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What was your dumbest FS pilot error?

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Like just about everyone else, I've landed with the gear up .....Now, being far too honest for my own good I have to admit to thinking that at 2230 I could just get a short hop in to get some flight time. Fatal ! Take off's no problem, but once in cruise the drone of the engines puts me into a doze - and if I'm lucky I'll resurface before diving into the ground !Must be getting old !

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As has everybody else, I've landed with the gear in the same "fully upright and locked position" as my passengers' tray tables and seat backs.As to the others, I'm not sure which is worse, so...1> Back in the days before I decided to hand fly everything until at least 10000' (and now to FL180), I set my vertical speed (not my altitude) as 7000. For some reason, a 767 will stall at that kind of a nose-up attitude. Go figure.2> On my previous landing, I'd manually deployed the spoilers and forgot to retract them. After a half-a$$ed (and as my dad says, do something half-a$$ and you'll look like a total one) preflight, went thundering down the runway with the spoilers up. Took every inch of runway, barely got off the ground, and couldn't get more than about 500 fpm of climb at "If I give her any more, she'll blow, Captain" throttle before I noticed the position of the spoilers.3> Flew about 2/3 of the way from Philadelphia to Boston before running out of fuel because I'd failed to retract the flaps and had to run the engines too hard to make a resonable speed. 'course, I suppose I'd have actually had better aerodynamics after the flaps got torn asunder by such speeds.And the one that got me my callsign of "Dart" many years ago....4> Let's just say that when you're flying combat sims that you should check your altitude BEFORE you invert and go for the split-s. A MiG-29 just won't get the nose around fast enough when you're only 500' AGL. After becoming a terrain feature, I was greeted by a chat window which congratulated me for becoming the world's most advanced and expensive lawn dart. Unfortunately the moniker stood.

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Stupidly editing an A330 to get superspoilers, fell the the ground faster than a dead seagull!!

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Ordering Flight Simulator 5 was quite definitely my dumbest ever FS pilot error.Chris Low,ENGLAND.


Christopher Low

UK2000 Beta Tester

FSBetaTesters3.png

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Guest saudi_777

1- Remember the last big Greek Fly-in? I was flying a Saudi Arabian Airlines MD-90 and I was on final approach and the tower has cleared me to land at LGAV. Everything was fine until it occured to me, when I was just less than a mile away from the runway threshold, that I didn't read the checklist and because of this I forgot to lower the landing gear! :-zhelp Instead of requesting a Go Around from the realtime ATC since the LGAV ATC was VERY busy, I used an emergency feature available only in Flight Simulator: The Pause button :-lol I paused the flight, lowered the gear, and then continued my short final and landed :-lol.2- A few days ago I was flying a Saudi Arabian Airlines 777-200ER from Jeddah to London and on short final to runway 9L at Heathrow, I paused the game to take a screenshot from the cockpit... Even though I held the joystick before un-pausing the game, the 777 nosed down into runway 9L after aaaaaaaaall that flight time :-mad I learned a tough lesson: NEVER do anything other than LANDING the plane in the landing phase, in other words I should comply with the "Sterile Cockpit" rule :-lolHappy landings,Asim Daffa :-kewlVP, Fleet - Senior First Officerwww.sv-virtual.com

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What a fun, entertaining thread - thanks for these stories. I must say that I think I have done most of these myself...bad news I know!My most spectacular Dumb Moment was the picture-perfect ILS into the old Kai Tak at HongKong in a 757. Everything "clicked" and I was spot on...little flare...ready on the reversers...settling in...radioalt. drifting down, down, down...SSCCRRRAAAAAAAAAPE! No gears!But actually this morning was a perfect example of my more typical FS Pilot blunder: Let me start by asking, "What in the world is a sterile cockpit?!?!?" I live in a house with two kids, pets, chores, TV, phone, (did I mention wife?) So here I am trying to shoot an early morning, foggy DME arc -> NDB approach in a 737. Well with the kids getting up and getting my lunch packed etc etc I got back to the cockpit to notice that I was about 1,000 ft too high at the MAP..."Go Around". Next time in I'm more careful but dang it, I can't get my airspeed to drop below 160 w/o having to flare my attitude up..Oh! lets get more than flaps 10! That helped only to cross the MAP with aural warnings...No Gear, "Go Around". Third time's a charm right? This time I'm going to touch every damned knob I can find to be sure that it's working and in position but "what the...." Half way through my DME arc I loose the NDB! "Forget this" I pull up and clean up and go into the holding pattern until I can figure out that in my eagerness to "check" everything I changed the ADF frequency. "Idiot!" Now I'm ready...slowing down, lights, flaps, gear, autobrake, VOR, NDB, arm spoilers,...."Honey, what time are you supposed to be at work today? It's 8 AM you know?" YIKES, only an hour late!!So, there I am, PAUSED on a 6 mile final just waiting for a better day.

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>lights, flaps, gear, autobrake, VOR, NDB, arm >"Honey, what time are you supposed to be at >work today? It's 8 AM you know?" YIKES, only an hour >late!! I start a flight before work and I'd better hope that I've got the day off... I admire your discipline for getting to work after all that!

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!!PAUSED on a 6 mile final!!Who needs sleep? "T'was the night before Thursday and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even my mouse ('cause I fly with my joystick/yoke thing)"So there it is, 23:15 last night and I finally got the 737 down and parked. Into bed by midnight...everyone's happy :-cool

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Guest Flyingdutchman

I took my 747 up in the sky for a flight to Narita Japan, and made out of EHAM a special departure, I kept 220kts and flaps 15..................and then I went to bed :-8 ......hehe when I woke up it was fling at FL32000 with 220kts.....so that was really slow with the flaps out!!! And I read some guys forgot the gear when they were on the approach....I've got several panels where a voice shouts LANDING GEAR, LANDING GEAR so I never have that problem :DBye,Evert

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Guest GalacticCowboy

One of the dumber moves I've made was...Ok, I'm flying an ATA L-1011 from SFO to LAX. It's a late flight - takeoff around 22:00 or so. Quiet flight, as all the passengers are napping. Everything on autopilot. We're cruising at a fairly low altitude, so I keep the autothrottle on at 250 kts. Beginning the descent into LAX, I start prepping for arrival. Flaps, speed down to 160, on the glideslope, gear down... Throttles all the way back to idle. Touchdown, hit F2 to activate reversers. What the? We're not slowing down... Brakes only make us yaw all over the place. The reversers never activate. Passengers screaming and stuff falling out of the overhead bins. We're rolling through downtown Los Angeles at a speed of about 160 kts. Somewhere in the vicinity of the Hollywood sign, I figure it out - I forgot to turn off the autothrottle before landing!

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Guest Dominik Mann

The autothrottle thing also happened to me recently (Vickers Viscount from EGLL to Z

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I've done the typical gearless landing several times long ago, but the last time I discovered it at the last possible moment, and managed to pull a go-around about 3-4 feet off the runway.....Also done the flaps-out cruise error several times.....But the biggest error I've ever done (that I can remember) that required an unscheduled landing was somehow setting FS2k2 to only control engine 1 in the 737, and FS2k2 simply would not let me select both engines again.... Ended up shutting down the "dead" engine and returning to the airport I had just left from not long before.... Had to leave the 737 at that airport for some time and continue my round-the-world trip in another aircraft while the engine and landing gear/tires were repaired (very rough landing!).Oh yeah, and I'm *always* forgetting different lights (coming in at night without landing lights, or blinding everybody in the terminal because I forgot to turn them off, etc.)


StoneC0ld_zps439869f4.png

Declared weather:  FSX: ASN / FS9: ASE

 

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About the dumbest thing I've ever done was taking off with about 2 gallons of fuel. I've also done the no gear landing.I'll throw in a real world boo-boo too!I was flying my friends C152 Commuter.I had just lifted off from L12 (Redlands Municiple). Everything was fine. Then I started to notice that my airspeed was gradually dropping. I figured maybe I was climbing to fast, 700 fpm. So I nosed down a bit to 500 fpm, and the speed kept dropping, though a little less gradually. I actually started to think that my throttle was connected to the yoke or something. Nah. I forgot to lock the throttle after take-off. It was slowly moving backwards during my climb. Duh!

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