flyingcheesehead
Touchdown! Greaser!
I have never declared an emergency in an airplane. 
I have, however, returned to the field a few times - Once, I had a pax FREAK out at about 5 AGL on takeoff, so we went right back around the pattern and landed rather than completing the IFR flight I had filed. Once, on an extremely cold day, the engine started grumbling about having to work so hard on a negative-Fahrenheit day by making some slight hints of roughness. Finally, I heard a "hiccup" on climbout once, and circled over the field for several minutes while I tried to see if it would happen again, or if I could detect any problems, and then continued on the (night, cross-country, winter) flight - Probably not the smartest thing I've ever done, though I did decide to follow the interstate rather than go GPS direct.
In the latter two cases, I think ATC declared for me (I got the SOB/FOB question) but didn't roll the trucks.
However, in a lot of these "don't really know what's wrong" scenarios, it's best to just declare, roll the trucks, and land. This article is an excellent example of just how wrong we are to NOT declare an emergency when something unusual happens, even if we think we know what's going on:
http://www.avweb.com/news/pilotlounge/182061-1.html
I have, however, returned to the field a few times - Once, I had a pax FREAK out at about 5 AGL on takeoff, so we went right back around the pattern and landed rather than completing the IFR flight I had filed. Once, on an extremely cold day, the engine started grumbling about having to work so hard on a negative-Fahrenheit day by making some slight hints of roughness. Finally, I heard a "hiccup" on climbout once, and circled over the field for several minutes while I tried to see if it would happen again, or if I could detect any problems, and then continued on the (night, cross-country, winter) flight - Probably not the smartest thing I've ever done, though I did decide to follow the interstate rather than go GPS direct.
In the latter two cases, I think ATC declared for me (I got the SOB/FOB question) but didn't roll the trucks.
However, in a lot of these "don't really know what's wrong" scenarios, it's best to just declare, roll the trucks, and land. This article is an excellent example of just how wrong we are to NOT declare an emergency when something unusual happens, even if we think we know what's going on:
http://www.avweb.com/news/pilotlounge/182061-1.html
