Ok, when I took a long trip once I used major airports, because I foolishly thought I wanted to become a CPL. Since I was in a warrior II I would come in fast to keep ATC happy then land long without flaps on runways several thousand feet long.

The day I got back after clearing customs in YYC we went back to YBW. Suddenly 3000' or whatever it was at the time, was not enough. I over shot, went around and tried for the first 1/4 of the runway instead of the last.

When landing in someone's self-maintained back garden strip - verify by telephone when they last mowed the grass. It's unnerving thinking about the eventual length of your takeoff run when you find that you have to apply 80% power just to keep the wheels moving while taxiing.

you have to apply 80% power just to keep the wheels moving while taxiing

As I'm sure you figured out, what you do in that situation
is a few runs up and down the grass strip, mowing the
grass with your Hartzell (or Macauley).

Eventually you can take off, but the aircraft looks like
the underside of a lawn mower. Next, you need to find
a good rainshower to fly through, to get rid of it.

The above is completely fictional.

Colonel Sanders wrote: As I'm sure you figured out, what you do in that situation
is a few runs up and down the grass strip, mowing the
grass with your Hartzell (or Macauley).

Eventually you can take off, but the aircraft looks like
the underside of a lawn mower. Next, you need to find
a good rainshower to fly through, to get rid of it.

The above is completely fictional.

Is that good for the prop?

Myself and another 172 owner did that at Jack's strip in Delia once. My buddy flew in first and was meant to check the strip, but I guess he didn't notice the 3ft high grass from the air. Anyway, it certainly helps reduce the ground roll. We just used Jack's mower to cut the grass before taking off again. I think Jack had actually gone out for the evening (I guess it's good to call before you drop in on someone's grass strip

Is that good for the prop?

Nothing is good for the prop. Not hours, not
years, not taxiing, not rain, not gravel. It's
all downhill after it departs the factory.

More importantly with a grass strip, is ... how
wet is it? How much has it rained lately? What
is the drainage like? Do a low pass - can you see
the reflection of standing water? Are there dark
green, lush areas? High and low areas?

If it's soft, and you land on it, your airplane is
going to pitch upside down, and it doesn't matter
if you're . Yeager or not, you're along for a
very unpleasant ride and a call to the TSB.

In a rush one day, imagine that....?

Departing single pilot IFR from Jamaica to Mexico in a King Air, super busy at the base that morning, weather coming in at the destination, got fuel, clearance, taxied, took off, climbed through 180 and while reaching for 29.92 out over the ocean, realized I'd left the logbook with all the goods on my desk. Yeah, rushing gets you nowhere fast... or more accurately after returning and waiting over an hour for fuel, it gets you somewhere, just reaaalllly slow.

Needless to say, lesson learned.

As a fresh PPL, I'll jump in.

I was about 2 weeks away from finishing the accelerated PPL course I was on, but due to weather I was slightly behind schedule in the course. An aircraft had opened up Saturday evening, so I headed down to the airport to punch in the winds and do my long solo XC. The route I planned was CYQF-CFN7-CEG4-CYQL (Red Deer, Sundre, Drumheller), and since I had done the same route with my instructor I was feeling pretty relaxed about the flight. The first two legs to Sundre and Drumheller had gone well, and after doing the touch and go in Drumheller I set off back to Red Deer, and this is where it all started to unravel. The climbout to my set heading point was easy, and I turned to my heading home.

Flying westbound in the evening with the sun setting right in front of me made for an awful time trying to spot landmarks coupled with some haze. Whether it was the winds or perhaps I set my HI incorrectly, I don't know, but the problem was I completely missed my first landmark. It was 2 towns and a bridge, and ideally you thread the needle between them. Couldn't find it for the life of me, and I threw all rational thought out the window. I started heading towards to north, couldn't find it. Back west a little, nope! Starting to get slightly nervous I turned to a heading I thought would work and plodded on searching for any landmarks. Not finding anything I could positively identify I went for the last ditch scenario, and pulled out my iPhone to check the GPS. I was able to nail down a town I was near, and adjusted my heading to head back home (for sure this time). I check my watch, and sure enough I figured I would be about half an hour behind schedule, so I decide to call Edmonton radio to amend my flight plan. I make a call on 126.7, and... nothing. No response. It turned out my aircraft (known as 'zero' among those at the school due to its shortcomings) had a radio issue, as another student about fifteen minutes away heard them make 5 calls to me which I failed to hear. Eventually I get back to Red Deer and land, certainly not the most enjoyable flight I've done, though I did learn a few valuable lessons about XC flying.

Colonel Sanders wrote:

you have to apply 80% power just to keep the wheels moving while taxiing

As I'm sure you figured out, what you do in that situation
is a few runs up and down the grass strip, mowing the
grass with your Hartzell (or Macauley).

Eventually you can take off

Used to do similar when on skis to pack down snow. Works the same. But was at about 6000 feet on a glacier. Did it once with a car at an airport as well when I discovered the conditions were poorer than expected(lac-a-la-Tortue).

Don' fly with anyone who is drunk. Early in my commercial flying career I let 9 very drunk lacrosse players get on my Navajo. The flight was only 15 minuites long so what could go wrong

Well other than the guy behind me who kept punching me the shoulder, the two guys in row 3 who were fighting and the guy who tried to open the emergency exit, not much.

I had the RCMP meet me on arrival, but the boss would not let me press charges because he was afraid to loose the business

CpnCrunch wrote:
Myself and another 172 owner did that at Jack's strip in Delia once. My buddy flew in first and was meant to check the strip, but I guess he didn't notice the 3ft high grass from the air. Anyway, it certainly helps reduce the ground roll. We just used Jack's mower to cut the grass before taking off again. I think Jack had actually gone out for the evening (I guess it's good to call before you drop in on someone's grass strip

I used to always call ahead for operations into a grass strip and try to get hold of a pilot to talk to. Ideally, to see if anyone else was using the strip and any other useful info. I just don't trust myself to be able to analyze a grass landing area from the air. There are too many little gotcha's that you might not see when trying to inspect it while still flying the aircraft or even if you can get someone else to fly while the inspection is done.

One time up near Espanola at some private strip near Massey, there was no one answering the phone so I went up anyways and found it kind of mucky on landing with water visible by the wheels as they rolled over the grass and squeezed the water to the surface. On the 180° turnaround I was creating ruts. You just can't see some of this stuff from the air. There were trees at the end of the runway and I just didn't want to chance it after having read some nasty accident reports, so I told all the pax to meet me at another airport 45 minutes away for their departure so I could fly out of the soft strip empty. Always wondered how it would have worked out with everyone on board and our almost full fuel tanks.

By the way......Don't forget to walk back down to your ruts prior to departure and do your best to flatten them out. Otherwise they will dry out and be a hard bump for someone else's landing when it dries out.

My instructor told me a PPL a is a license to learn, I've been learning.

Don't take off with a tailwind. Any kind of tailwind. Even a variable one that you've been monitoring that you're expecting to go away "any second". I didn't like it when my tail came up on me before I rotated, luckily I recovered, but it could have been much worse.

Flying on floats is considerably harder than you think. The runway conditions (wind, boat traffic, rocks, logs etc.) can change in a matter of minutes. Every time I fly a float plane (with an instructor always and I only have 10 hours on floats) I am humbled. I have nearly landed with a tailwind a few times by accident by mis-reading the wind lines. Also, when you're on the water, navigating is hard, particularly in unfamiliar places.

If you're flying anywhere unfamiliar, or in an unfamiliar aircraft or with a new friend/pilot be sure to brief yourself/each other on all phases of flight. This is especially important when launching a float plane from a dock. Even moreso when said floatplane costs 10 times more than your net worth. Luckily the prop wasn't damaged and I don't need to sell my house. I wasn't properly prepared for what would happen while we were waiting for the turbine to spool up given the wind direction.

Heavy airplanes are dangerous. Always do your performance calculations. I thought I had enough runway when I was fully loaded to clear an obstacle, and I just barely made it because I waited to rotate until I had ample airspeed. I should have used a longer runway or a short field takeoff procedure.

Regardless of what ATIS or a controller tell you, always note the direction of the windsock on short final and adjust accordingly. I've had some close calls with last minute gusts on a variety of airplanes.

I feel like I could go on, like I said, I learn something new every flight.

Don't take off with a tailwind. Any kind of tailwind.

I wouldn't say that's a hard and fast, I learned a while ago that often the runway slope trumps the effect of lighter winds.

Shiny Side Up wrote:

Don't take off with a tailwind. Any kind of tailwind.

I wouldn't say that's a hard and fast, I learned a while ago that often the runway slope trumps the effect of lighter winds.

Agreed. Tailwinds are fine, as long as you KNOW what you are doing. In many mountainous bush settings they are inevitable and must be dealt with. It is doable, and safely. Same goes for landing with them - there is a method, and there is a "no-go" threshold, but we managed to operate this way for many years in an off-strip environment, it can be done safely.

stl

heh - fair enough. I felt like I cheated death in that tailwind, but I only have 200 hours, so really, every time I fly, I'm cheating death

Lotro wrote:heh - fair enough. I felt like I cheated death in that tailwind, but I only have 200 hours, so really, every time I fly, I'm cheating death

That feeling does go away -- I'm at 500. A certain comfort level does come -- just never get too comfortable . My rule now is tailwinds are OK at 5 knots or less -- with a comfortable length runway / and or other factors like slope or terrain. Definately not OK for a short runway. (unless well known and briefed by those with more time than I have)

To add to the list one of my rules bought by experience is always check the floats yourself. Thankfully we didn't also have a lot of fuel on that day, but I'm not 100% certain that we weren't over gross. I figure there was at least another 400lbs of water in those damn things, hard to measure when you're just counting strokes with the pump. After you give someone the evil eye for a while you'll get the "well the first couple compartments didn't have any so I thought..." and "so you're saying you check them all before every flight?"

i have just registered on avcanada to say what an aoutstanding thread this is.
what i really like are peoples descriptions of their thought process leading up to their mistakes. i am a new ppl myself, i am finding this extremely educational, thanks!

There are lots, and lots of mistakes. And then cousins of those mistakes. And then cousins of those cousins.

I suggest a new ppl -- I still do this -- make a mental journal of each flight and what could have been improved. Personally, I don't think I've had perfect flight yet.

Not mine this time, but I was recently talking to an older and now wiser pilot who had a few very close calls when he was younger. One time he cut it a bit fine with the fuel quantity on a multi-leg trip, and the engine quit just after landing as he was taxiing back. Switching to the other tank prevented further embarrassment.

A good rule in my opinion is to always plan to land with 1 hour of fuel remaining, and also land soon if the gauges are showing less than 1/4 full.

Another time he got caught out in deteriorating weather with lowering cloud bases. When the trees started coming up to meet him, he decided the best course of action was to climb into IMC (he didn't have an instrument rating). After climbing into the clouds he turned around and eventually got back to VMC safely.

I flew over to a local island aerodrome one day with three other aircraft, sort of in a loose gaggle... Long before I started flying formation. We played around on each other's wings on the way over, and then stretched out line-astern. Probably no more than a mile apart when we crossed midfield and turned downwind left for landing.

This particular strip is one-way... and 2/3 of it is uphill. The middle third is level, with a pond on one side and hangars on the other. It looks like a postage stamp when you're approaching it, but it's really not that bad because of the uphill grade for the 1st third of the runway. Land on that, and you'll usually be stopped before you get to the flat bit. There's no going around, as the hill behind out-climbs most small light a/c that don't have high thrust to weight ratios.

This particular day, however, we had a tailwind on landing... I was told it isn't uncommon at this strip, but I had never encountered one there in a few dozen landings so I wasn't really thinking about it (error 1). As we approached, and everyone started slowing down, our 1 mile separation got smaller because we all didn't slow down at the same time (error 2). And finally, the plane I was in had a known problem with the throttle cable that from idle, it wanted to inch forward from 600 to about 1000rpm if you let go of it. I knew of the condition, and had flown that way before (we were still debating the best way to fix it), but I had forgotten about it (error 3) and wasn't keeping my hand on it on short final.

So at the end of the day, here's me rocketing (relatively) down final, touching down 15 mph fast, with a bit of power on, two aircraft ahead of me on the runway, and one ahead of them which had just pulled off before the pond. The second pulled in between the hangars, and the third landed long and did a U-turn at the end of the flat section, well beyond where most planes reach when landing there. I did figure out the throttle, but by that time I had wasted my uphill section and spent the whole time on the flat section braking (mostly useless on grass) and wagging the rudder to increase drag and give everyone time to vacate my path.

I ended up doing a semi-groundloop at the end of the flat section, while my wing went under the wing of the plane that stopped there and then pulled off to one side when he saw me (high-wing/low-wing). No damage to any people or property, but it was a good adrenaline rush...

Lessons learned?
Know the winds before you land.
Know the effect of those winds on your approach.
Keep your hands on the controls.
Don't tailgate.

Lotro wrote: This is especially important when launching a float plane from a dock. Even moreso when said floatplane costs 10 times more than your net worth. Luckily the prop wasn't damaged and I don't need to sell my house. I wasn't properly prepared for what would happen while we were waiting for the turbine to spool up given the wind direction.

What turbine floatplane were you flying with <10hr on floats?

trampbike wrote:Should I really feed the troll..?

pdw wrote: What 767 essentially tried to say there is that if you are so near the ground when accidentally nearing stall (not sure exactly how near you are to stall in that first second you're caught by surprise seeing a quickly-lost low airspeed) your power then is primary too ... as lowering the nose without it will get too close / too quick after 500ftAGL in seriously decaying IAS. (You're caught between a rock and a hard place there ... whether you like it or not)

trampbike wrote: And that would be just plain wrong. Power will never be primary on a stall recovery. Never. Doesn't matter how low you are, what kind of aircraft you fly or the super special decreased performance windshear you might encounter.

I beg to differ in this context (this having been my most important point leading in) that without immediately placing full power in this particular situation while letting the nose down a bit ... not yet stalled in a sudden negative shear-entry on final approach but "nearing"/ neared very quickly to (or at) stallspeed when near-the-ground. Was fairly certain that from the moment full power was in place (as slow speed is first noticed) the Cardinal was on the edge of stalling in those 15-sec left to the threshold (was only stretched to 15 by the immediate full power) ... so that lowering the nose too much (and 'only') would have introduced an irrecoverable sinkrate and only 3 seconds to impact ?

I maintain it would be quite deadly in the first second of lowering the nose with a delayed power application in my case where penetrating further/down into the negative shear (allows the decay-rate to continue) by shoving the nose-down carelessly without the full power; the nosedown-only action here actually contributes to prolonging airspeed decay in this context (few precious moments) ... when so dangerously-near to the surface.

The consensus at our club was that you do do both at the same time there. In that sense I still believe 767 had made a point that is valid (doing "both" so near the ground) if he was instructing in an area where these types of shears (sudden/negative change/transition without any sign of turbulence) can occur, just like still happens at Niagara on occasion when in approach, ... when the runway is downwind of the flatland/ with southwest winds (300' higher than airport elevation) but situated below an escarpment down where there's an opposite northeast breeze, a cooler / retreating air steeping over the larger / lower Lake Ontario.

When saying "put nose down first" ... are saying "power second". That spells delay ... which I still don't believe is affordable in certain situations where 'slowing-to-stallspeed' is-happening in a negative shear close to landing. My mistake ... to let the plane get so slow there.

Again, I won't repeat that mistake, coming in smooth / fast and flat without flap on a clear day only then to be suddenly caught up in an airpeed decay/shear, so-unexpected and so-smooth that it is so-tricky, where 15 seconds of full power hardly increased decaying airspeed (stayed close to stallspeed ... near max gross) as the last 500 ft of altitude unwound too-fast-for-comfort to the 24-threshold.

When saying "put nose down first" ... are saying "power second". That spells delay ... which I still don't believe is affordable in certain situations where 'slowing-to-stallspeed'

I considerably disagree...

Putting the nose down first means no delay, in unloading the wing, and placing the plane in a favourable attitude to accelerate, particularly with engine power. This is of PRIMARY importance. If you do not lower the nose, and unload that wing, and your application of power does not fix it, you're in big trouble, and now you have a whole bunch of power (torque) applied as you approach a stall, which is asking for a spin entry. Or, you jammed the throttle, and it quit - now you're delayed more, slowing faster, and the nose is still up. It's going to be bad....

Yes, power should be added if a stall is imminent, but that will always be secondary to lowering the nose, and reducing the tendency to stall, and flying the plane.

There is no way that the addition of power can reduce the tendency to stall as quickly as reducing the angle of attack, and getting the nose down to promote recovery - the affect of that is instant - zero delay. Increase in power is never instant.

Adding power in a Cessna lowers the stall speed by blowing air across the wings and reattaching the flow. The benefits in stall recovery are not just about increasing the airspeed.

It was at 1500, just added another 900rpm ... but sure didn't feel like much even WITH same-time lowering the nose from the 2-3 degrees glideslope to about 5-6 at first recognition of "slow" (then adjusting to about 3-4).