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When You Want Something so BADLY It Almost Costs You Your Life


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On 5/6/2017 at 8:17 AM, Oscar Avalle said:

...since then we had many adventures together...

LOL. I have had many 'adventures' with my E as well. My wife calls the collection "the reasons she won't fly with me"!

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I am really enjoying reading your experiences everyone.  Thank you all for sharing.  Some reoccurring themes I definitely recognize in myself.  You truly don't know what you don't know.  I think there is a lot of wisdom from all your words if others read and learn from your experiences.

Nice writing too.  Way better than Sunday night T.V. (Though Fargo on DVR was a hoot).

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OK...guess I will reveal my most stupid/dangerous time back in the early 1990's.

Kept my original 201 in a community hanger at Austin municipal (prior to Bergstrom) airport.

It was cold (for Texas) day about 10AM...called the FBO to get out my plane and leave it on the large ramp in front off the hanger .  Hanger was the middle one of three about 200 yards from the FBO.

Tried to start the Lycoming IO 360 and starter would only whir... starter would not engage.  Previously I could move the prop a couple of inches and then could engage the starter.  Of course I had a can of starter fluid ...just in case.

Go out ( did not set brake because was only going to move prop a couple of inches).  Just to help things I shot a little starter fluid in...you can guess what happened when I barely moved the prop...I dashed to the side and watched my plane go about 100 yards on the huge deserted ramp (no witnesses) and coast to a stop.  I pushed it back to the hanger drove home went to bed...and did not fly for a week or two.  I learned a huge lesson then.

Bob

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Since we are all confessing....

My most idiotic flight was in 1981.  I had bought a C-150 with a partner.  Neither one of us had any money to maintain it, other than scraping enough together for an owner-assisted annual.  So it turned into a flying junker. (Eventually the other guy had the wisdom to sell me his half).

My goal was to show my boss how I could use the plane for business.  We had a presentation to a potential new client in Parkersburg WV.  I was to fly from my home base in Frederick MD and join my boss (who was smart enough to drive) for the presentation.  

The weather forecast was for high overcast and a broken layer over Parkersburg.  Needless to say, neither I nor the C-150 were "instrument rated and equipped".  Leaving Frederick, I climbed to get over the mountains.  Gradually the scattered to broken clouds below me turned into a solid undercast layer.  I was now trapped between an overcast and undercast layer.  My navigation method in this plane was limited to pilotage, since the only NavCom in the plane was unreliable in both Nav and Comm.  On top of that, the whiskey compass had some kind of problem and was unreliable.  You can see where this is going.  When my carefully filled out flight log said that I should be over Parkersburg (based on timing), I was stuck in between layers, and could not even use my backup navigation method ("where is the sun?") to figure out which way I was heading.  And with strong headwinds I was running low on fuel over the mountains of WV.

The only radio on the plane that was somewhat reliable was an ADF.  There were no NDBs in the area so I resorted to looking for an AM radio station in the Cumberland MD area to get myself turned around.  Fortunately I picked up a station, and was never so happy as to see the needle turn toward the station.  The clouds were broken over Cumberland and I dove through an opening to find the airport.  After filling the tanks I estimated that I had about 20 minutes of flying time when I landed. I got a rental car and drove the rest of the way to Parkersburg, arriving just in time to see the presentation ending.  My boss was not a happy camper, and we did not get the business.  On the other hand, I was still alive.

When I look back at this episode I can't believe how stupid I was. Never again!  If any aspect of a flight begins to sound like something you might read in an NTSB accident report, I don't make the flight.

 

 

 

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