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Lessons Written in Blood for the New Year

T

tinman451

Member
We have been kicking around best practices for flying around the pattern safely. In the thread, there have been so many great nuggets shared...very helpful.

How about for the start of 2024, share a thought about things you should or should not do to stay safe while flying.

1) Never interrupt someone who is conducting a preflight inspection.

I made this mistake while purchasing my Cessna 140A after selling my RV. I was reviewing the aircraft logs and had a question about an entry. The owner was conducting the preflight. He was checking the oil when my question was asked. Due to the interruption, he failed to put the dipstick back in. We went flying and I happened to notice a liquid where it should not have been. We put down on a little grass strip only to find the side of the plane covered in oil. I had never seen so much of a mess! We called his A&P for help...he arrived with a big grin on his face and the missing dipstick! It was found on the taxiway as he taxied out to assist us. We had only lost about a quart of oil, so no harm was done other than a mess that would take several washings to make go away.
 
Don't TALK to me......

tinman451 said:
How about for the start of 2024, share a thought about things you should or should not do to stay safe while flying.
1) Never interrupt someone who is conducting a preflight inspection.
Click to expand...

Let me highlight that. And let me address #2): NEVER interrupt someone who is conducting a preflight inspection.

I consider my preflight as a sacred ceremony. It is my chance to reconnect with my airplane; it is a personal thing! This airplane is about to take my hinney and maybe someone else's up in the air and I want to make sure everything is exactly how it should be. Have I found things on a preflight? YES! A center tail wheel spring out of three on the Cub, cleverly hidden between the other two, that had broken. Well-hidden unless I was down on my hands and knees looking at things, which I always do back there. If someone says something to me, they are either ignored (and I'm not sorry; they eventually get it) or I'll politely say 'Hang on just a minute." and continue on. If the dipstick comes out of the Cub, it is put at the bottom of the lift struts where they form a dipstick-holding "V". If I get in the airplane and don't see THAT......! In SuzieQ I place it on the bench or somewhere with the start key around it. Ain't gonna go without that little silver thing.....:p

That said, I was ferrying a Champ (slightly unfamiliar to me) to North Dakota once with my instructor following in his PA-18-90. When we landed at Miles City, my instructor gets out and starts laughing! What's so funny? There was a large oil streak down the right side of the Champ.:eek::eek: Oh. Rats. I had not secured the dipsick in the oil tube.:rolleyes: Just half a twist and.......No harm done; plenty of oil left. Lesson learned. Haven't done that since....
 
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Ditto for the pre-take off check list. Years ago there was a fatal accident on take off, iirc it was a 727 on a re-positioning or cargo flight (no passengers). On the cockpit tape, the cause was evident: the FO was running the pre-takeoff check list, when the captain interrupted him, and suggested that perhaps the flight engineer would like to fly this leg. FE and FO swapped seats. FE picked up on the checklist, but started one line further down. The missed line was “trim set”. Plane attempted takeoff with full nose up trim, all three died.
If I’m interrupted on this checklist, I start over again from the top.
 
2) Never quit flying a taildragger...no matter how hopeless the antics on the ground are, stay in the fight!

I was doing my RV transition training with the transition pilot. We had done monkey see/ monkey do for several hours. This is where he would demonstrate a challenge and I would then try to duplicate the evolution. We were getting silly and I was really feeling like the RV was becoming an old friend. He suggested that I land ONLY on the tailwheel and hold the mains off the runway for as long as possible...hmmm...this sounded fun. For this evolution, I would go first.

I had a pretty good lineup and the tailwheel did touch first, but I did not have the skill to hold the mains off with only power since I no longer could use elevators for pitch control. I got a bit sideways before the mains hit and the beast was released! We swerved hard left, then right, then back left with the tires squealing. I knew I was going to ground loop, but through blind luck and determination, I managed to get it back under control. My instructor had ice water running through his veins...all the time, he had his hands resting on his lap next to me (RV-6). I asked him why he didn't jump in and help, and his response stuck with me all these years...he said I was doing everything he would have done to save it. He had no magic tricks once we were that deep into ground loop country.

He then pointed out that most ground loops happen because the pilot stopped flying the plane when things got a bit out of control. He reminded me to never give up trying to save it no matter how bad it seems. I asked him to demonstrate the evolution, and the outcome was exactly the same! We had a good laugh over that one...I still wonder if it is possible to do this with a taildragger...
 
Control stick aft and hold, throttle full forward on a go around. Verbalize and verify the positions. Seen more than a few crashed planes from it.
 
In the last couple of years, two of the most experienced pilots among us have been killed in the kinds of accidents they never saw coming.

2021 - Dale "Snort" Snodgras - control lock still attached. Ditto to everyone above who said to treat every single item on the checklist like your life depends on it. Because it does.

2023 - Richard "Spad" McSpadden - exact cause yet to be determined, but possibly attempted the impossible turn, after years of advising against it.

Every checklist item is there for a reason. And the recitation of the "engine out plan" as you roll onto the runway needs to be taken to heart.
 
Flow

Maybe it’s a given, but if you are ever distracted or interrupted in your checklist, it makes sense to me to back up to the beginning of that section. The section that flows through a list. Always back up. Never skip ahead. Redo the whole flow and make sure you really saw and did it all.

That goes for building too. I was distracted last night and when I came back 2 minutes later, picked up the drill where I had left off and without reading back through the paragraph promptly countersunk the wrong hole in a spar. I didn’t count spaces and recheck after picking up the tool. That kind of flow error. I was lucky: didn’t matter, that was just a positioning hole. But it could easily have been expensive.
 
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Thankfully we are not that innovative in finding new ways to crash. Here are some ways to avoid a crash:

  • Keep your airspeed up - even if the engine fails
  • Don't fly into weather that's not appropriate for plane or pilot
  • Perform the checklists carefully
  • Keep fuel in the tanks
  • Maintain your aircraft properly
  • Fly with appropriate preparation
  • Keep flying the airplane until all the parts stop moving

Obviously there is some detail behind each of these suggestions. Happy to see what others come up with.
 
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preflight checklist

Stop me if you've heard this before...
So, I'm flying the RV1 back home to Winder from Creswell, OR and my first over night is Bakersfield South. The next morning I'm pre-flighting the Mockingbird and this 'ol guy on a golf cart comes out to see what's going on. He says: "An Rv1 huh?. I say with out looking up "yeah, the only one not in the EAA Museum that is airworthy. I ask if he's a pilot and he says, Yeah. I ask what he flies and he says "Rockets". I ask, again, without deviating from the task at hand, you mean the Harmon Rocket? he says yeah, I'm John Harmon. I answer nice to meet you John but I'm on my way home and want to depart before the temps go to 110F on the ground. I depart, ready to go on course heading and look out the Port window & see the fuel cap is not properly seated. Fortunately no fuel is leaking...yet. I call approach and declare I'm returning to Bakersfield for loose fuel cap. No issues and re-tighten cap and back in the air. Lesson to me: pay attention and retrace steps after being interrupted. Something I had forgotten over time from my Primary Instructor had emphasized years earlier.
I always wanted to go back and hang with John as he seemd like the kind of person I could learn a lot from.
:eek:
 
I have to admit I took off with the oil door not latched last week. Sure, not as fatal as taking off with a control lock attached, but it did provoke some scary "what if I forgot a different checklist item" thoughts. I wasn't interrupted either, I simply got distracted.
 
Aviate, navigate, communicate. How many of us carry an I-pad with Foreflight just in case? Do the same number of folks carry a backup handheld radio or personal ERB?

JJR
 
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