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What was your dumbest FS pilot error?

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Guest Dominik Mann

Here're mine...Last weekend I did this:I had just lifted off from Bangkok on my Lear 35 world flight and was climbing through 1,000 feet or so. I switched on both the autopilot and autothrottle and continued to climb to my cruise altitude of 35,000 feet. However, about 30 seconds later, when looking over my instruments I noticed something wasn't right. The A/P was pulling up the nose to 15 degrees and more, while airspeed was quickly dropping to 100 knots. Needless to say, I stalled, and only by disconnecting both A/P and A/T I could save my plane.It turned out I had switched the autothrottle to IAS Hold mode without actually dialing in any speed value. Thus, the A/T pulled back to idle, since the pilot had entered a target speed of 0 knots, no? :-eekAbout a month ago I managed to do the following. It was on the same Lear 35 I am currently flying around the world with. Before takeoff (and before I actually connect the A/P, of course) I normally set the A/P to my cruise altitude and speed so that I only need to flick a few switches after liftoff.Well, I dialed in an initial altitude of 8,000 or 10,000 feet, took off and turned on the A/P, putting it into Altitude Hold mode. Then, however, the plane would start climbing like crazy, almost like a fighter jet. For a long few seconds I was totally clueless......before I noticed that I had confused the altitude and vertical velocity dials, meaning that I entered a climb rate of 8,000 feet per minute instead of a target altitude of 8,000 feet. :-shyYour turn! :D

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Guest Fortress

He! Well two things spring to mind: the quintessential gear-up landing, and also totally and absolutely forgetting about flap retraction during climb-out. I was close to cruise before noticing that N1 was abnormally high for the V/S I was pulling!...thankfully, neither has occured since using FDC & FSMaintenance ;-) (Edit: hey Erict! Nice to see CPAV and BAV have opened up codeshare on Cathay flights!!:7)Cheers,Paul

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul.haworth/Fortress.gifVoted Best Virtual Airline of 2002 and Best CEO of 2002 by participants in the BIG VA Vote organized by FSPILOT.comVANF "Best" New Virtual Airline Awardhttp://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul.haworth/saint_georgex1.gif

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I have two personal favorites:1) I was taking off from 06C (Schaumburg Regional) in the DF Archer II. In order to keep the realism, I followed the real noise abatement procedures, which is a slight right bank immediately after rotate. Once I had followed the procedures and climbed to a safe altitude I flicked on the autopilot. After about two minutes, I noticed something was wrong, it was sending me in circles, right in the flight path of ORD (which is about 20 miles straight out of the runway at 06C). I also noticed my airspeed was in the 90's and that the autopilot was trying to climb at about 4000 FPM. I immediately flipped off the autopilot but noticed it was still happening, so I had to turn back and make a short final into 06C. Unfortunately, the Archer was still trying to climb at about 3000 FPM and I had no idea what happened, so when I was on finals about to touch down, it put me into a vertical stall at which point the winds turned me just enough to make me strike my wing and lose it. Needless to say, thats not a flight I was proud of. Upon looking around, I'd noticed that I had accidentally pushed in my yoke, setting my autopilot to use full upward elevator trim.2) Not quite so elaborate. I was flying a multi-player flight with some friends and was using FS Maintainence. About halfway through at 22,000 feet I noticed that my engine had stopped. Immediately I tried to get it going again, but couldnt. I set the autopilot to hold a -400 FPM descent to keep a fair amount of speed while I looked for an aiport. I pulled up the FSFlightMax and looked around, and found an airport about 20 nm back. I set the course into my autopilot, and when I was properly aligned with the runway, I had to manually pump my gear because by that time i'd had an electrical failure. Upon landing (not quite smoothly, and barely on the runway), I checked out the FS Maintainence setup and found I needed to buy new flaps, new electrical, new gear, and quite a few other systems. Luckily I landed without FSM giving me a crash, but I did manage to score a -105% :-lol. Upon reviewing the flight, I'd found out that my climbs had put excessive strain ont he engine, and that I had run at an unsafe MP, RPM, and Oil Pressure setting for too long, causing the engine failure.Scott

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Guest Fortress

Don't you just love that FSMaintenance Scott?!! If only it would present you with a Techlog during dispatch, so you'd be alert to items that were coming up for maintenance!Took me ages to work out why I couldn't start the engines on my last 757 trip (actually, couldn't do anything - not even turn on the beacon). I'd crashed the thing about a week earlier and would cost best part of a million to put back in the air... :-(Cheers,Paul

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul.haworth/Fortress.gifVoted Best Virtual Airline of 2002 and Best CEO of 2002 by participants in the BIG VA Vote organized by FSPILOT.comVANF "Best" New Virtual Airline Awardhttp://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul.haworth/saint_georgex1.gif

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Guest

Yah, its great for GA (even though its not outright supported), luckily i just put in as much money as I want to fix my baby Commander, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to fly it for quite a while.Scott

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Trying to run MSFS2k2 on a Celeron 466 with EVERYTHING turned up...like flying in "Time-Lapse" world.Following ATC in FlyII....Flying into combat with my Spitfire's gear down (MS-CFS)Believing 99% of what is written on the side of the box for some add-ons......Thinking "As Real as it gets" means I could ask that somebody bring me coffee instead of hitting the "pause" key and getting it myself.Answering the phone when I was below 10,000' and breaking sterile flightdeck rule (thud).Wondering why I can't capture an ILS freq in at Memphis, trying hard to engage it in a PIC767. During the Virtual-NTSB press conference following my crash I discover that the radio data in FS2k2 didn't match PIC767 database freq for that runway.Reading AVSIM posts on plane accidents and having them "solved" by our "experts" :15 minutes after they occur(Ok, that was off topic). Having real-world flying buddies (10,000Hrs+) watch over my shoulder as I say "Watch this" then crashing as I demo something trivial like showing them gear retract animation after take-off only to have the jet settle back on the runway. (Gee, you think that is why we say "Positive rate, gear up?")etc, etc, etcTimothy

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Passing 2500ft comming in to land in Barbados I was setting up for an ILS and all of a sudden my engine quit. I attempted a resart but no joy. I ended up ditching in the water about 2 miles short. Then I relized I had left my mixture set to lean when I descended from cruise altitude of 12000ft. Ooops!Ken

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I hit the spoiler key accidently on my PIC 767. At FL 350 I started to slow down, Luckily the Radar Contact controller allowed me to decend. Took about 20000 feet to figure it out. But we lived.JimCYWG

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Just last night I was taking my 2nd flight ever in the Cessna 208B, about halfway through the flight I was thinking man this is a slow plane, must have some strong headwinds... realized I never retracted my flaps after takeoff. I've never done a gear up in FS2002, but I did come close once, realized this at MDA. Close one!-------------Michael T."The one fellow who is really broke in the air is the one who is out of both altitude and airspeed" (Wolfgang Langewieche, Stick and Rudder)

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Guest Dominik Mann

What I also did several times was not to switch back to NAV tracking (instead of GPS) on approach to my destination airport, and then to wonder why the plane would not lock on to the ILS :-shy ...

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Guest The Ancient Brit

I was approaching Block Island (KBID) in a Cessna (I think I was flying FS95) and a bit concerned since I knew it had no ILS and I had not done too many VFR approaches. I had worked out an altitude against distance to go chart so I thought I might be in with a chance. What I did not allow for was a side wind. I made a small adjustment to allow for it, but it seemed to get stronger. Another adjustment was made and the side wind grew yet stronger. Determined to get the better of this unwanted and unspecified side wind that had put in such an unwelcome appearance, I made a strenuous effort to compensate. If I had to touch down at 45 degrees to the runway, then so be it.I lost control of the aircraft and as I headed irrevocably towards the drink I realised all too late why the wind had managed to foul up my otherwise well planned approach. During the alignment manoeuvre I had looked out of a forward side window, checked my altitude against my descent chart and was so preoccupied with the VFR approach, I forgot to change to the direct forward view. When I thought I was aligned therefore I was flying at 45 degrees and the more I struggled with the

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I struggled for over two hours in Real Weather imposed IFR (Zero Vis)in the FSD Cheyenne. It was late, I was tired and I needed to land. Determined that I was gonna' see this through (as one would have to in real life) I found a suitable airport and made a very difficult and nail-biting ILS landing through treacherous mountains. Put down beautifully soft on the tarmac and was absolutely smug with my achievement. I taxied to a standstill but was unhappy with my parked position in the fog... Applying a bit of throttle, I rolled down a hill and into a lake...AFOX. (And there's more where that came from...)

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After a grueling flight from KDFW to PHNL, I forgot to lower the landing ear. Thankfully I saved the flight before my final approach. This was back in the old FS98 days.Brent

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