I learnt About Flying From That

[AndyG]

Eeeiiisshh,

No stories, maybe I should delete this log???

[grostek]

Nah,

Keep it going , I am sure the stories will come.

Kind regads,

Gunter Rostek

[Morph]

OK, have told these before but here goes

Early 2000, started training in Bapsfontein. I had less than 2 hours and another guy was prepping his Quicksilver for a flight. Intructor asks me if I want to go for a flight and I readily agree. Pilot agrees and we jump in. Now he has no instruments, except a bird feeder ASI (basically a tube with a ball in it. speed makes the ball float). We line up and take off. perfect climb out, turn cross wind, pilot keeps pulling back on the stick into a power on stall. drops the nosed recovers, pulls into a stall again, recover again, turn downwind, I hear out instructor on the radio, "Put the nose down, gain airspeed" Not this guy, nose up stall, recover. Eventually in a panic he turns base towards the runway and we stall for the last time. He froze, holding the aircraft in a nose high attitude and we fall. We hit the ground destroying undercarraige, wing struts, snapped etc. Luckily no injuries. The ground around the airfield was sloped upwards, and his brain had the impression we were loosing height, when we were not. He had no ALT so he couldn't tell

Lessons learned
1. never just trust someone without seeing them fly first.
2. Never fly in an aircraft without instruments, especially ASI and ALT
3. As Pilot, if you are unsure, don't let someone, like an instructor force you to do something you are uncomfortable with
4. Don't tell the wife, especially if you only have 2 hours under the belt and have already been in your first crash

[Morph]

Story 2

in 2000, still busy with my training, my destructor, who paced my flying according to his cash flow requirements and bottle store account, only ever took me up in pristine conditions. Once, we took off, and it was bumpy. (now I have more experience, it was mild). He immediately grabbed the stick and landed us again. Not very inspiring. Told me conditions were too bad to fly. So as a result I never flew in any form of turbulance, Until solo cross country from hell!!!!! I planed this untra trip from Baps to Thabazimbi and back over a weekend. No advice from him, knowing it was a long flight and I would be landing in Thabazimbi is the hottest time of the day.

Took off 5h30 am and routed for Cullinan and Rust-de-winter, then on to Warmbaths for refuel, beautiful. Take off 10am climb from 3000ft to 7500 to clear the mountains over Rooiberg and down into the Thabazimbi valley. WACK, the plane is on it's side Push joystick right, eventually she rolls ever so slowly back, WACK, leftwing up. Pull the joystick, and lots of rudder she rolls back, dropping, climbing, PING PONG. WTF is this I had no clue. Instinct told me get close to the ground, pulled back on the throttle, and put her into a near VNE decent. Eventually flew at about 100ft agl along the road into town and landed safely. I tied the plane down, got a lift to the pub and got horribly pissed.

Lessons learned
1. your instructor must teach you to fly in turbulance. you cannot imagine the severity and the shock if you have never felt it before. One of the instructors at Morning Star deliberately takes his guys up in high wind and turbulant conditions and all of hs students tackle long distances well
2. Fly the plane, don't panic
3. do NOT, dive towards the ground because you think it will be safer. Altitude is your friend. If you hit thermal turbulance climb if you can. Usually just 500 ft will be enough to smooth the flight out.
4. a lot of aicraft will right themselves, they have a dihedral in the wings that ensures this. don't fight the aircraft, with anough addrenaline you can bend bars, pedals etc. Hell as Ranger says, with enough force you can break your finger off in your A&^%hole.
5. Do not ever push your aircraft to VNE and beyond in a panic, you will end up definately dying.
6. On landing come in 5 to 10 mph quicker to help penetrate the turbulance, which will be nice and bumpy over the hot black runway
7. try and detect the source of the turbulance, roads, black burned lands etc, and avoid them if possible.
8. If you are nervous, fly in cooler times of the day. Don't pressurise yourself if you are uncomfortable
tighten the seatbelt, sit back and enjoy the ride

[AndyG]

Nice ones Morph,

I can identify with a lot of points there.

[Stephan van Tonder]

hehe - this Entire last week's flying training for me was getting chucked across and up and down in the sky. I think i'm going to think there is something wrong if the wind isn't blowing Thanks for those tales guys - it really does help. Fantastic idea this... PLEASE keep them coming.

[Morph]

Standing Waves

how to lose the contents of your stomach in both directions in 3 seconds.

Here in the Cape there are huge klippe to the east and north of us. The Eastern side are much closer and tower to 8500 in places. When the wind is blowing strong easterly you are at a very high risk of standing waves. If the air is humid then you will see Lenticular clouds, at the peaks of the waves. Lenticular waves are stationary, even in heavy wind. This should be an indication to stay out of the sky.

I have had 2 cases of standing waves. One I took off with a young softness for a flight. We landed at Fisantekraal for coffee an a chat and headed back to Morning Star. Wind was blowing strong easterly. No clouds were in the sky. I took off, climbed to 1500ft and cruised back. Next moment we were free falling, wings level, just loosing altitude and a rapid pace. Suddently a solid thump and hit the bottom, lost 700feet in 1 or two seconds. Seconds later we were bounding towards the sky at 800fpm. No changes in throttle nothing. Later discovered that this was a standing wave. I took out a map, looked upwind and sure enough, the Paardeberg mountains were about 20 miles away. A standing wave will form every 15 to 20 miles depending on wind speed. The conditions need to be fairly stable with a very high wind blowing across the top of the mountain. This forms waves at regular intervals downwind from the mountain.

When you are in a sudden drop your best way out is NOT to pull back and try maintain altitude, but rather increase throttle, point down and fly out of it. On the updraft, reduce throttle and ride the storm. I would also slow down to the defined manouvering speed of the aircraft.

[Chris Liebenberg]

My story

In 2006 we flew from Lydenburg to Pyramid to join a fly-inn at BrianYoung’s place.
Dirk van Dort went in his Bantam and myself with softness as pax on a Windlass Trike.

On the day of return the weather was bad. We only took off after 10h00 when the low clouds cleared enough to have 5/8th visibility.

Visibility was bad once airborne, and we landed again at Nelspruit to wait for better conditions.

Around 11h00 we decided to head back to Lydenburg.

It was already hot with temperatures in the high 20’s, and unpleasant turbulence.
A constant steady climb was necessary to gain the 3000 ft needed to clear the mountains at Kwena dam.

Once over the mountains and on the Lydenburg side of the Kwena basin, the Rotax started to sputter, and it was impossible to maintain altitude with loss of power.

I contacted my wingman Dirk on the radio, indicating to him that I was going to do a precautionary landing, using the Lydenburg-Machado road.

Once on the ground, the engine was running smooth again with no sign of a problem.
After I did mag tests and maintain high revs for a minute or longer, I was satisfied that whatever caused the problem, had disappeared again.

Me and my soft pax took off again, and as soon as we were airborne, the sputtering started again.
Since it was Sunday, the road to Lydenburg was quiet, so with a rough running engine I tried to maintain altitude and stay overhead the road.

About 1 mile from Lydenburg, the engine died, and we made another emergency landing on the road.
We folded the wing and trailered the trike back to the hangers.
At the hangers the Rotax started and revved as if nothing was ever wrong.

During my investigation I found the problem to be the following:

The fuel pick up pipe runs trough the filler cap of the fuel tank.
The snoopy fuel tank of the Windlass has got a small cavity at the bottom of the tank, where the pick up pipe needs to fit in to ensure fuel is taken from the bottom of the tank.

During the refuelling process at Pyramid, the willing hands of ground crew closed the fuel cap without making sure the pick up pipe is positioned correctly. The pick up pipe was hanging loose inside the tank, and the dancing of the aircraft in the turbulent conditions caused it to occasionally suck in air instead of fuel. As the fuel level dropped over time, the problem increased and that explained why the engine spluttered at first and died eventually. This also explained why the problem disappeared every time the engine was running while stationary on the ground.

Lessons learned:

Nobody allowed to do or help with re-fuelling.
Problems do not disappear by themselves.
The time used to practice emergency landings, even after training, is invaluable.

[Chris Liebenberg]

I learned the most about flying and situational awareness from hanger talks, where pilots share their experiences with each other.
Some things I experienced myself, and I could also contribute to hanger talk sessions.

Someone might learn something from this:
While landing an aircraft is the most difficult part of flying, take-off is certainly the most dangerous part. Maximum power, minimum speed, low altitude.

There are 5 things that can go wrong during take-off.

• High Density Altitude
• Runway length
• All up weight of aircraft
• Downwind take-off
• Fuel or engine problems.


If you encounter a problem in one of these areas, but the other four are good, you will be OK. For instance, if you experience fuel starvation on take-off, and the runway is long enough, you can land immediately again, or, if you need to perform a downwind take-off because of a one-way-in-one-way-out runway, and your aircraft is not overloaded, no density altitude situation, and runway length sufficient, you will be OK.

If however two of the above mentioned five factors are negative, you might be able to take-off successfully, but you will certainly experience cold sweat and relive that take-off a couple of times. (And contribute to hanger talk sessions)
For example, when your aircraft is heavily loaded in a high density altitude situation, you might experience the end of the runway is closer than what you want it to be.

But if three of these factors are negative during take-off, you are going to be in serious trouble.

All five of the above mentioned factors can be evaluated before take-off.
Because high density altitude and fuel/engine related problems can not be identified easily, at least make sure the other three are always positive.

Take-off is optional, landing is mandatory.

[Wargames]

All five of the above mentioned factors can be evaluated before take-off.
Because high density altitude and fuel/engine related problems can not be identified easily, at least make sure the other three are always positive.

Take-off is optional, landing is mandatory.

Hi Chris,

Loving your input, and I think it is great to share, but I don't agree with your statement made above on density altitude. For density altitude you need 1. your elevation, 2. Temperature, 3. QNH, 4. Humidity or dewpoint.

The only one that should be an issue to get, will be the humidity or dewpoint. In cape town we are lucky that we can only listen to 127.00 for ATIS and recieve qnh, temp, and dewpoint. But then again, we don't care much about density altitude, because on a hot and humid day, I might have to take off at 2500ft were morningstar is 200ft above sea level.

Anyway, back to the point. When in doubt about the humidity, rather work on 80%, to over assess the situation. Then at least you are making a error on the save side. By doing your calculations, it should really be only fuel/engine related problems which should pose to be a problem.

Keep the input coming.

Regards,

[Morph]

Loving your input, and I think it is great to share, but I don't agree with your statement made above on density altitude. For density altitude you need 1. your elevation, 2. Temperature, 3. QNH, 4. Humidity or dewpoint.

The only one that should be an issue to get, will be the humidity or dewpoint. In cape town we are lucky that we can only listen to 127.00 for ATIS and recieve qnh, temp, and dewpoint. But then again, we don't care much about density altitude, because on a hot and humid day, I might have to take off at 2500ft were morningstar is 200ft above sea level.

Seriously consider buying an E6B calculator. You get the physical version (I have one from a Piper) or electronic. For a good estimation of Density Altitude all you need is current pressure altitude and temperature.

Have a look here at an E6B emulator, it gives you a really good idea of what the calculator is capable of calculating. Every plane should have one

http://www.csgnetwork.com/e6bcalc.html

I might have to take off at 2500ft were morningstar is 200ft above sea level

for example 35deg C will result in a 2500ft density altitude at Morning Star, 200ft AMSL

[AndyG]

Excellent link, I have bookmarked it. It has a whole host of useful calculations. thanks Morph

[Wargames]

I have the E6B Calculator. It is an amazing piece of equipment. You put it on your knee board and there you go. From fuel consumption and ETA calculations to heading and ground speed calculation, density altitude, TAS and even convertions between km, mile and nm is as easy as eating pie.

Regards,

[AlanM]

Here's mine .....

Ice on the Wings


I recall during my training how our instructor Peet at Crosswinds used to not allow us to take the trikes out of the hangar in the early winter pre dawn mornings to avoid dew forming on the wings.
The dew might turn to ice. Even if the wings were wet in any way, he would not fly until they were dried off.

I was to learn very clearly what he meant on a trip to Dragon Peaks in the Drakensberg in July 2002 – mid winter.

The hangar space that was promised to us on booking our accommodation did not materialize, and I had to leave the aerie out in the open overnight.

The following morning at dawn, during the pre-flight inspection, I noticed a very thin layer of ice on the upper wing surface, which I brushed off as best I could with a cloth. The ice came off fairly easily, leaving the wing wet, with ice only in the centre of the wing, where I couldn’t reach.

I strapped my passenger in, warmed the motor, did my pre-take off checks, and pushed full throttle for take off.

The first thing I noticed was that the take off roll was taking longer than the previous afternoon’s flight. I carried on, checked airspeed, and pushed the bar full forward for rotation. All the aerie did was lift the nose wheel off the ground, and as soon as I pulled the bar in, the nose wheel came down again. I tried once more as I now had more than enough airspeed – same thing, so I aborted, cut the throttle, and applied brakes, only now to find that the grass is also frozen, and we are skating along merrily towards the end of the runway. Fortunately we came to a stop with inches to spare.

We waited for the sun to melt the ice, wiped the wing completely dry, and took off normally an hour later for a most enjoyable flight.

Lessons learned:

- DON’T take off if there is any sign of icing. Even moisture will re – freeze in winter on the take off roll.
- I was fortunate in a way, because if the icing had been less severe, I would have got airborne, and then found that I had limited climb performance, and who knows what would have happened then.
- Winter flying has its magical moments, but it also has its hidden dangers.

[TonyV]

Now that my mate Alan has told one of his stories I have to tell one of my own.
I started flying late in life. I went solo on my 56th birthday. Our instructor, Peet, told me once that the only thing I would regret about flying is that I started so late in life. How true that has been. Starting flying is a rejuvenation in many ways, there are so many new thrilling experiences to encounter but also, on the other hand, you get this ruddy great trunk full of new mistakes that you've still got to learn your way through. And unfortunately I seem to be one of those people who have to make them all.

I have this one rigid unbroken rule. You NEVER, EVER, leave your aircraft unattended whilst the motor is going! Some of my younger flying mates (not Alan by the way - he's only got a few years to go to be as old as I am) have this habit of wandering around doing pre-flights while the prop is spinning or going into the hangar to fetch something they forgot. If this smug old man has told them once he's told them dozens of times "if you carry on in this reckless and irresponsible way, one day you are going to see your backside!"

It was one of those bitingly cold Highveld winter mornings. The frost was on the grass and the sun was just below the horizon. I had started my engine and according to my rule (you stay in front of your plane, holding onto the profile tube or sitting in the pilot's seat) I was sitting in the front seat putting on my helmet. My fingers felt like someone had taken a hammer to the tips and I couldn't fasten my helmet strap. One of my younger flying mates was on the point of taxiing out and I signalled to him to stop. In my haste I jumped out of my seat and ran the few metres over to him to get him to help me with the strap.

As I turned round after getting the strap fastened I saw my trusty trike gathering pace as it turned on a slight downhill towards the runway. Panic stricken, a hefty dose of adrenalin shooting into the bloodstream, this old man took off after his pride and joy, the lead to his headphones jerking from side to side like some trotting stallion's giant flaccid penis. The inevitable happened. The plug point of the lead hit the ground at a point where a millisecond later my left foot was to land. My momentum carried me forward, the lead trapped under my left foot jerked my head downwards, my feet left the ground and I became a flying uncontrolled missile crashing into the earth, helmet first. Because of the surprising speed of my panicked run my helmet gouged a furrow in the ground filling the helmet with soil and grass. Stunned but still charged with adrenalin I managed to jump up half blinded by the soil and grass only to see that my trike, motor still turning, had been stopped by the long grass on the other side of the runway.

Did this happen to one of my 'reckless and irresponsible' young flying mates? No, it happened to this smug old man who NEVER, EVER leaves his aircraft unattended. How unfair!

Did this happen on some quiet morning with no-one around? Of course not! It happened on the day that everyone in the club had pitched up to fly - even the Thunderbird pilots had all come out early. Were they busy in their hangars unsuspecting of the unfolding drama? They all had ring side seats. If you believe that you're a fool for only five minutes, forget it, the story told to great mirth and hilarity at get togethers grows longer and more hilarious with each telling! What shame! What humiliation!

So what's the lesson to be learnt from this?

Being in charge of an airplane with the liquidizer blades turning is like being in charge of a toddler in a crowded supermarket or near an unguarded swimming pool. You daren't let your guard slip even for a second!