Dumbest thing you have done and lived to tell about it

kimberlyanne546 said:
(Almost) left a chain tie down on the wing. Had to shut down the plane, get out, unchain, get back in. I did not taxi - almost did - I saw the chain out of the corner of my eye.
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Been there, done that. The almost part anyway. Three times by now in about 80 hours of flying - twice with instructors on board (we BOTH forgot one). If I get to a dozen while keeping it at "almost", I'll consider myself lucky. Don't know why, exactly, this is a repeating brain fart with me.

kimberlyanne546 said:
Sprayed windshied cleaner into the wind and had it land on my face instead of on windshield.
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That cracked me up... awesome! not dangerous, but funny as all get out. I wish I could see your face.

Well... in order to satisfy the "live to tell about it" part... here are a couple of mine:

1) took off in a vicious crosswind, realized I forgot to close my window, and instead of flying the plane, tried to close my window.

2) landing at night and realizing 10 feet off the ground that it's awfully dark... my landing lights were off. Then instead of flying the plane, I tried to turn them on.

3) trying to land at an unfamiliar airport, coming in too high, and instead of going around immediately, tried to slip... forgetting I had the flaps on.

4) landed and allowed myself to relax once all wheels were on the ground... only to be pushed 70 degrees to the right a moment later from a vicious wind shear. Then, to compound my stupidity, I pulled the mixture trying to make the plane stop. Then, to make things even worse, I pushed it back in together with the throttle while trying to track back to centerline. Suffice it to say that when I finally had the plane under control again (without having run off the runway, damaged anything, or taken off again inadvertently), the guy at the tower said "when ABLE, taxi off the runway and contact ground", very much stressing the word "able".

In all cases I realized my stupidity literally within a split second - I'm sure it was less than a second each time - and corrected properly. But in all cases, I basically got behind the plane for a second. No damage, nothing happened, but good lessons learned
 
I forgot to enunciate clearly when the witch-doctor promised me whatever I wanted most. As a result I now have a 9" pianist.
 
Doing night touch and goes while listening to a baseball game on the ADF.

Wasn't paying attention and after landing with full flaps added power to take off, after climbing 10 foot I raised the flaps all at once. Almost took out some runway lights before I got her climbing again.
 
In Aviation - as a student with my instructor, I tried to do a soft field take off, and didnt lower the nose to stay in ground effect... we climbed straight out, almost stalling.

Not in Aviation - Dated a woman who forgot to mention she was married (but getting a divorce?)... husband was NOT happy. (she really did end up getting a divorce)
 
I was just talking about this topic with a colleague of mine last week. His response: "got married"....
 
I tried to drive out tied down once, but I didn't tie it down. I made a quick fuel and food stop X/C in the AgCat, walk out fire up and "WTF?" add some juice, still no joy. I get out thing I must have swung the tailwheel in a hole or something... I go look and sure enough, someone had tied my tailwheel down. To this day I don't know who did it. I always suspected one of the other guys going by saw my plane there and landed jst to f- with me a bit, no problems, a good joke is a good joke, but none of them ever let on....
 
Henning said:
I tried to drive out tied down once, but I didn't tie it down. I made a quick fuel and food stop X/C in the AgCat, walk out fire up and "WTF?" add some juice, still no joy. I get out thing I must have swung the tailwheel in a hole or something... I go look and sure enough, someone had tied my tailwheel down. To this day I don't know who did it. I always suspected one of the other guys going by saw my plane there and landed jst to f- with me a bit, no problems, a good joke is a good joke, but none of them ever let on....
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I had something similar happen before. Someone put chocks around my wheel on the passenger side, that i never saw.
 
onwards said:
2) landing at night and realizing 10 feet off the ground that it's awfully dark... my landing lights were off. Then instead of flying the plane, I tried to turn them on.
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Oh oh oh, yup! That brought back a long lost memory. Fairly early on in my PPL training, my instructor and I were up doing my first sets of night landings. I had done a couple...always flared too high, but I got the thing on the ground. Coming around on base again I was determined to nail this one. Roll in on final, very proud that I had done my CGUMPFS (or whatever it was called back then) in a more timely manner, and realize at about 100 feet...hmm...it's REALLY dark this time. The runway had edge lights, but that was it; the ILS and all its associated lights were on the other side. My instructor was chuckling as I fumbled, unsuccessfully, for the light switch. Rather than go around, I decided it would be better to lower the Ames runway 19 a few inches.

I think I got my three night landings on that approach alone.
 
Swampfox201 said:
Doing night touch and goes while listening to a baseball game on the ADF.

Wasn't paying attention and after landing with full flaps added power to take off, after climbing 10 foot I raised the flaps all at once. Almost took out some runway lights before I got her climbing again.
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I wonder if I will ever get to the point I'm listening to music and / or sports while flying. Probably not. But then again, how many of you do?
 
Teller1900 said:
Oh oh oh, yup! That brought back a long lost memory. Fairly early on in my PPL training, my instructor and I were up doing my first sets of night landings. I had done a couple...always flared too high, but I got the thing on the ground. Coming around on base again I was determined to nail this one. Roll in on final, very proud that I had done my CGUMPFS (or whatever it was called back then) in a more timely manner, and realize at about 100 feet...hmm...it's REALLY dark this time. The runway had edge lights, but that was it; the ILS and all its associated lights were on the other side. My instructor was chuckling as I fumbled, unsuccessfully, for the light switch. Rather than go around, I decided it would be better to lower the Ames runway 19 a few inches.

I think I got my three night landings on that approach alone.
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I didn't even have a working landing light for my night cross country and night landings! We did a pre-flight, I saw it wasn't working, he said we could go anyways. (No he does not work for the school).
 
Not trusting my gut. I've been in a lot of situations I shouldn't have made it out of alive; and without exception, my gut warned me before I got into each one of them.

-Rich
 
kimberlyanne546 said:
I wonder if I will ever get to the point I'm listening to music and / or sports while flying. Probably not. But then again, how many of you do?
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Sometimes. Especially at night on a long cross-country. The audio panel on my plane squelches the music when there's traffic on the COM radio. Used to do this quite frequently flying over Alabama, Mississippi, and East Texas at night. Much more difficult on an TEC IFR flight in the northeast during the day.
 
kimberlyanne546 said:
I wonder if I will ever get to the point I'm listening to music and / or sports while flying. Probably not. But then again, how many of you do?
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Honestly? Very rarely. I listen to the plane and the Com. It's kinda anoying when I'm on FF because it always getting interrupted if you're in a busy area. If they used selective calling it could be much better. And then work flying, I'm typically just listening to the sound of the plane, and I like that fine.
 
kimberlyanne546 said:
I didn't even have a working landing light for my night cross country and night landings! We did a pre-flight, I saw it wasn't working, he said we could go anyways. (No he does not work for the school).
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Landing lights are good day and night when you get a traffic call.
 
Hopped a train. Oh wait, you wanted an aviation related incident.
 
kimberlyanne546 said:
Yes but hopping a train sounds awesome. How fast did you have to run?
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Haha, actually we didn't "hop" it. We snuck aboard a coal car in the Denver rail yards (when they were still there) and rode it to Pueblo. Then we hitchhiked to the mountains and hitchhiked back to Denver. Our co-workers couldn't believe we did it and sometimes neither can I.

Sadly I recently found out that my train hopping buddy was killed in a motorcycle accident a couple years ago, rear-ended by a drunk driver. RIP Liz. :(
 
Everskyward said:
Haha, actually we didn't "hop" it. We snuck aboard a coal car in the Denver rail yards (when they were still there) and rode it to Pueblo. Then we hitchhiked to the mountains and hitchhiked back to Denver. Our co-workers couldn't believe we did it and sometimes neither can I.

Sadly I recently found out that my train hopping buddy was killed in a motorcycle accident a couple years ago, rear-ended by a drunk driver. RIP Liz. :(
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That was a cool story, until the end. Sorry about your friend.
 
Well there was this one time in the UP when it was a tad dark when I landed...

;-)
 
I just meant that I would have to be pretty bored and pretty confident to get to that point. There is always something to do.
 
As a student pilot with about 20 hours I went up solo in the school's 152 and practiced spins. Actually did this quite a bit.

I had plenty of altitude, and I read up on how to properly spin the plane. Didn't have any problems but I think it was pretty stupid of me to do that with so little experience. The only spin I had done with an instructor was a 1/4 turn "incipient spin recovery"
 
kimberlyanne546 said:
I wonder if I will ever get to the point I'm listening to music and / or sports while flying. Probably not. But then again, how many of you do?
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1560 in New England, 1260 around New York for Radio Disney!
880 is CBS Radio News in New York - Yankees baseball. Those are the only ones I know off hand. Need to learn more for out West now.

Another story of other people messing with a pilot's routine:
Guy I used to fly with was a Freight Dog for many many years flying a Caravan. One night he lands in northern Maine, in the midst of a torrential downpour. He has one leg left for the night, so he runs his load inside and jumps right back into his plane to get home. Quick checklist and he hits the starter. He hears the engine spool, everything is going fine, except there's no prop rotation. He gets about halfway through the start cycle when he finds out why.

At about 30% Ng, the prop strap that the line guy had dutifully put on finally lets go. As a flash across his windscreen, he sees the prop go from 0 to rated RPM, as the prop strap sets out on a journey of its own - about 50 feet up and 50 feet over to the infield grass.

I'm sure he inserted a few more words before shutting down again and running into the grass, in the driving rain, to retrieve his prop strap. Apparently the little metal hook that attaches to the bottom of the nacelle had done its job quite well, right up until it couldn't do it anymore; the thing was bent nearly straight.

From then on, he says he was a bit more punctilious with respect to that prop strap.
 
Left the laminated 8.5x11 (blue) checklist on the top of the (blue) nose while doing a preflight at night. Engine start - THWAP! - and "Oh ****! the checklist!" as the checklist flew back against the windscreen and fluttered away. My CFI was in the right seat (although this was a post-private night flight refresh). I ask him if we should stop and he said we'll pick it up when we get back. An hour later we are taxing back to the parking spot. "Look, the checklist is right there in the parking spot!" No, wait... that's half the checklist! It took us 30 minutes searching around the ramp with flashlights to find the other half. As the engine started the airflow must have pulled it into the prop which sliced it into exactly two very cleanly cut pieces.
 
First night flight after getting my ticket, I was about 200' on final, and got a phone call. Answered it, talked to them until about 25'.
"What are you doing?"
"Flying the plane."
"What?"
"Hold on I gotta land the plane."
Touchdown. Pick it back up.
"Yeah?"
"Did you say you were flying, and answered the phone while landing?!"
"Yeah, I'm taxiing now what's up?"
...

Looking back, I should have went around and finished the conversation, THEN landed.
 
EdFred said:
Looking back, I should have went around and finished the conversation, THEN landed.
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No, you should have had the phone turned off. Next you'll be texting on final.


And, oh yeah, been flying a...........,wait for it............., a Grumman. :D
 
I come to POA for the knowledge, I come for the camaraderie, I come to blow off steam.....but mostly I come to see what Wayne is going to write next!
 
Henning said:
Honestly? Very rarely. I listen to the plane and the Com. It's kinda anoying when I'm on FF because it always getting interrupted if you're in a busy area. If they used selective calling it could be much better. And then work flying, I'm typically just listening to the sound of the plane, and I like that fine.
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Yup, exact same way here. Every once and a while I'll see what's on radio disney, but I think I can count the times I've done that on one hand. I'm perfectly happy listening to airplane noises.

EdFred said:
First night flight after getting my ticket, I was about 200' on final, and got a phone call. Answered it, talked to them until about 25'.
"What are you doing?"
"Flying the plane."
"What?"
"Hold on I gotta land the plane."
Touchdown. Pick it back up.
"Yeah?"
"Did you say you were flying, and answered the phone while landing?!"
"Yeah, I'm taxiing now what's up?"
...

Looking back, I should have went around and finished the conversation, THEN landed.
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:rofl::rofl::rofl:

Unfortunately (or fortunately?) the only thing I have to add to this is taxiing with the parking bake partially engaged on my private checkride and wondering why the plane was pulling to the right...I'll keep thinking
 
I'll eliminate all the ones I didn't live to tell about and then sort through the rest and get back to you.
 
Getting complacent.
Coming back home on a long XC (1000 mi), I got lax on planning my route to stay over airports (on most routes, a slight adjustment will put you over many airports, or over no airports).
Over central Nebraska at dusk, flying on the back side of a line of thunderstorms advancing northward, the moisture and cool temps starting forming a low undercast. The there were only three airports within 100 miles, one was on the other side of the tstorms,
one went IFR in seconds.

I dove from 10k feet to the deck to get under the layer, and was ducking and dodging (in failing light) to get to the only airport around, looking very hard at the farm roads and expecting to have to land on a road. After going *around* a grain elevator (with the top in the undercast) to get to the airport at Minden, that was a very big learning experience.

Plan your route so you have outs. If I had added about 10min to a 6 hour flight, I never would have been more than 30miles from an airport.
Don't play near thunderstorms in the evening. The lack of sunlight can change WX behavior, and reduce your options significantly by reducing visibility.
I should have landed on a farm road. I could have gotten killed pressing on to Minden.

Big one: GET A GPS! Being able to hit NRST and use its bearing and distance info allowed me to stay eyes-out and looking for obstructions, rather than trying to stay oriented with a chart and landmarks while in bad WX conditions and worried about towers.
 
Just remembered one - and it is a bad one.

Pre-solo all we were doing was practicing landings. Over and over, many lessons in a row. One day, on final, I asked something about the flare and he said "why don't you line it up with the centerline first".

I had thought it was odd there were TWO planes on the runway but kept going down - that was when I realized, after he said something, that I was aiming for the TAXIWAY which runs next to the runway.

If he had not said anything I still wonder what would have happened. How close would I have needed to get to the freaking ground before I realized my mistake? Or before he did and took over the controls?

Yikes.
 
kimberlyanne546 said:
Just remembered one - and it is a bad one.

Pre-solo all we were doing was practicing landings. Over and over, many lessons in a row. One day, on final, I asked something about the flare and he said "why don't you line it up with the centerline first".

I had thought it was odd there were TWO planes on the runway but kept going down - that was when I realized, after he said something, that I was aiming for the TAXIWAY which runs next to the runway.

If he had not said anything I still wonder what would have happened. How close would I have needed to get to the freaking ground before I realized my mistake? Or before he did and took over the controls?

Yikes.
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That's not uncommon. If you go into PHL, runway 26 (where they frequently put the planes that don't use jets) is very hard to spot, it's easy to line up with 27R instead.

My dumbest thing would be landing during a thunderstorm. I convinced myself that I could make it to the airport before the storms closed in. I was wrong. It was a night landing, and raining so hard I could barely see the runway lights. Made a firm landing, then had to look out the side window at the taxiway lights to see where to taxi. At one point it was bad enough I had to stop altogether, and this was just taxiing to the FBO.

Learned my lesson. You'll do stupider things, trust me.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
That's not uncommon. If you go into PHL, runway 26 (where they frequently put the planes that don't use jets) is very hard to spot, it's easy to line up with 27R instead.
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It's for that reason exactly that I have seen SEVERAL airports with large yellow and black signs in or near the run-up pad that say "Don't take off on taxiway," or that have TAXI painted in 15 foot tall yellow lettering at the ends of taxiways parallel to runways.

Even the pros do it. Look for the news stories about the Continental 757 that landed on taxiway Z in EWR (the home base for the plane AND crew). I talked to the tower supervisor who was working ground that day...funny story, since no one else was on the taxiway.


Or the Delta 7X7 (I think it was a 76-) that landed on the parallel taxiway in ATL. How many thousands of times must they have landed there before the incident flight?
 
Well it is easy to mistake white stripes for a solid yellow line.
 
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