Ever Have a WTF Mental Moment ?

[BigBadLou]

North and south is like up and down, harder to confuse. Lateral dimensions are much harder for some (just ask a crowd to raise their left hand and watch - I don't mean this as an insult to anyone, just pure occurrence of events).

 

[dlsmith]

Oh yes. I've had days I've flown several different planes. When those days involve all university, which are all 5xxMT, things get interesting. I've had a lot of days of "murfreesboro traffic, Diamo- Cess- Lusc- Arrow- uh what the hell am I flying again?"

 

[jpower]

Yes, that kind of thing has happened to me. But only for "east and west", NEVER "north and south!"

I only have it happen on east/west. Never had a problem with north/south.

Why is it that no one ever confuses north and south, but almost everyone screws up east and west sometimes?

No idea why but I'm exactly the same way. I don't think I've ever screwed up N/S but I do mess up E/W with a decent amount of regularity.

 

[StinkBug]

We have 4 planes in the club. I can fully identify with this one.

My club has over 50. After getting my PPL it seemed like I was flying a different plane every single flight. I got into the habit of visually checking the dash plaque before every single call, not so much because I would use the wrong tail number, but because I honestly had no idea what mine was.

Biggest WTF moment I can think of right now was coming into KMYF from the west. There are parallel runways, and usually it's right pattern for 28R and left for 28L. I requested 28R and they told me "Enter left downwind for 28R" I then repeated it back to them while continuing towards the right downwind. After a few minutes tower came back "confirm you are going to turn right for the left downwind" "Ummm, YEP!" as I crank the plane to the right. Didn't expect them to want me to cross 28L final to land on 28R and just put myself on autopilot. Thankfully I was far enough out that it wasn't really a problem for anyone.