wrote:
First solo? How about first lesson. We had one of our aviation
scholarship winners blow a jug on the first lesson in a 150.

Me? At bout 1100 hours the engine in the Deb quit without warning on
takeoff. Climbing through bout 50 feet @ 100 MPH and nothing. Instant
silence. The diaphragm in the spider (fuel distribution block) blew
shutting off the fuel to the cylinders, but pumping a quarter inch
stream of gas out onto 6 *hot* cylinders.


I blew a jug in a C-152 immediately before I was to solo back in 1977. We
changed aircraft and I soloed later that morning. In 1980 I had the engine quit
on a Cherokee Six over water at night because of a problem with a fuel switch
that didn't. I got a restart. In 1988 I had a catastrophic engine failure in a
Lance when an oil line came loose. Crashed. In 1990 I had a double flameout in
a C-402 when I fell asleep while flying on the aux tanks. Got a restart on that
one, too.

Then there are the equipment failures: have lost two alternators while in solid
nighttime IMC. Have lost two vacuum pumps in IMC, one at night. Have drown my
airspeed indicator three times in very heavy precip. Numerous avionics
crapouts, too.

Nothing in a while.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com