. This is really going to suck.” I checked the ADI again…yep, still useless. As I went through everything one last time I came out of the clouds…at 3,000’, 270 knots, 60 degrees nose low in 120 degrees of bank. :eek:

I rolled, pulled and was back above 6,000’ (avoiding the clouds, this time) in no time. I still had about 20 minutes of time left in the area, and I spent it…flying in circles and trying not to have a heart attack. I came back to the field very carefully and did one approach to a full stop.

The rest of the day was spent trying to avoid everyone while the words “YOU’RE AN IDIOT” echoed around my (apparently empty) skull.

Needless to say, I learned from my experience (that’s why it’s pilot training, after all - you’re not SUPPOSED to know everything!) And I got the job!:wink:

5

I was going around the pattern to get my required night takeoffs and landings. I was in a 172 at Tacoma Narrows airport. For some reason, I got a little bit behind on things on my first approach, and I didn’t have any flaps down until after turning final. Didn’t seem like a big deal, it’s a long runway there and I didn’t need any flaps at all, really.

The flap switch in that 172 was a three-position toggle at the center of the panel below the radios. It was the the kind where you hold it down and watch the flap indicator, and when the flaps are where you want them, you let up on the switch and it springs back to the middle. I reached over for the switch and held it until I had ten-degrees of flaps. Took my hand off and back to the yoke, and after a few seconds it felt like somebody had thrown an anchor out the back of the airplane. It was slowing down.

Rule number one; fly the airplane. I started adding power, and more power, to keep from sinking too fast. I landed, no problem, but on the rollout I reached over to bring the flaps back up and discovered the problem. The switch had stuck in the down position even after I took my hand off it. The flaps had gone all the way to full on my final approach.

I don’t know if that’s bone-headed enough for you, Johnny, but I was a little bit careless and it made things more of an adventure than they should have been.

6

Robot Arm: Older Cessnas, like the 1970 172K I learned to fly in, have a flap switch with staggered detents. That way, you could hit the switch and forget it.

My flap story: Once when I was a student pilot in the 172, my instructor, Jim, wanted to show me a touch-and-go. I was to sit there and observe the proper technique. We landed with 40° flaps. Jim added power and we took a very long time to get airborne. We climbed very slowly and Jim was struggling to keep the airplane aloft. I said to him, “Is there a reason why we took off with full flaps?” He raised the flaps and never said another word about it.

The amazing thing is that the ol’ Skyhawk could actually take off and climb with those big barn doors hanging down.

7

When I was a student pilot my instructor sent me out for my second solo cross country to an airport about 80 miles away. Lots of prominent landmarks on the way, and no difficult airspace. I departed at about 7:30 AM with no wind and none forecast, and we were going to have a fly-in that afternoon with my friends attending. So life was good.

I arrived at my destination, got my logbook signed, jumped back in and blasted off for home feeling pretty good about myself.

There is a medium sized mountain ridge about 15 miles out from my home airport, and when I crossed it the plane started getting bounced around. That’s not unusual for the ridge, but it got intense and didn’t let up. I dialed up the weather station and found that my nice calm wind had changed to a 19 knot gusting crosswind at my airport. I could divert to the nearby international, but then my friends wouldn’t see my climb out of the plane after my solo flight, and I’d have to get my instructor to go over and fly me back, and that would be disgraceful…

Naw, I’ll try to get in at home base.

OK, I’d had a crosswind landing lesson. Once. On a 9000’ runway, with nearly a 4 knot crosswind. Now I was going to try it on a 2600’ downward sloping strip with cracked concrete.

I flew a fairly good downwind and base leg, but all hell broke loose on final. The plane was rocking and rolling, and the last 300 feet were a blur. I vaguely remember attempting a sideslip, then juking the controls around frantically, and then sitting on the far end of the runway breathing very hard.

Whoa.

I turned around and taxiied back to see my instructor standing there with a stressed out look on his face, and a radio in his hand. “Didn’t you hear me?!” he yelled, waving the radio.

Turns out the wind had shifted while I was flying the pattern and I ended up landing with a significant tailwind component. No wonder my sideslip didn’t work so well. And I didn’t have the radio on the right frequency, so I didnt’ hear Mr. Instructor yelling at me to go around.

After he finished chewing me out the airport manager strolled by. His first remark was directed at me: “You know, we have a windsock on the roof over there for a reason.”

OK, I deserved that.

Then to my instructor he said, “So how about teaching your students to land UP-wind from now on?”

That hurt.

Incidentally, I’m getting my Instructor’s ticket next month. :slight_smile:

8

[sub] “What bone-headed maneuvers have you pulled while flying?”[/sub]

Well, there was this one time when I pulled my cape off and…

D & R

9

Great story Pilot141!

Ah, so many bone-headed things to pick from . . .

The time when I had my student license and came back into the pattern at dusk. Didn’t see the other plane until he went wingover to avoid the collision. Turns out it was my instructor.

More recently, during commercial training when an instructor had me put a Mooney into a departure stall at 2,500’. Mooneys are normally docile in a stall but can be nasty when even the slightest bit cross-controlled, snapping into a spin.

And Mooneys are placarded against spins because the small rudder doesn’t give them good rudder authority.

So we enter the departure stall and on the verge of the stall, I bring it back to straight-and-level. “No, the practical test standards say a full stall and that’s what I want you to do,” says the instructor. Back we go into the full power stall. And we snap inverted in a spin over the Puget Sound at 2,500’.

Whether we made 2 full circuits in the spin or not, we recovered go back to 2,500’ and do the maneuver again. Bam – inverted, in a spin again!

The Mooney placarding notes that you can lose 1,000’ in each revolution of a spin. Doing those maneuvers at 2,500’ was insanity. When I woke up the following morning I was questioning my fitness as a pilot: why would I let an instructor with 10% of the knowledge of the aircraft do that to me?

BTW, I have a good friend who’s a Mooney training specialist. He used to teach cross-controlled stalls – until he found one that wouldn’t exit a spin easily.

10

All of my bone-headed maneuvers were navigation errors while flying my solo cross-countrys. I trained in the Baltimore-Washington class B area, and this was about a year after September 11. Mostly stuff like inadvertently straying into the wrong airspace. I was damn lucky not to find a F-16 on my wing afterwards. If I’d done this stuff now, however, I’d most likely lose my license.

11

My long cross-country was from Lancaster, CA to Henderson Sky Harbor, just south of Las Vegas. I was on my downwind leg when I happened to glance out of the Skyhawk’s rear window. There was a retractable coming in very fast on a 45° entry across the runway to downwind. He had his gear up and seemed to be closing fast. He never announced himself on the unicom. Maybe I was being over-cautious, but I made a diving turn to the right and let him pass.

(I don’t think I’d made a “bone-headed maneuver” in this case, but I thought I’d share.)

12

If a friend of mine who used to insure aircraft were here, (he’s since gotten into general lines underwriting) he’d say your bone-headed maneuver was getting into a Robinson. Seems the things have a way of losing their airworthiness at the most inopportune times - usually while in the air.

He also had countless tales of people getting into trouble when they forgot Job Number One - fly the airplane - and got distracted by burnt-out bulbs, misbehaving radios, and similar things.

13

Robinsons are quite airworthy. The reason you hear about more Robinsons crashing than Bell 206s is that the JetRanger is not generally used as a training helicopter. The R-22 is very nimble, which makes it more difficult to fly; but a student pilot wouldn’t know the difference.

Four of the R-22s I’ve flown have crashed. One was flown in the worst storm in quite a while when the pilot caught a case of get-there-itis. (The heli had been sold and the pilot was flying it to Oregon and was forced down. I heard he did the same thing in another helicopter a week later.) One crashed during a practice autorotation. The pilot got sideways and rolled it. (I rented a Cessna 172 that day instead.) The third was being flown by a new pilot who was taking his dad for a ride. He got into the vortex ring state (“settling with power”) and did not take the proper remedial action. Hard landing. The last one, a guy was trying to land on a ridge. It can get windy in So. Cal. passes sometimes. His approach was too shallow and he got into a downdraft on the lee side of the ridge that he couldn’t climb out of. He hit the ridge and rolled about 200 meters down the hill. No one was injured in any of the crashes.

Flying in poor weather. Improper technique on autorotation. Improper technique while settling with power. Improper approach to a “pinnacle” landing. None of those were the fault of the Robinson. They crash because there are a lot of them, and because they are generally flown by pilots whose experience is less than those who fly turbines.

14

On a student cross-country I set up for a left downwind at a towered airport. Unfortunately, I set myself on the WRONG runway. When I figured out what I had done, I froze for a few seconds. At that point the tower came on and said, “Can you see the runway DIRECTLY BENEATH YOU!?”

Very embarrassing.

Second story: I hadn’t flown for a while, and apparently got confused about chart markings. I entered what I though was pattern altitude for a runway right next to a mountain. Well, instead of adding 800 feet to the airport elevation to get pattern altitude, I added 800 feet to the RUNWAY LENGTH. The mountain confused me. It felt right for it to be right out the right window during downwind.

Base and final were quite dramatic. Actually, it was all quite fun. I got some dirty looks from the ramp, though.