Jeff wrote:

Has anyone read the new flying magazine?
There is an article in it about a guy in a bonanza who crashed doing an
instrument approach using a hand held non-aviation GPS, but whats worse
is his maint. on his airplane, putting tape over the gas tank when he
lost his gas cap and so on.

I wonder if there are many people out there who actually take these kind
of chances.


I assume you're talking about the Aftermath column. IMO that column is
worth the price of the magazine alone.

Read it long enough and you'll soon learn there are lots of people like
that out there. Some of the pilots whose crashes are profiled in there
are so stupid it almost makes you feel complacent because you know you
would never do that. For example, the guy who tried to fly an
overloaded Warrior from Reno to Denver without completing his club
checkout, and oh btw he was also on Meth when he and his friends went
into a lake. Or the farmer who had no logbooks for his 172, kept it in
a barn, never did maintanence, used tractor gas in it and didn't have a
valid medical. Or the welder who fixed his own engine block to save money.

But as you get that complacent, then they come out with one that makes
you gasp and realize that could be you if you don't keep your safety
edge. Like the midair between an experienced and a student pilot who
were both talking to (and trusting) the same class D controller who lost
track of them in the haze. Or the guy who went down because it was
Sunday, he had to get back home on Monday, and the weather was OK when
he took off but it just got progressively and slowly worse and by the
time it was no longer VFR he was trapped with no way out. Or the
professional pilots who got complacent and lost focus on the "easy"
short last leg of a long flight home.

Mike
--
PP-ASEL
PA28-161
http://www.wingsofcarolina.org
Note: email invalid. Respond on newsgroup