Big scare story

"nrp"
the wing tips were within a few feet of the 9R snowbank maneuvering
with full flaps in a near-vertical bank.

If you are prone to nightmares, don't listen to this mayday call:

http://www.naats.org/docs/flightassist.mp3




Dallas

"George Patterson"
I've got a loose contract for repairs to some rentals out in Sea Bright.
Two of
them are a steady source of income from this sort of thing.

I thought this rental business venture was going to be like Donald Trump....
turned out to be more like Schneider, the building super from "One Day at a
Time".

:-)

Dallas

I thought this rental business venture was going to be like Donald
Trump....
turned out to be more like Schneider, the building super from "One Day at
a
Time".

ROTFL!

Yeah, people have this vision of running any kind of rentals -- apartments,
hotels, motels, B&Bs, rooming houses -- as just sitting in a rocking chair,
collecting money. They don't see all the time spent snaking bottles of
shampoo out of toilets, or re-attaching towel bars...

With *our* place, (and this is partially my fault for perpetuating the "Bob
Newhart" myth in a well-known magazine), I'm actually occasionally asked
what I do with "the rest of my time" -- the implication being that SURELY
running this little place isn't a full-time job.

I used to get incensed. Now Mary and I just laugh and laugh, nearly to
tears, leaving the poor inquisitor wondering what they said that was sooooo
funny...

;-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Third scariest was when I looked over Mary's left shoulder, in the
pattern,
and saw a beautiful Stinson ready to T-bone us in mid-air. I grabbed the
yoke and broke right and down, and we missed each other by tens of feet.

Did the Stinson ever see you?

Nope. And that incident is what got be going on an anti-NORDO rant that
carried into this newsgroup for over a month.

Which is how I met Henry Kisor, who was (at that time) very active on this
newsgroup -- and member of the Deaf Pilots Association. Obviously, his
take on the situation permanently changed my attitude toward NORDO flying...
:-)

I wonder what ever happened to Henry? I haven't seen him post here in a
very long time...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

I take that back. I was once terrified while still in the cockpit.
Flying into Las Vegas once, Las Vegas Approach said, "McCarran Tower
would like you to give them a call when you land. Are you ready to
write down their number?" It was innocuous, but it scared the living
daylights out of me.

It's kinda sad when the FAA is scarier than having an engine out!

:-)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Montblack (and all others)

YOU ARE CORRECT. USE ONLY RED CAN (Isopropyl) HEET,

Sorry about that.

NRP

Was coming back to the airport on one of my very early solo flights. I
normally flew during the week but this was a Saturday and the pattern
was full of airplanes. Didn't know how I was going to get in the
pattern and land. Panic set in and my hands actually froze on the
controls. I couldn't release my grip to reach for the mic or throttle.
Definitely a very scary moment. Had to turn away and fly around a while
before I could land. I was calculating how long until I was out of
fuel, because I figured that's when I'd die. I've had plenty of scary
moments in the 29 years and 2700 hours since, but nothing like being
unable to control the airplane.
--
Gene Seibel
Tales of Flight - http://pad39a.com/gene/tales.html
Because I fly, I envy no one.

"cjcampbell" wrote in message
oups.com...

I have flown within a mile of a funnel cloud, lost thousands of feet in
a microburst, flown through embedded thunderstorms, been rolled clear
over at less than 600' AGL by wake turbulence, lost engines to oil
pressure and hail ingestion, had a life raft wrap itself around the
vertical stabilizer, and many other adventures. Hard to say what was
the scariest moment, except that none of them seemed scary until the
next day.


Clear sky funnel cloud scared the living crap out of me and my instructor
when I was getting my helicopter rating. We were at appx 3000 agl near
Jonesboro AR, very flat country. I was about 10 hours into training on a
perfectly clear late September afternoon. My instructor was a young kid from
Germany who comes over a few months each year to build hours instructing.

We see from what at a distance looked like a long plume of smoke coming from
the ground and then dissipating slightly below our altitude. We go to
investigate. As we got closer I started to realize that it was probably not
smoke because the base of it was moving. It dawned on me what it was and I
immediately turned away from it. After we cleared I told the instructor what
it was and he thought I was nuts and he didn't think the base was moving. I
really couldn't argue the issue to strongly because I'd never heard of a
clear sky tornado. So he took the controls we moved back towards it slowly
and climbed to about 4000 ft. When we cot about a mile away we started
feeling some rough air. when we got about .5 to .75 miles we hit sever
turbulence and the bottom dropped out.

When he regained control we were at 1500 ft.

A corrected reposting:

This assumes no gasahol - a separate issue in both our states (MN & IA)

I add a couple of tablespoons full of red can (isopropyl) HEET every
now and then when the temps drop below freezing. Pure gasoline will
dissolve a small amount of water that will come out of solution and
freeze as the temperature drops below freezing. It looks like very
light snow but it won't go thru a gascolator screen. Consider that in
the winter, gas is usually colder that it has ever been since it was
made down south. It will be cooled in your airplane even more when it
comes out of the ground tanks at say 45 deg F. Like air, warm gas will
dissolve more water than cold gas. The difference on chilling, shows
as snow. The gascolator provides a way that the very smallest amount
of H2O can interrupt the fuel flow - especially at full throttle.

In my case I took a previously fueled airplane from someone else that
had already flown it an hour on that -20 deg F morning. It probably
had the gascolator fully iced from that flight, but there was enough
fuel flow and reserve in the carb bowl to do a normal run up so away we
innocently went. However there was insufficient fuel flow to sustain
takeoff power & we only got above and a little beyond the end of the
runway when it just faded away over only a couple of seconds.

The FAA wasn't able to explain it at the time except to say that "there
are some things we just don't really know about fuels". I found some
data from Amoco that gave the water solubility in gasolines, cranked
some numbers, blended in enough knowledge of chemistry & meteorology to
be dangerous, and yep, that would explain it.

Another FAA fellow had seen the same thing happen to others but didn't
have a good explanation. We went together and published an article in
the Sport Aviation December 1986 issue. It should be required reading
for anyone flying in colder climates.

In the mean time - BEWARE of fuel that has been severely chilled since
it was last filtered!

On Wed, 16 Nov 2005 06:58:22 GMT, "Dallas"
wrote:

My guess is that all of the high time pilots have at least one "big scare
story" they might share... How about it, what was your scariest moment?


Accumulating ice, very quickly, over mountains in eastern Washington
and Oregon with my wife and two kids in the plane. ATC was very
helpful after I declared an emergency - found a layer between the
clouds and landed for a long, get the shakes out of my system lunch in
Boise.

Michael