Those stories all us pilots have...

[hookedonflight]

C'mon everybody..share some of those stories..  

[hookedonflight]

Engine Failure After Takeoff

My Instructor and I were practicing engine failures after takeoff. He briefed me on the lesson and we were good to go.
We get airborne, climb to about 300 agl and off goes the power. We are a bit asorbed in it, he's correcting me .
then we hear "XXX, confirm you are operational!"
We looked at each other a little sheepishly and my Instructor key's his mike. "Affirm..XXX"
The ATC reply? "could you please make sure that you let us know in the future ...we all nearly had a heart attack.."

Suffice to say that now I ALWAYS make sure I inform the tower of what I am about to do..especially if its Engine Failure after T/O....
 

[TheSoccerMom]

Wow, you must have really gotten everyone's attention!!!   

It's nice to know they are watching so well...   

 

[Ragwing]

Hookedonflight,
One purpose in life is to learn from somebody elses mistakes and not make them yourself.
I enjoyed your engine failure moment    I will make sure to not make that mistake

Back in the 50's and 60's, many of the instructors use to pull the mixture to give you the real feeling of an engine failure    and then as you neared the ground, they would push it back in and the engine would start.

One instructor that I knew, was teaching a student and as they neared the ground, he pushed in on the mixture and THE MIXTURE WOULD NOT PUSH IN

He gave the student an extra demonstration that day.
It turns out that the cable had slipped and jammed.   Turning a simple instruction into a real emergency.

For some reason, I never found our schedules aligned to fly with him.

[cotejy]

and then as you neared the ground, they would push it back in and the engine would start

Amassing how teaching techniques changes even if airplanes are still the same.

Here is my story of my first flight incident. Not a big thing but with the little experience I have, I had an adrenalin rush.

I was in the process to get my twin rating. We were exercising on emergency procedures and this was supposed to be an engine failure during final approach. Everything was going good until I looked for the gears 3 greens. There was just 2. We were long final so I pull gear up waited then gear down. Still 2 greens.  My instructor then gave me back my right engine and told me to overshoot. He called the tower and told them we will head north for the moment without more explanations. At this point, I was still convinced this was en exercise (but I couldn't figure out how he got just one green to not light).

Anyway, I went through the checklist and I understood that this was for real when I saw my instructor really doing what was on the checklist. We did a slow and low pass near the tower (which would have been fun in another circumstance) and asked them to check the front gear. It was down but he couldn't tell if it was locked. The instructor decided this should be a electric problem and we would land like that. He let me do the landing and I kept the nose up as long as possible. When the nose went down, I was so nervous but finally, the gear was down and locked.

I guess the right things were done there because the plane and us are fine but...could you imagine if the gear would have been unlocked. Nose sliding on the runway, props bended, engine damaged, sparks and fuel...  If I would have been solo on this one, I would probably had burned as much fuel as I could before landing, tried the emergency gear down system and shut down the engines just before touching down. Which would have been overkilling the problem.

[Rooster Cruiser]

Which would have been overkilling the problem.

Maybe, but it would have guarenteed you got on the local TV news that evening!   

[leiafee]

My first instructor had a very dry sense of humour and I'll never forget his critique of my rather shaky engine management early in my lessons.

"Please don't keep doing that to the engine -- it's the only one we've got, if you break it we'll be stuck up here all night."

[cotejy]

lol Instructors!! I think my instructor didn't expect what I did on my first flight. She let me do the first takeoff without showing first.  After that, she always demonstrate each exercise and made sure I understood it well before letting me do it.

So she explained me before getting in the plane. So with my head full of "theory" I was lineup on the runway. She shoot: "when ready, apply full power". Full throttle I gave. The runway was 75 foots wide and I needed all of it. I went from full rudder right to full left to full right then full left Looking at the airspeed was not an option. I needed all my concentration to stay on the pavement. After a few seconds, we must have reach the proper speed because I heard "PULL THE NOSE UP". I wanted real bad to be airborne so the edges of the runway would no longer be a problem. So I removed my hand from the power to pull the yoke all the way back with my both hands.  In less then 3 seconds, we went airborne, we lost airspeed and I heard "I HAVE CONTROL" so loud people on the ground probably heard it. I have no idea how close we were from stalling when I finally let go the yoke but I'm sure this was scary for both of us. 

Instructors! Their job is to be inside an airplane, with a complete ignorant flying. Their task is to make this flying clown a decent pilot. No wonder why they want you to go solo after only 10 hours. They all deserved a round of applause. Cheers to all instructors.

[hookedonflight]

Instructors! Their job is to be inside an airplane, with a complete ignorant flying. Their task is to make this flying clown a decent pilot. No wonder why they want you to go solo after only 10 hours. They all deserved a round of applause. Cheers to all instructors.

Spot on!!
Instructors are the best! 

[ZK Kiwi]

Instructors can also cause some of the problems...
when I was getting my PPL I did a dual cross country in a C152 to a little known unattended airstrip in NZ called Ruawai (hookedonflight will know where that is...) as I have relatives living nearby and I thought it would be good to practice this flight for the future. It is quite a tricky airstrip to find but as I know the area well I didnt have a problem. My instructor wasnt so sure and at regular intervals he kept grabbing my chart (which I had neatly folded to minimse space) and unfolded it in order to get his bearings. Coming up to Ruawai I found the comms were completely dead, which was a slight concern as we had flightplanned through some  busy airports on the way back to top up the fuel. The instructor was getting quite worried and started fiddling with the radio, circuit breakers etc. Doing the right thing, I ignored the radio and just did a standard overhead rejoin, looking out for other traffic etc and set it down on the narrow gravel strip amidsdst tall unmown grass (probably a tumbleweed or two somewhere!) and shut down. The instructor went to phone the aero club to report the fault but found no mobile coverage. whilst he went off to find a phone that worked, I sat in the plane and went through all the switch settings in a systematic manner. It didnt take long to find one of the audio panel switches on the top of the instrument coaming had been switched off. I had never been shown what that panel actually did, so it was useful to know - low and behold all comms resumed OK. The instructor had knocked the switch with the edge of the chart whilst he was flapping it around in the tiny cockpit.
Lessons learned:
Aviate Navigate Communicate
Know your systems (instructors need to teach the students this stuff!)
dont let anyone mess with your cockpit workflow
Instructors arent entirely infalliable!

[hookedonflight]

The instructor had knocked the switch with the edge of the chart whilst he was flapping it around in the tiny cockpit.
Lessons learned:
Aviate Navigate Communicate
Know your systems (instructors need to teach the students this stuff!)
dont let anyone mess with your cockpit workflow
Instructors arent entirely infalliable!

Heheh True , True! 

[Baradium]

At my flight school, one of the instructors decided to do an engine out test on a student on a cross country.   He did this by really shutting down the engine.   Now, he wanted the actual shutdown of the engine on this 152 to be a bit of a surprise, you know... for better training.  I'll also note that it was a commercial student, so he already had a private pilot's license.

In his infinite wisdom he decides to use the mose inconspicuous item he can think of... the fuel shutoff valve which is between the seats on the floor.


Most of you probobly already know where this is going.


I had a really long story written out, but the cliffs version is... now there  is a 152 somewhere at the bottom of Watt's Barr Lake in Tennesee.   They never did find the plane after it sank.  The student ended up changing career courses and is an airport manager in Texas now.  He couldn't swim at the time and was fairly traumatized by the whole thing.



For the most part the stories that I have, and will admit to ,  aren't all that exciting.

I can tell you that taking over an hour to deice because deice trucks kept breaking was a bit amusing though.  That was just last week.  Probobly don't want to know how much money that was in wasted fluid trying to get that done, not to mention the fuel we burned.

[Gulfstream Driver]

Living in this area, I get to fly with loggers and other people that drive heavy equipment that is often very different from airplanes.  For example, if you want to increase engine rpms on some logging equipment, you pull the throttle out.  So, on final, when I say go around, sometimes the throttle gets pulled back to idle before getting slammed to the firewall. 

When I'm going through the C-GUMP check in the airplane, I've had two students pull the mixture to idle/cut-off (once in the pattern).

Once on a cold day, my student and I were practicing off-airport approaches, recovering at 500 ft AGL.  We were set up nicely to make the landing, reached 500 ft and I said "go around."  My student advanced the throttle with authority (tried to push it through the firewall) and the engine got very quiet for a second before roaring to 2500 rpm and dragging us back to a safe altitude. 

My mechanic as told me to keep these stories to myself.

[TheSoccerMom]

Hmm.  Well, lots of stories...  but, yesterday's comment from the guys was,

"Why is the airport out the right window??" on final...  it was just a bit windy...  too windy for us....   

 

[Gulfstream Driver]

Hmm.  Well, lots of stories...  but, yesterday's comment from the guys was,

"Why is the airport out the right window??" on final...  it was just a bit windy...  too windy for us....   

 

Just stow the right engine.  The left one will bring you around.