What was your dumbest FS pilot error?

[Guest]

>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! I did something similar...Let's just say that the Piper Cherokee's cockpit was not built with a 6'5" pilot in mind. Shortly after taking off from KMIV (Millville Municipal), I started to lose speed. My right knee was jogging the throttle knob and causing me to lose speed. Argh!

[Guest Ariel]

Just last night on my fs2004 debut i made a couple of schoolgirl errors.On final approach to Wellington New Zealand in a Virgin Blue B737-800. Perfect approach. However I didnt realise that while talking to a mate earlier i had pressed the E key. This meant that only my port side engine would respond to the throttle. On final approach i cut the autopilot and reduced throttle for touchdown. one engine backed right off, the other stayed at 80% swinging the plane on a wild angle off line. Had to hold e and hit 1 and 2 very fast then full throttle to go around. After this near crash the plane was (even more) tardy and unresponsive and i had to rag it to get up to 300kts. It was only when i landed properly that i realised i had left the airbrakes up for the entire go around!

[Guest daveg4otu]

1:The usual wheels-up landings2: Catapulting of a carrier in an E-2C with the throttles closed- early bath!

[Guest estevesm]

I've done it all:Gear-up landingsFlaps-out during cruiseTaking off and return within 5 minutes because of low fuelShoot the perfect VFR approach, landing like an ace, noticing new taxiways on the way to the parking ramp and then realizing that was the wrong airport!Set the autopilot to fly a NAV fix and actually setting it to fly a heading... after an hour of flying I looked outside and realized I was an hour into the Atlantic Ocean when I should be almost close to landing in NY...VFR flight using the directional gyro only to realize later that I should have pressed "D" to synchronize it with the compass..VFR Approach to a center rwy only to realize I was about to land on a taxiway...After doing a lot of calculations for beginning of descent, I started my descent just over my destination airport... had to circle from FL220 to sea level... hope the pax were ok with my free airsickness demonstration...

[RobbieHe 0]

I have been a dedicated flight simmer since FS 5.1 (1995), and the day before yesterday (Tuesday), I landed with my gear up at MEX (Mexico City). I have done that before, but it has been over 5 years ago. I could not believe it! I caught the ILS, lined up perfectly, watched my air speed, deployed my flaps at the expecteda ir speeds, was careful to look out for traffic, and then crunch, stutter, and lots of smoke... I did manage to stutter-taxi off of the runway in my 737 after a 2.5 hour trip from ATL. I felt kind of degraded. I came home from work a little early and was excited the whole way home because about my prospective flight and then that had to happen.

[MarkW 1,491]

I have done many of the same things.....funny nobody mentioned being on short final in a 767 wondering why the speed is dropping and needing more and more throttle...only to realize the speed brakes are deployed.Bottom line is most of us tend to take shortcuts rather than print out a solid checklist and follow it religiously.I'll start on my next flight....well unless I am in a rush.Mark

[Guest MeltedPixel]

>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!>>I just did that with the PMDG 737-300 :-lolI'd have to say thats my worst one yet, too.

[Guest GalacticCowboy]

>Bottom line is most of us tend to take shortcuts rather than>print out a solid checklist and follow it religiously.>>>I'll start on my next flight....well unless I am in a rush.I bought a PDA that I use for stuff like this, though not as much as I should. :) I even built a little spreadsheet program that I can punch in the runway headings and get cross, downwind and base headings for left or right patterns. My wife commented on my little "cockpit" last night - I've got my flight going on one computer, my PDA out doing various "kneeboard" stuff and my laptop sitting beside me doing various WideFS functions such as ActiveSky. :)

[Gavin 99]

Strangely enough I haven't done too many wheels up landings (can't think why not) BUT forgetting to dis-arm the autothrottle is one of my special talents!Gavin

[Guest Rockcliffe]

I happened upon this thread while doing a search and spent 20 minutes reading it and laughing. It deserves to be revived.Choosing my dumbest FS move is tough ... there's so many.One I recall was flying a Turbo Otter over Southern B.C. I was flying over 8/8 cloud cover (back in FS2002, when overcast meant overcast) using real world charts and was totally immersed in navigating when my engine quit. I cratered somewhere near Kamloops, still pressing the start switch.It was only later that I realized I'd run a tank dry and only needed to switch tanks to keep airborne.Oh, and gear-up landings ... more than one of those.BlairCYOW

[Guest]

Was flying the ** P-47 yesterday and wondered why its performance was so poor.It was handling like a pig, climbing like a lead brick, and speed was more like a B314 than a WW2 fighter aircraft.After half an hour I noticed my landing gear was down...

[Guest StevenJLN]

Forgetting to set the trim on some planes before takeoff, wondering why the nose isn't going up for too long and then trying to abort far too late before finding myself in a house or in the drink. Have done this on about 20 or more occasions! Thats why i'm not a real pilot....Regards

[Guest]

or setting it too high and pitching violently up as soon as you get any lift at all only to crash right back onto the runway.

[MD83 1]

1) Forgetting to set the pitch trim for takeoff. I pulled back on the stick, nothing happened, and I have to apply some nose up trim PDQ :-lol. The issue has been solved with my "mental checklist".2) In 1999 I had an engine failure whilst flying the default 737. I was attempting to land on one engine, with a STIFF crosswind, and I didn't use the rudder. I was descending through the cloud base and the plane started to somersault and flip .... crash :(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v615/Dar...roflmaoblag.gif

[Guest ranco1]

www.fs2crew.com/linepilot.jpgMy dumbest error was I by mistake put the rw heading for the ias and the ias speed for the heading. When I took Off I started to stall beacause when I engaged the a/p my ias read 6 beacause that was the rw heading.Alex