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Browncbr1

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When arriving and departing an extremely busy untowered field with heavy training ops, don’t double, triple, quadruple...quintuple or sextuple check to make sure your ctaf frequency is correct because you’re not hearing any of the other planes you can clearly see.   Nope, that’s not enough to verify you have the last two digits backward.     Nope, I should have made that 7th check digit by digit.   I’m sure all the CFIs were pointing “that mooney” out as examples to their students!   Doh!    I guess there is no substitute for eyeballs though. 

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I won’t say it happens to all of us, since I can’t speak for all of us. But I’ll never forget the day I did much the same thing very early in my flying career. In my case I had the correct frequency dialed in, kept looking at and wondering why I couldn’t hear the other very visible traffic in the pattern. Until I finally realized I had the volume turned way down as I was abeam the numbers and only then got the volume up in time to hear another pilot complaining that I obviously couldn’t hear them! Felt like a total idiot but it was a lesson well learned enough that’s it’s never happened again. And that’s the only positive thing I can say about such experiences like that, that such difficult lessons like that usually never needs repeating.


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You mean silence isn't always golden?

:lol:

Our community requires us to turn on the runway lights for both day and night ops (warns the kids on golf carts).  Lights are on the unicom freq, so if I can't get the lights to come on, I'm either keying the wrong freq, the wrong radio, or both.  No help for a low volume setting, though.

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36 minutes ago, Mooneymite said:

You mean silence isn't always golden?

:lol:

Our community requires us to turn on the runway lights for both day and night ops (warns the kids on golf carts).  Lights are on the unicom freq, so if I can't get the lights to come on, I'm either keying the wrong freq, the wrong radio, or both.  No help for a low volume setting, though.

Going to FXE to get my tanks resealed, I was flying IFR in VMC but was too far away to hear ATIS,  so I just turned down the volume on Com2. Vectored out over the Everglades, I started hearing "noises"! Unhappy pilot! Something made me check the radio after a couple of minutes, turned up the volume and found the source of the funny noises--ATIS was strong enough to break squelch.

Living at an uncontrolled field, I sometimes either forget to hit the flip flop or miss it. It happens . . . .

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I wish I could say that experience would cure this problem. It lessen the frequency of stupid pilot tricks. But never seems to compleatly eliminate it. Any pilot that tells you they are too good to do things like that is probably about to do it. We can only learn from our mistakes and try like hell to never do it again. If we were perfect we wouldn't need an airplane we could just fly like the angels.

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Sure appreciate all the confessions in this thread, I've made similar errors.

Worth remembering if you're ever on the verge of air rage about "that idiot who didn't even make position reports in the pattern!"  Might be an honest mistake on their part, and might be you that has the frequency wrong or the audio panel mis-set or whatever.

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Or make your calls on the Unicom frequency ( Unicom folks were outside watering the plants so couldn't correct me) and I missed the fact they also have a CTAF.. Yep, happened in to me in PA. I landed one way and a Cessna came in right after the other way. Fortunately, I was landing on the correct runway according to AWOS. Kind of two wrongs didn't make a right. oops.

It  was a little awkward as I was paying for my fuel and neither of us mentioned anything to each other. Filled up and headed out the same runway I came in on, but of course announcing on the CTAF this time.

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Once coming back home after dark I started making position calls about 10 miles out. At about 5 miles I tried turning on the runway lights and they wouldn't come on. Then I realized I had the wrong frequency dialed in. Quickly changed it, made a call (it was late and I was fortunately the only one in the sky anywhere near there), turned on the lights and landed uneventfully.

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Or you could be like me, tuned into tower about 25 miles out.. flying your wife and her best friend and thinking it would be cute to pretend you’re an airline pilot and read them the “beginning our descent, weather, thanks for flying with us”  speech and at the end realize by habit you keyed the mike and broadcast the whole thing.  Oops.

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19 hours ago, Browncbr1 said:

When arriving and departing an extremely busy untowered field with heavy training ops, don’t double, triple, quadruple...quintuple or sextuple check to make sure your ctaf frequency is correct because you’re not hearing any of the other planes you can clearly see.   Nope, that’s not enough to verify you have the last two digits backward.     Nope, I should have made that 7th check digit by digit.   I’m sure all the CFIs were pointing “that mooney” out as examples to their students!   Doh!    I guess there is no substitute for eyeballs though. 

Even at a quiet field it is important to check.  Not to long ago I was flying a 767 into Maui at 4am.  I was flying and the captain was working the radios.  He was transmitting our position and trying to control the lights on the wrong freq.  was not even close. After landing I took over the radios and realized the issue......It must have been the previous arrival that turned the lights on for themselves and we got lucky they stayed on for us as they went dark soon after we landed.  Happens to everyone......

 

 

 

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On 2/24/2018 at 10:24 PM, ragedracer1977 said:

Or you could be like me, tuned into tower about 25 miles out.. flying your wife and her best friend and thinking it would be cute to pretend you’re an airline pilot and read them the “beginning our descent, weather, thanks for flying with us”  speech and at the end realize by habit you keyed the mike and broadcast the whole thing.  Oops.

I think I would have landed at another airport . . lol

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4 hours ago, teejayevans said:

Modern radios confirm your selection by listing the nearest applicable airport, no need to check morse code either. I love technology.

I'm not often landing at the nearest akrport, and our hero abkve was 25nm when he "oopsed" with his thumb on the button . . . . And regardless od what I put in for Com2, my 430W is Com1 and it doesn't do this. And when I'm in touch with ATC, my ppreference is Com1, leaving me Com2  for things like weather ahead, calling CTAF when landing at uncontrolled fields, etc.

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On ‎2‎/‎24‎/‎2018 at 5:33 PM, Vance Harral said:

Worth remembering if you're ever on the verge of air rage about "that idiot who didn't even make position reports in the pattern!"  Might be an honest mistake on their part, and might be you that has the frequency wrong or the audio panel mis-set or whatever.

Yes, yes, I know, that was me fuming in the cockpit wondering why nobody in the pattern was announcing a couple years ago.  In my defense, they had changed the CTAF frequency and it was in the A/FD but not on the sectional yet, but I was swearing a blue streak until the FBO called up on the old frequency to tell me.

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So  I need to add to this cause there is a point when your brain is on overload.  Been dealing with vandalism and theft all weekend and I decided this morning to take a quick flight around the pattern to clear my mind before work.  Did my preflight check removed my pitot tube cover put it in my pocket finished my walk around...,  get a phone call to head into work so I scrap the plane ride reinstall the cover cover....,  get another phone call canceling meeting...  Take plane out for a quick ride....   Your airspeed will not work when covered.  As soon as I took off The bells in my brain were going batty against my one brain cell. 

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41 minutes ago, Dream to fly said:

So  I need to add to this cause there is a point when your brain is on overload.  Been dealing with vandalism and theft all weekend and I decided this morning to take a quick flight around the pattern to clear my mind before work.  Did my preflight check removed my pitot tube cover put it in my pocket finished my walk around...,  get a phone call to head into work so I scrap the plane ride reinstall the cover cover....,  get another phone call canceling meeting...  Take plane out for a quick ride....   Your airspeed will not work when covered.  As soon as I took off The bells in my brain were going batty against my one brain cell. 

Be careful! Distraction is the mother of all kinds of bad things . . . . .

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1 hour ago, Dream to fly said:

So  I need to add to this cause there is a point when your brain is on overload.  Been dealing with vandalism and theft all weekend and I decided this morning to take a quick flight around the pattern to clear my mind before work.  Did my preflight check removed my pitot tube cover put it in my pocket finished my walk around...,  get a phone call to head into work so I scrap the plane ride reinstall the cover cover....,  get another phone call canceling meeting...  Take plane out for a quick ride....   Your airspeed will not work when covered.  As soon as I took off The bells in my brain were going batty against my one brain cell. 

On a very long x-country flight with a friend in his airplane we made a late-day fuel stop but discovered the pumps had been shut off already.   The fuel cap had been taken off in anticipation of refueling, but since we didn't refuel it didn't get replaced.   We didn't realize this until tying down at the destination airport, so we had to scramble to find a fuel cap in BFE, which took some effort. 

Since then the very last thing I do before getting in the airplane, every time, is one more walk around the entire airplane, checking just easy visual stuff:  tires aren't flat, it's not tied down, no chocks, the fuel caps are on, no cowl plugs, no pitot cover, hatch is closed and latched, etc., etc.   I don't touch anything, just walk around and look one more time, regardless of even if I just preflighted it, as I miss stuff on pre-flight sometimes just like you did.

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