Most embarassing GA story...

astanley

astanley

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Andrew Stanley
Early this morning, I was driving through South Jersey, listening to my music at far too loud a volume, and I noticed that the car felt "sloppy". I quickly realized that the called-for gusts of wind had arrived, and were buffeting my car as I drove down 95.

I recalled the story of the very first time I took my then girlfriend, Jessie, with my flying GA. Jessie, my CFI, and I piled into a Warrior and flew to GON for lunch and a tour of the sea. It was early July, and the air was hazy and lumpy with convective turb. The plane wallowed and jostled along, and I had two pretty nice landings. Jessie like lunch and spent the whole flight chatting it up with us, enjoy the view, and asking questions.

In the car ride back to our apartment, I asked her what she thought of hte flight, and I apologized for all of the turbulence. She asked "What turbulence?", I responded "the constant, sloppy-feeling bumps while flying along"

She looked over at me, and said "Oh, I just thought you were a terrible pilot! I didn't know that was turbulence!". She then profusely apologized for thinking I was a terrible pilot.

So, what's your most embarrassing GA story?

Cheers,

-Andrew
 
OBTW, isn't your wife named, "Jessie"?
 
You mean like forgetting to untie the tail tiedown and wondering whay you aren't moving even at full power??? No nothing like that has ever happened to me :aureola:
 
Had a JFK Jr. moment over lake Michigan when I went out of sight of the city. Nothing but mist and water, fortunately I heard the engine racing and was able to correct the unusual attitude before splashdown. With all the dumb things I've done it's amazing I'm still alive.
 
*ahem* A "landing" at Gaston's last year which was just a tad long with a group of fellow POA'ers watching the ordeal unfold. :yikes:
 
I felt better after reading Dick Collins one day -- he wrote, "If you haven't had to shut down to pull a chock you forgot, you haven't been flying enough..."

One afternoon while flying some practice patterns in the right seat with my 10k hour CFI in the left seat, we got buzzed by the local T-34 squadron. Larry promptly lets me know exactly what he thinks of those muckety-mucks and their pretend Navy flights and all the rest.

We continue flying and notice no one else in the pattern is making radio calls...

Until he hits his mic button and we the radio filled with mutiple pilots shouting "Hot mike! Hot mike!"
 
shouldn't yelling "hot mike" be itself kind of embarrassing? ...
 
...which then strikes a spark on my pet peeve ... why do people feel obligated to holler "hot mike! hot mike!" when everyone who CAN hear, ALREADY hears the hot mike, while the person WITH the hot mike CAN NOT hear you?!!!???!!!

like, DUH!!!

sorry ....
 
gkainz said:
...which then strikes a spark on my pet peeve ... why do people feel obligated to holler "hot mike! hot mike!" when everyone who CAN hear, ALREADY hears the hot mike, while the person WITH the hot mike CAN NOT hear you?!!!???!!!

like, DUH!!!

sorry ....
Click to expand...
They are afraid that when they also ask ATITAPA that no one will hear them due to the hot mike, so by pointing out that the mike is hot, you will listen more closely for their ATITAPA callouts!!! :eek::eek::eek:









:rofl::rofl:
 
Yea if you haven't forgotten to untie something, you either haven't flown long enough or fly planes that are always in the hanger.
 
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Maybe having a Navy Flight Trainee call Pensacola Ground on UHF, to tell him to call me on VHF, to tell me that the little door under the fuel selector (where the middle sump drain is...) was open?

That happened to me.... ummm... that is, to this guy I know (yeah, that's it, to this guy I know...).

Some hotshot professional pilot wannabe... kill the engine, hop out on the runup pad, run around and close the little door, run back around, hop in (climbing over irate wife), pray to the hot-start gods that I don't screw this up too, look sheepishly at Navy trainee pilot in his Texan II, grin and salute.

Big grin back, all is good.
 
During instrument training the CFI-I was playing ATC. He gave me a vector and I dutifully hit the PTT and acknowledged the instruction on the CTAF for all to hear!!
 
What about the times ATC gives an instruction and I respond by toggling the auto-pilot switch on the yoke and reply into dead air.
 
On my PP checkride my examiner and I were all strapped in and I began reviewing the checklist. I got to the item "Verify chocks removed" and I just dropped my head.

I was in a Warrior.

(The ramp at that area has a slight slope to it, so I always kept the chocks in place until I was ready to climb in. In all the excitement I just forgot to pull them.)

No problem, the DPE took care of it for me and kept telling me to relax!
 
AuntPeggy said:
What about the times ATC gives an instruction and I respond by toggling the auto-pilot switch on the yoke and reply into dead air.
Click to expand...


I put Comm 2 on same freq since I don't seem to be raising Clearance Delivery on Comm 1.

Then I get to hear myself make the next radio call in Darth Vaderese.
 
AuntPeggy said:
What about the times ATC gives an instruction and I respond by toggling the auto-pilot switch on the yoke and reply into dead air.
Click to expand...
I can tell the difference between the auto pilot and the mic switch. When you talk on the mic, your voice sounds different.
 
On one of my first lessons learning to fly a TW. I was attempting to turn it around on a 60 foot wide runway and having heal brakes in it. I didn't quite make it "around". I couldn't apply brakes and rudder at the same time.(deserted place)
Here I am sitting ACROSS the runway, stopped and looking at the grass. I look at my CFI and get "you got us into it, you get us out of it".
The thought of getting out and pushing the tail around crossed my mind several times in that couple of minutes.
Eventually I did get it turned around, but was one of those "what did I get myself into" moments.

Mark B
 
Sorry, but I can't decide, so I'll just have to leave you in suspense. Many seem to involve the radio, though!

At least one of the candidates has already been posted here, though. (Asking on the radio if "they" saw a meteor, thinking I'd switched frequencies to the air-to-air I was using to communicate with a flying buddy, when I was still on with Chicago Center.)

Then there was going around the pattern dutifully making position reports, only to realize I was emulating Aunt Peggy and hitting the auto pilot button.

And then there was turning down COM1 to get ATIS on COM2 and immediately calling for clearance on COM1 without turning it up again when at Midway. Embarrassing. Doing it again at O'HARE -- mortifying!
 
Had an instructor that liked to wait inside in the cool while I preflighted. So, I went out to preflight, pulled the 150 up to the pumps, filled the tanks, cleaned the windshield like the experienced 20 hour student I was...then hopped in, taxied out, did my runup and took off...

Right about as I was turning crosswind...he's on the Unicom, asking me if I forgot anything...:rofl:

Fortunately, he had a good sense of humor, and didn't rescind my solo signoff...


Trapper John

p.s. there isn't anything on the 150 checklist about verifying the right seat is occupied.
 
LOL I've forgotten a lot of things in flying but never my instructor.
 
My home base airport for my private training (BJC) has 3 runways. They usually use 29R and 29L. 29L is usually used for pattern work, with 29R being the main runway. After doing lost of pattern work at BJC, my instructor took me to LMO, a untowerd field. It has only one runway, you guessed it, 29/11. Several times I made position reports saying I was on base(downwind,final,etc) for 29 left.... :redface:
 
When I was just getting started, I remember letting the world know I was on left final on more than one occasion.
 
To this day Collins gives me hell about my cowl plug snafu. Sometime in the mid '80's we were judging the IFR event for the big college national flying event (SAFECON, NIFCON?) in Monroe, LA. I had come in from FL in the 340, my partner flew down from KC in the T-210 and parked on the front row where the lineman wanted him.

We were all sitting around yakking in the lobby when somebody asked if the owner of the 210 could move it back a few rows. My partner was in the john but I had a key so I ran out to do it for him. Didn't check anything, saw it was untied and all I had to do was fire up and make the circle. Sure enough Jim had put the cowl plugs in (and around the prop blade as we always did) and when I hit the starter they went straight up about 50 feet and fluttered back to earth. Collins never forgot it.

dmccormack said:
I felt better after reading Dick Collins one day -- he wrote, "If you haven't had to shut down to pull a chock you forgot, you haven't been flying enough..."

One afternoon while flying some practice patterns in the right seat with my 10k hour CFI in the left seat, we got buzzed by the local T-34 squadron. Larry promptly lets me know exactly what he thinks of those muckety-mucks and their pretend Navy flights and all the rest.

We continue flying and notice no one else in the pattern is making radio calls...

Until he hits his mic button and we the radio filled with mutiple pilots shouting "Hot mike! Hot mike!"
Click to expand...
 
dmccormack said:
I felt better after reading Dick Collins one day -- he wrote, "If you haven't had to shut down to pull a chock you forgot, you haven't been flying enough..."
Click to expand...

Fortunately my memory isn't good enough to remember most of my embarrassing aviation moments. I don't think I've ever tried to taxi while tied down but I've definitely forgotten the chocks a few times. That's happened enough that I've learned I can jump the nosewheel over most of them by pulling the wheel all the way back and bumping the power (not a good idea if there's an airplane nearby behind though).

The worst thing I can think of is landing at the wrong airport once and to make matters worse the county work crew was repairing the far end of the runway I landed on (they didn't know about marking it with an 'X' let alone the NOTAM concept).
 
I vote Trapper John's story as best!
 
One day before I had finished my PP training, I was flying with a friend to Apple Valley in Central CA. 10 miles from Apple Valley is Southern California Logistics, a fairly striking airport with lots of old and retired airliners and a 15,000' runway.

My friend was pretty new to this whole pilot thing (he had gotten his certificate 1.5 years earlier) and, not unlike many other newbies, thought he was "ahead of the curve". He was so far ahead that we landed 10 miles early. I remember being surprised that Apple Valley had such a huge runway.

We taxied to what looked like a tie down area and walked around a bit. I thought it was also odd that we were parked right next to a white 747-400 without any markings. A few minutes later, we noticed a fuel truck moving toward us. At that point, we had our doubts about the airport and decided to leave.

Shortly after take off, I noticed that there was a frequency painted on the runway which was different than the one we had been using. So we switched to that and announced that we were departing to the west. A sleepy sounding voice replied (he called himself "Victorville tower"), asking our position and told us that he didn't have us in sight. At that point, it dawned on us that we might just have landed at a controlled airport without talking to tower, so my friend decided to ignore him and we left as quickly as possible.

Thinking back to this, I still don't understand how tower didn't see us land, taxi, and take off again....
 
sba55 said:
One day before I had finished my PP training, I was flying with a friend to Apple Valley in Central CA. 10 miles from Apple Valley is Southern California Logistics, a fairly striking airport with lots of old and retired airliners and a 15,000' runway.

My friend was pretty new to this whole pilot thing (he had gotten his certificate 1.5 years earlier) and, not unlike many other newbies, thought he was "ahead of the curve". He was so far ahead that we landed 10 miles early. I remember being surprised that Apple Valley had such a huge runway.

We taxied to what looked like a tie down area and walked around a bit. I thought it was also odd that we were parked right next to a white 747-400 without any markings. A few minutes later, we noticed a fuel truck moving toward us. At that point, we had our doubts about the airport and decided to leave.

Shortly after take off, I noticed that there was a frequency painted on the runway which was different than the one we had been using. So we switched to that and announced that we were departing to the west. A sleepy sounding voice replied (he called himself "Victorville tower"), asking our position and told us that he didn't have us in sight. At that point, it dawned on us that we might just have landed at a controlled airport without talking to tower, so my friend decided to ignore him and we left as quickly as possible.

Thinking back to this, I still don't understand how tower didn't see us land, taxi, and take off again....
Click to expand...

They were probably napping and too embarrassed to say anything about your unnoticed arrival.:D
 
sba55 said:
One day before I had finished my PP training, I was flying with a friend to Apple Valley in Central CA. 10 miles from Apple Valley is Southern California Logistics, a fairly striking airport with lots of old and retired airliners and a 15,000' runway.

My friend was pretty new to this whole pilot thing (he had gotten his certificate 1.5 years earlier) and, not unlike many other newbies, thought he was "ahead of the curve". He was so far ahead that we landed 10 miles early. I remember being surprised that Apple Valley had such a huge runway.

We taxied to what looked like a tie down area and walked around a bit. I thought it was also odd that we were parked right next to a white 747-400 without any markings. A few minutes later, we noticed a fuel truck moving toward us. At that point, we had our doubts about the airport and decided to leave.

Shortly after take off, I noticed that there was a frequency painted on the runway which was different than the one we had been using. So we switched to that and announced that we were departing to the west. A sleepy sounding voice replied (he called himself "Victorville tower"), asking our position and told us that he didn't have us in sight. At that point, it dawned on us that we might just have landed at a controlled airport without talking to tower, so my friend decided to ignore him and we left as quickly as possible.

Thinking back to this, I still don't understand how tower didn't see us land, taxi, and take off again....
Click to expand...

It may be due to the fact that VCV has hardly any traffic. We use the airport a lot for crew training. There is maybe 1 or 2 airplanes operating there while we are operating. We are usually there for about 3 to 4 hours.
 
My instructor never let me know when I was going to solo...

We were doing endless touch and goes one afternoon when he said, "Land and taxi back to the ramp..."

I did -- he got out and said, "take it around 3 times."

He didn't have to tell me twice. I took off, and landed, took off and landed....

Finally I thought I'd had enough and taxied back to the ramp.

"How'd it feel!?"

"Great!"

"How many times were you supposed to go around...?"

"umm.. three?"

"Well, you went around seven!"

"oops..."
 
overachiever
 
So it really took you 5 trys (go-arounds) to finally make that third landing?:rofl:


Just kidding!:devil:
 
dmccormack said:
My instructor never let me know when I was going to solo...

We were doing endless touch and goes one afternoon when he said, "Land and taxi back to the ramp..."

I did -- he got out and said, "take it around 3 times."

He didn't have to tell me twice. I took off, and landed, took off and landed....

Finally I thought I'd had enough and taxied back to the ramp.

"How'd it feel!?"

"Great!"

"How many times were you supposed to go around...?"

"umm.. three?"

"Well, you went around seven!"

"oops..."
Click to expand...

LOL I pretty much did the same thing, except my instructor didn't tell me how many to do. I finally quit when I had to extend my downwind for the scheduled United BAe 146 (OSH still had airline service back in '94). When I funally pulled up to pick up my CFI, she looked at me and said "Good at least you didn't forget to pick me back up" :)
 
vontresc said:
LOL I pretty much did the same thing, except my instructor didn't tell me how many to do. I finally quit when I had to extend my downwind for the scheduled United BAe 146 (OSH still had airline service back in '94). When I funally pulled up to pick up my CFI, she looked at me and said "Good at least you didn't forget to pick me back up" :)
Click to expand...

I suppose you replied with "I'm surprised that you're still here".
 
markb5900 said:
On one of my first lessons learning to fly a TW. I was attempting to turn it around on a 60 foot wide runway and having heal brakes in it. I didn't quite make it "around". I couldn't apply brakes and rudder at the same time.(deserted place)
Here I am sitting ACROSS the runway, stopped and looking at the grass. I look at my CFI and get "you got us into it, you get us out of it".
The thought of getting out and pushing the tail around crossed my mind several times in that couple of minutes.
Eventually I did get it turned around, but was one of those "what did I get myself into" moments.

Mark B
Click to expand...

I remember that story well, Mark...and a few others.:yesnod:
 
Trapper John said:
Had an instructor that liked to wait inside in the cool while I preflighted. So, I went out to preflight, pulled the 150 up to the pumps, filled the tanks, cleaned the windshield like the experienced 20 hour student I was...then hopped in, taxied out, did my runup and took off...Right about as I was turning crosswind...he's on the Unicom, asking me if I forgot anything...:rofl: Fortunately, he had a good sense of humor, and didn't rescind my solo signoff...
Click to expand...

Stories like this make me feel sooooo much better. Sometimes I think I say the dumbest things in front of my instructor. :redface:
 
I got my HP and complex endorsements in the Trinidad. During short field landing practice I stepped on the brakes too hard and blew a tire. Unfortunately I stopped in the intersection of the two runways and the whole Dubuque airport had to be shut down while we got our hobbled plane moved. What did I learn from that? That airplane's brakes are touchy, and don't try to impress your instructor too much by winning the world's shortest landing contest! That was embarrassing. The tire ended up in the display case of shame. :redface:
 
markb5900 said:
On one of my first lessons learning to fly a TW. I was attempting to turn it around on a 60 foot wide runway and having heal brakes in it. I didn't quite make it "around". I couldn't apply brakes and rudder at the same time.(deserted place)
Here I am sitting ACROSS the runway, stopped and looking at the grass. I look at my CFI and get "you got us into it, you get us out of it".
The thought of getting out and pushing the tail around crossed my mind several times in that couple of minutes.
Eventually I did get it turned around, but was one of those "what did I get myself into" moments.

Mark B
Click to expand...
Hey, there would have been worse things than having to get out. Like dinging the prop on a runway light!
 
gkainz said:
...which then strikes a spark on my pet peeve ... why do people feel obligated to holler "hot mike! hot mike!" when everyone who CAN hear, ALREADY hears the hot mike, while the person WITH the hot mike CAN NOT hear you?!!!???!!!
Click to expand...
I've been the person with the intermittent hot mic and I'm pretty sure that our confusion and troubleshooting steps were heard alternately on LA center and guard as we flew across California. When we finally got it figured out by basically unplugging everything except for one hand mic I heard an airplane say, "I hear a female on guard". Center said, "I think everybody hears her". :redface:
 
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