silly things you've done

[spearmint_flyer 579]

Many many things in flight sim. My most embarrassing tho. Taking off in a real plane with my pitot tube cover on. Luckily I was able to notice it during the take off run and aborted to remove it

[HighBypass 2,339]

Having loaded up a flight plan into FSX, I was feeling lazy and didn't want to taxi from the gate, so let the sim start me on the active runway. I promptly took off..... then wondered why ATC wasn't handing me off nor giving me a heading to steer (I only use stock FSX ATC at the moment).

 

It does help if you actually contact ATC, thus allowing FSX to give you some instructions! 

 

Chock - I've recently taken up gliding and winch launches are all I know for now: there's no aerotow at the club. I'm still at the stage where there's someone in the back whose job it is to keep me alive!

 

The acceleration of a glider winch launch is I feel, the closest most civilians will come to experiencing a launch from an aircraft carrier, even then, it's not THAT close (as a layman, just looking at the numbers tells me so), but in the realms of GA it's certainly fun.

[Chock 17,769]

Chock - I've recently taken up gliding and winch launches are all I know for now: there's no aerotow at the club. I'm still at the stage where there's someone in the back whose job it is to keep me alive!

 

The acceleration of a glider winch launch is I feel, the closest most civilians will come to experiencing a launch from an aircraft carrier, even then, it's not THAT close (as a layman, just looking at the numbers tells me so), but in the realms of GA it's certainly fun.

 

I know exactly what you mean. The first time I experienced a winch launch I remember thinking: 'Jeez, this is fast, I thought gliders were all sedate n stuff'.

 

It's probably because you go from stopped to about 50 knots in a couple of seconds or so, so it is undeniably very rapid acceleration, and the only other way anyone ever gets that kind of acceleration out of an aeroplane is from a catapult launch off an aircraft carrier. Then, just when you've got your head around that part, you start climbing at what seems like about 45 degrees. It's a real shock the first time you experience it, isn't it?

 

Just wait until you get a cable break at something awkward like about 300 feet and have to decide whether there is room to land ahead, or whether to dive it to get some speed and then do a 180 to land back downwind; that'll have you thinking fast lol. If you ever do have that happen btw if there is room, landing ahead is safer, but if you do decide to try turning back, make sure you stick the nose well down to get craploads of speed on before attempting to turn, or you'll stall it and spin in. Whatever you do, don't try and edge it round with the rudder, people die when they try stupid stuff like that. Instead do a chandelle - i.e. nose down, get the airspeed really really fast (I mean like nearing Vne kind of fast lol), then stand it on its wingtip and come around quickly whilst you've got all that speed on the clock (cos your stall speed increases in a bank, remember). It's really satisfying when you manage to pull that off; makes you feel like a good pilot, which indeed you are when you get something like that right.

[Guest]

Got another to add to the list from last night...

 

Flying Gatwick to Morocco  in PMDG 737...

 

with the Air Stair deployed all the way.

 

Tbh it looked kind of cool, like an invitation to anyone who happened to be hanging about at FL350; "Come aboard, no boarding pass required. We have coffee and biscuits".

[Navigator43 25]

I pressed shift P for pushback and the phone rang. Got into my conversation and when I came back I was way out in the woods still on pushback lol. Another time I took off with the emergency exit doors open had to make an emergency landing lol

[stans 702]

Silly things I've done?  In sims or real life?  Either way, if I listed them all it would overload and crash the server. :rolleyes:

[The777Flyer 5]

Silly things I've done?  In sims or real life?  Either way, if I listed them all it would overload and crash the server. :rolleyes:

Yeeee, Go for it

 

Btw, I just flown on the bermuda triangle and I got strange things, but heading on it anyway haha

[jarsky 12]

What sort of strange things? (I wonder if FSX in any way attempts to replicate the oddities of the Bermuda Triangle.)

[ClearedtoLand 149]

Did the pushback at SBRJ without releasing the parking brake on the PMDG 737. Anyone want to guess what the gear lights showed after retraction?

 

Flew 180 miles in the PMDG 747 with the gear hanging out. Not so good for gaining airspeed or altitude, or confidence for that matter.

 

Badly messed up a landing on the A2A Cessna 182 in Botswana. Must have been really annoyed with myself afterwards because I skipped a visit to the maintenance hanger and duly forgot about the destruction I wrought on the poor 182. Took off a few days later in an attempt to do the flight properly, thought I had forgotten to extend the flaps ... but in reality, it was just one of many things destroyed by my previous 'landing', a few others being most of the vital components for having a working engine. Anyways, long story short, it's a really strange sensation when one's plane suddenly banks left, and the earth doesn't stop getting closer no matter what one tries.

[Chock 17,769]

Another real world one here, this was way back in the '90s when I was learning to fly gliders at Husbands Bosworth airfield in Leicestershire. I was in an SZD 50-3 Puchacz two seat training glider, and it was maybe day three of a week long residential flying course. I'd spent the past two days greasing it in perfectly on every landing, and my instructor was impressed with my ability to do so, but he nevertheless cautioned me that if I ever got that wrong, it would result in a heavy landing and so it'd be advisable to go for the less flashy but ultimately better more regular landing technique.

 

Sure enough, he was right, for on that third day I got a bit visually fixated on my chosen touchdown point, and flared a bit too late. Result: a pretty hard landing which saw us doing a walkaround of the aeroplane to check I hadn't damaged it; fortunately, training aeroplanes are built pretty tough and can take the odd hard landing and shrug it off, so there was no damage, but I was feeling pretty sheepish when we did that inspection. Next flight I stopped doing those greasers and landed in the more preferred way, and have done ever since. Got sent solo two days after that and so got my glider 'wings' badge and the BGA and FAI licenses, so, a lesson learned.

[tailspin45 20]

On 1/20/2017 at 1:31 AM, Chock said:

 

I know exactly what you mean. The first time I experienced a winch launch I remember thinking: 'Jeez, this is fast, I thought gliders were all sedate n stuff'.

 

It's probably because you go from stopped to about 50 knots in a couple of seconds or so, so it is undeniably very rapid acceleration, and the only other way anyone ever gets that kind of acceleration out of an aeroplane is from a catapult launch off an aircraft carrier. Then, just when you've got your head around that part, you start climbing at what seems like about 45 degrees. It's a real shock the first time you experience it, isn't it?

 

Just wait until you get a cable break at something awkward like about 300 feet and have to decide whether there is room to land ahead, or whether to dive it to get some speed and then do a 180 to land back downwind; that'll have you thinking fast lol. If you ever do have that happen btw if there is room, landing ahead is safer, but if you do decide to try turning back, make sure you stick the nose well down to get craploads of speed on before attempting to turn, or you'll stall it and spin in. Whatever you do, don't try and edge it round with the rudder, people die when they try stupid stuff like that. Instead do a chandelle - i.e. nose down, get the airspeed really really fast (I mean like nearing Vne kind of fast lol), then stand it on its wingtip and come around quickly whilst you've got all that speed on the clock (cos your stall speed increases in a bank, remember). It's really satisfying when you manage to pull that off; makes you feel like a good pilot, which indeed you are when you get something like that right.

Just in case anyone reads this --  as a CFIG I have to make sure you know just about everything he says is wrong except the part about trying to force the turn with rudder. 

[HighBypass 2,339]

Tom,

I respect your position and knowledge as a CFI, as do I also respect Chock's hours in real aircraft, but for the sake of my own curiosity I must ask: Plain wrong or just not taught as it sounds quite advanced? (Please, no pissing contests here)

At about 300 feet there's hopefully still enough room in front of you even once you've attained flying speed to land ahead and not hit the winch...I suspect the dive to attain speed would get rid of most of the 300 feet altitude.. There might be an option of an intentional groundloop in case things are really wrong - dropping a wing so you in fact turn away from the winch? No good for the glider, but.... Skylaunch winches are other launching "vehicles" are pretty solid things aren't they?

I think I get what Chock means - trading whatever altitude you've got for whatever airspeed you can get, and then assuming you've managed to get a crapload of speed, a chandelle would again trade speed for altitude and a rapid change of direction, then you trade that altitude for the speed to execute a controlled landing. A tad unconventional and I don't think it would be taught (should ever be taught?) to a small-hours, non-solo glider pilot such as me, but it could be something else in the "let me and the aircraft survive" bag of tricks...

 

Thanks.

[tailspin45 20]

I wouldn't have commented except for a concern that someone might get hurt using the procedure described.

A cable break at 300' is going to be exciting, sure. And getting the nose down is indeed the first priority even if there are miles ahead of you to land. Falling out of the sky can ruin your day. 

If you and your ship are up to it, pushing over at zero G after a cable break would be optimum because no G means no lift means no induced drag means no slow down so much—all designed to get into a best L/D attitude. And that attitude, it's worth remembering, means you have to pitch from about 45º nose up to say 10º nose down. That's almost 60º and will take a deliberate push to avoid slowing down too much during the maneuver. It's tempting after the extreme nose up attitude to be satisfied to just get the nose back to somewhere near the horizon. But with the nose still up and the bird still decelerating, your setting up a stall.

That said, a stall at 300' won't kill you if you recover properly. An improper recovery—a pull on the stick instead of a push, stimulated by ground fright, inexperience, or poor training—can kill you, however. I read somewhere recently that at Fighter Weapons School someone told a class to always remember that the ground has a kill ratio of 100%. (Yeah, I know, that's not a ratio. But, give them some slack, they're Air Force.)

But I digress. My point is the attitude required to get to best L/D is most certainly not achieved by pointing your aircraft at the ground nor looking for Vne. In fact, I doubt you could reach Vne from 300' in a sailpane anyway, unless the wings already came off. Why not? Induced drag again—and that's the reason why pushing to anything near Vne is a bad idea. You may gain some speed, but in doing so you'll have burned off a whole lotta energy as drag, energy that you can never get back.

In short, things do break and you will make mistakes. What you do about it is what matters. Any time you have to succeed at some extreme maneuver to survive it's not something that should make you feel good because you've already flunked. Or said another way, "Truly superior pilots are those who use their superior judgment to avoid those situations where they might have to use their superior skills."

[Chock 17,769]

Nope, it isn't 'plain wrong' Mark, the fact that I am still around to actually talk about it, should be enough proof of that. Although it probably is worth pointing out that to do such a thing properly, you have to be confident in your abilities to fly the aircraft well, and decide weather or not it might be better to land ahead, which at pretty much every airfield would indeed be the case. So it is worth pointing out that the airfield I was doing that at, was Camphill, which to anyone who is familiar with gliding in the UK will be aware, is probably the toughest airfield to fly from in that country, since there is not really anywhere to land ahead when launching from certain directions. In fact, you had to actually do a course there with a number of rigorous flight tests before they would let you fly solo from it, including having to do a spin recovery from an entry height of 1,000 feet AGL because with it being, as its name suggests, on top of a hill the best part of a thousand feet above much of the surrounding terrain, and in the Derbyshire Peak District, a region which is fairly famous for having had loads of aeroplanes in WW2 crash with a CFIT owing to the low cloud ceiling, it is not unknown to come up into cloud whilst still on the winch, which would mean pulling off and dropping out of the clouds, but with most gliders not having an AH, there is a slim possibility of a stall and spin if one were to get vertigo in a cloud (coincidentally, something which I am currently involved with  investigating for an A320 airliner accident report), so they want to know you can do it from a winch height.

More to the point perhaps lol, good old Hotel Hotel Charlie - an SZD 50-3 Puchacz - an aircraft in which according to my logbook, I did precisely that manoeuvre at Camphill on 12/9/1999 (with it should be noted, an instructor in the back at the time, since I was on an aerobatics course there on that day), was still perfectly intact after having done that should also make it apparent that it was not 'wrong' under those specific circumstances, which indeed I was at pains to point out on the original post.

It is kind of amusing to see the 'Time in Air' column in my logbook reading: H-0, M-1 lol. But what is more interesting, is that it was not me who filled out the 'Details of Flight' column in my logbook for that short flight, but the instructor who was in the back. As noted, we were not doing initial flight training on that occasion, since according to my logbook it was my 79th flight in that type of aircraft, but supposed to be getting up some height to do some aeros. The instructor's handwriting is a bit hard to read, but I can make out that the last word is 'Congratulations', so evidently he didn't think it was 'wrong'.

Here ya go. The exact logbook entry...

Actually, looking at that log entry, it might have been solo with the instructor observing from the field, difficult to remember exactly since it was nearly 20 years ago, but I could have sworn he was in the back, not that it really matters.

If anyone is not familiar with Camphill, taking a look at some of the pictures of it might give you an idea why landing ahead isn't always a possibility:

http://glidingclub.org.uk/

As you can probably see, from some launch directions, there aren't many fields of a sufficient length (lots of dry stone walls and small fields with sheep and cattle in) or sufficiently level enough to make it down onto safely if you get a cable break at an awkward height. There is a golf course in one direction (I've landed on that once in the past - they didn't exacttly love what my main gear did to the fairways lol, and it's a pain in the butt dismantling something to trailer it back too, not to mention getting that big arsed trailer up the tight turns on the road back up to the airfield, more than one trailer has grounded on a turn and had to be hauled out of the predicament with a lot of sweat and swearing!).

Anyway, that's a fun airfield to fly from (they had the world gliding competion there, in the 1930s I think, since it is a tough place to navigate and fly around), but it wouldn't be my recommendation for ab initio lol.

[Chock 17,769]

Anyway, back on the original topic, here's a silly thing I did in a sim recently: spent a good thirty minutes prepping a flight in the FSL A320, supposedly between two airfields in Canada, then called for clearance and realised I was at LOWW (Schwechat) in Austria. Doh!