On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 12:25 PM, Kelly Troyer
<keltro@att.net> wrote:
Dave,
Same for me ...........Fun read............My experiences flying as a crew member for the
Navy were incident-less................Same for my civilian flying except for check ride for
my seaplane rating in a Lake Amphibian when the nose gear would not extend after the
ride was complete...........No problem , landed back in the lake and called the mechanic
who came out and fixed a known problem with this a/c.........Then took off and returned
to the airport without incident............FAA check pilot did not hold it against me and did
issue the rating !!.........Interesting though were my many flights in parachute jump planes
(single and multi-engine both recip and turbine) many of which obviously suffered from
somewhat iffy maintenance and jumpers just prayed they would climb high enough to
get out of alive............But never had a problem with any of these a/c !!...............
--
Kelly Troyer
"Dyke Delta"_13B ROTARY Engine
"RWS"_RD1C/EC2/EM2
"Mistral"_Backplate/Oil Manifold
Ok Kelly, I am going to have to call BS on that one about incident-less Navy flying. Are you trying to tell me that you NEVER had a flight cancel at the last minute, get cut short, or move to a different aircraft because of a maintenance issue? Really? We are talking about the US Navy, right?
Not to say the the Navy is unsafe - their safety record is absolutely outstanding, especially considering the job they do!
Your story reminded me of one more incident. While doing the check ride for my multi-rating in a Piper Apache, the examiner's door came open just as we rotated for take off. I had just finished reading an article about someone who crashed in a similar situation by worrying too much about the door an not flying the plane. So when the door came open all I could think about was "just fly the plane." So we flew once around the pattern and came back, landed, closed the door.
The problem was that when the door first opened I still had about 7000' of runway and could have easily aborted and taxied back. The instructor very nearly failed me on that one but after I made him read the article he accepted where my misguided mindset was at - and he set my takeoff mindset straight.
Most of you probably already know, that mindset should be "looking for a reason to abort until return to runway is not possible, then raise the gear and transition to 'aviate, navigate, communicate" duh!