"Newps" wrote in message news:hHGnb.52727$Fm2.30563@attbi_s04...
Instead of smashing anything you would be better off finding out in
advance where your static lines are. On my 182 I have two static ports,
one on each side, but no alternate static system. On the pilots side I
know where the tubing meets the fitting and can reach it while in
flight. You simply yank the tubing off the fitting and now you have
your alternate static source. And when you land there is nothing
expensive to fix.

Was just a joke. The two times I've had static failures were really non-issues.
The first was in a turbo arrow which had an alternate static valve under the
panel (for jollies we closed it on approach and taxied it up to the shop with
the airspeed still reading about 60 knots). The other time was in the Navion
in severe clear. The only fun thing about that is trying to guess when I was
below the navion's gear speed of 87 knots. I used the GPS groundspeed and
the AWOS winds to estimate that.

My favorite "plugged over" story was when Margy flew to Oshkosh about a
month after getting her license. The bug firmly lodged itself in the pitot after
she lifte off at Dulles. Figuring we were already in the air we flew over to
the maintenance shop (which has an 8000' runway) and had it blown out.
After arriving at OSH, we were sitting in the bar in Friar Tuck's relating the
story to some other pilot who told us that he had an alternate Pitot inside
is cockpit. Margy kicked me as she knew I was about to ask the guy how
fast the air moves inside his cockpit.