"The Weiss Family" wrote in message
...
Marco,



Moral(s) of the story:
1. Make sure someone else flies the plane for an hour after its next
annual
before me.
2. Check the volume.
3. Use COM2
4. If I had it to do over again, I would have fixed the problem on the
ground before taking it in the air.

I REALLY hope I never am that stupid again. Especially because next week
I
am taking my wife up for the first time.
We're not just going around the patch, either.

Adam

P.S. Please don't chastise me. I realize how stupid I was!


Please don't feel bad!

Your problem is not stupidity: your problem is that you never had to deal
with a "prankster" instructor:

you have no idea how often I had to put up with my instructor turning things
off on me while I wasn't looking.

More than once he would ask me to close my eyes for "supposedly" unusual
attitude recovery.

He would twist and turn the plane while I wasn't looking and then make me
recover it.

Little did i know that he would turn the volume of the radio down to
nothing.

Or that time that I was so engrossed in the runup and he turned off the
radios. He didn't let me take off.
He asked me "Why didn't you do a radio check?"
"Oh" goes I "Sure! Linden unicom radio check please"
Nothing.
"Linden unicom radio check please"
Silence.
"ahhh ... Linden unicom, radio check please?"
Nada.
"Maybe they are in the bathroom?"
Blank stare from my instructor (god I don't wanna play poker with him).

My instructor was in "asshole" mode that day, since I was about to get ready
for my X-country checkride.

"I don't know. You are PIC. What do YOU think?" he asks. And from the tone
of his voice I can tell his feet are on the brakes and the plane is NOT
moving.

He looks at a plane turning from base to final. Nothing is coming out of the
radio. My newbie brain finally reaches a new level of conciousness and
awarenees washes over my neurons as I finally realize that maybe just MAYBE
I should be chacking the dang radios instead of just pouding on the mike
button in the yoke.

A quick search ... lets me discover that the frequency is not on 123.00 but
on the practice area frequency ... he was sneaky enough NOT to turn off the
radios (I would have noticed the silence with the engine at low RPMS on the
ground) and he set it to the practice area frequency so that I could still
hear the static.

Yes my instructor was a prank-star. I am still burning for that one ...

Trust me ... I triple check the radios every single time now.

--
Marco Rispoli - NJ, USA / PP-ASEL
My on-line aviation community - http://www.thepilotlounge.com