Dumb dumber me

[gertcoetzee]

I read years ago that we all have three minutes of madness per day, thankfully most have it while sleeping. Yesterday I had mine during daytime, twice.

Since I am a firm believer of learning from other's mistakes, I have to confess when I did the stupid deed. Please have a look at the following picture and express your opinions/disgust/amazement etc for the benefit of others. This moment of madness could have ended with a big bruise.

The second idiotic thing I did was when I lined up my trike for the trolley. A fellow microlighter jumped to assist me, and did the pushing which I usually do. Now normally I am behind the trike and then "chock" the wheels before moving the trolley inside. This time I was at the front wheel. What happened next? Silly me. Again. This moment of madness could have bruised my pocket.

[Fairy Flycatcher]

Not sure what you did wrong on the first one? Explain?

[Morph]

Looks like you came off your power just before takeoff, right at the end of the runway, ground speed dropped to almost nothing, then you took off, could have been very close to the stall.

The 2nd problem I know about because I was there. Let's see if the others can guess. Fortunately no injuries, to man or plane.

[Tumbleweed]

My thoughts are;

There was a crowd, possibly some nice looking female watching in admiration.

At the holding point you did an inmediate almost vertical take- off and floated over to the beginning of the runway.

Here, after levelling out, you started waving at said admirers whilst showing skills of maintaining straight and level at different ground speeds till over the end of the runway.

We see ths often, mostly by Blue bull suppoters sporting horned helmets waving a flue flag, sometimes even on a bike doing wheelies. This is not a new phenominen.

Are you a Blue bull?

Now I've never been approached by any forensic / insurance enitiy for my point of view regarding accident analysis before, wonder why?

[Fairy Flycatcher]

I still don't quite understand....

Isn't 3 lift-off? When you initially climb out, your ground-speed does drop significantly, as you are converting some of your horizontal speed into a vertical component... This does not mean you loose airspeed though.

I must be fairly stupid, but Gert, please explain in words. It doesn't look like your instruments are accurate enough, or your ground-run is your low-level run or what?

[ForensicFlyer]

Ok - as a Forensic / Insurance investigator (nudge nudge), I have some questions:

When looking at the graphical representation of (especially) altitude, I have some questions:

1. If we look at the start (1), there is already a momentary increase in altitude. Since this was you start-point, is the instrument accurate, or were you fiddling with the MSL setting while taxiing?
2. From there and UP TO (2) you seem to be at a constant velocity (or speed, rather) and at a constant altitude... I assume the altitude there will be the "base4line" for the runway - at least it SHOULD be...
3. Where the altitude and ground-speed are both flat-lined, I assume you were stationery... So you weren't flying...
4. From there (2) your altitude DROPPED, but not constantly, unless it's a HORRIBLE runway? Or are you STILL fiddling with the ALT knob?
5. From (3) to (4) your altitude increases drastically (wouldn't know if this is normal for the runway, but anyway)... Then I see there are some "oscillations" in altitude... Obstacle?

I am not a pilot (yet), but it looks to me like you were trying to:

1. Either get over an obstacle and almost stalled...
2. Pushed too hard and climbed too rpidly, almost "losing it."

Either way - my impression is that there was some problem with the rate of climb vs speed, in some way or another...

How am I doing, never having been to the airport, not knowing the recording medium well, and not being a pilot?

Stan.

[gertcoetzee]

Morph is closest (but not quite).

The answer is not in the altitude reading before (3). I backtrack at one - the groundspeed increases and decreases. Then I am stationary - the groundspeed and altitude stay constant, as ForensicFlyer states. Then the roll - the altitude, in reality stays as constant as Morningstar's runway is reasonably flat. Takeoff is at (3) as FF says. The dip in the groundspeed before (3) is where a bell rang, but not hard enough. Then I DO takeoff (3) and is there a drop in groundspeed as I do the climb combined with the turn?

The data comes from the GPS - ie groundspeed not airspeed.

Not that easy though, not giving the answer yet. Since it is Sunday afternoon, the wind is howling, the wife is howling, and I do have the time, here is another picture. Also look at my log (another hint there).

Ah, and the density of the yellow dots also means something - as recorded at regular interval by GPS

[ForensicFlyer]

Ok - I am not too good as guessing, and actually am not sure of my versions yet...

Normally, I investigate before I report...

I have an idea: Can we do a polygraph test on you?

Then I will get to the "route" of all evil...

It looks like you come to ANOTHER stop, or that you practically stalled as you took off...

But - not having flown an MC myself, I am possibly missing something an experienced pilot would pick up on immediately...

I knew the density plays a role. From THAT persepective, there was possibly a case where you exceedd Vne, but I am not sure...

The speed on the GPS - mph or Km/h?

I'd like to see where this goes...

Stan.

[Junkie]

The wind was howling - as you climbed and turned, your ground speed first slowed then started to accelarate as you turned downwind

on yourtake off you roll you initially accelerated, then slowed down hesitating and then thought what the heck and went for it anyway and regretted it once you were airborne

[Morph]

You took off downwind and a howling downwind at that. Ground speed shooting from 50mph to 98mph within a very short period of time after you got airborne. Also you used a significant amount of runway before taking off. Towards the end of the ruanway you were still not off the ground so you hesitated, took your foot off and the ground speed slowed, but you were so far down you were commited to get her off the ground and thus did, instead of testing how good your brakes were.

Was there a wind shear? What did the sock tell you on the ground. Was there a sudden wind direction change as you started climbing or did you simply not look at the sock?

[loansharkblv]

Hi Gert,

Eish , Just seen it now as well......100mph

Take off was downwind, high level air (he he) moving quite a bit faster than expected..... I imagine the next 10 minutes where spent turning the trike around and heading back to the a/f with a groundspeed of 5mph, a landing roll of 4m's and a quick trip to the bathroom before almost shearing your (not moving) prop off on the high ground behind the trolley when they lifted the front end.

What is the deal with the trolley, I still don't get that one - Any pics?

[John Young]

Take off was downwind.

Nah. Take-off was into wind. Strong gust caused him to consider aborting take-off and decelerate.

Gert changed his mind – took-off anyway [beginning of “3 minutes of sheer stupidity”].

Found himself in a steep wind gradient [100mph ground speed downwind].

After landing, wind at ground level shifted trike off dolly.

[loansharkblv]

Wait a bit, have a look at the length of the runway – If each of the hangers is a minimum of 10 meters wide then his takeoff roll was 180 meters long. Niw I don’t know about you guys but 1 up my roll can’t be much more than 30 meters. Now to trundle along for 180 meters would mean that:

Either Gert has decided to invest in a KingAir, or

He ground hopped to a point just short of the threshold and then gave gas, or

He proceeded with a normal takeoff run (with a tailwind) and couldn’t get the a/c off the ground due to some strange wind effect, got to a stage where the fence at the end of the runway started to look less and less appealing, hesitated for a second or two, figured out that the profile tube was not going to make a great wire cutter and kicked the pony one last time and took off at the last to immediately regret the choice.

BTW Gert, what was your fuel load and did you have a PAX?

[Morph]

This is Morning Star, the runway length is 650 meters. Gert, under normal circumstances would get off the ground mid way between the 2 and the 1. The big issue here is just beyond point 3 there are 150ft bluegums. Gert get's to 200ft, so must have just scraped past these trees

John, if you look at the track you will see that it was just after take off and Gert was begining to turn left for crosswind where the highest speed was obtained. (Look at the 2nd set of images, where he has the track in yellow, showing the spread of gps points. It's the two shaded areas. Once out of the shaded area on the GS, Alt and Track you notice the GS dropping to around 50mph. This is where he was on downwind.

The runway he took off on is 20, generally pointing into the south easter. Sat there was a front coming in and lots of cloud. The wind direction is normally NW under these conditions. In fact Gert managed to get back just before the weather closed in, it had just started drizzling and this time he landed on 02, into the northerly wind which I would say was fresh to strong at the time. I was at the airfield at this time.

The 2nd issue was forgetting to put the chocks on the trolley and pushing the trike sideways into the hangar, halfway in the trike rolled off, fortunately not colliding with any doors, poles or other trikes.

[gertcoetzee]

I have edited the 2nd picture.

I took off downwind (and take the 5th on any questions related to this).

My takeoff point was, as can be seen from the edited 2nd picture much earlier than point 3 - sorry about that. It was in fact after a roll of 200m which is a lot anyway.

I never look at my ASI when rolling, I start off with the bar in neutral, then pull it in, and get a feel for the wing wanting to fly. As I rolled, I did not get the feel (alarm bell) at the right distance, pulled in more, got the "feel" pushed out, and immediately did not "feel" the right amount of lift. Pulled in again, and climbed, slower than usual.

My groundspeed now increased to 100mph, and as I turn (upwind, as it happens) my groundspeed decreases. I flew part of the circuit, and then left for Wintervogel. As I approached Wintervogel I called for runway 20(!) and then changed for 02. On the way back there was a strong wind, a bit gusty but my landing on 02 was nothing to write home about.

I think (and please comment!) a trike is reasonably forgiving in a tailwind landing and take-off, and as I have experienced before very forgiving in a crosswind landing and takeoff.

Not a clever thing to do, but a worthwhile lesson?