My wife getting scared

Bob Fry wrote:
Reckless with money or other areas of life that give her cause to
doubt?

Wreckless with money? Of course he's wreckless with money. He's a GA pilot.

"Peter R." wrote in message
...
On 10/1/2007 5:42:34 PM, "Paul Riley" wrote:

I retired from the Army in 1978. I have not flown since. Not because she
wanted me to stop, my decision. Financial, with 2 kids in college, and
then, after final retirement, our desire to travel, flying was not
economically something I wanted to do that might prevent OUR enjoying
retirement activities

She is now an invalid, and I am her caregiver, a task I take on willingly
out of love. I can never repay her for the support she has given me all
these years, but I try.

There are some people, even on Usenet, that just exude class and honor.
Paul,
IMO you are one such gentleman.


--
Peter

Thanks Peter,

I am sure there are many others doing the exact same thing I am. My reason
for posting was to let the OP know that wives do adapt and become helpmates
as well as to confirm, from my own experience, all that Dudley said.

Regards,
Paul

Thank you very much Dudley. I appreciate it.

Paul

I don't believe shock cooling exists, either. Or, if it does, it's
fairly insignificant.

Tell it to a towplane owner/operator :-)

Bartek

Matt Whiting wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote:
Dallas wrote:
On Mon, 1 Oct 2007 02:58:02 +0000 (UTC), Paul Tomblin wrote:

Three years ago, the DE who passed me on my private and instrument
tickets
died in a stupid accident.

Sorry, but you've peaked my curiosity a bit. I'm wondering how a DE,
who
should in theory be very familiar with aviation safety, could died in a
stupid accident.

Can you tell us what happened?


Happens frequently. I'm working with an accident right now that
involves a highly experienced demonstration pilot who suddenly and for
no apparent reason began a Split S at an altitude below that required
for a recovery.
Any pilot, no matter how experienced, can suffer a "brain fart" for
lack of a better term. The study on how to prevent this from happening
both to myself and to others has occupied a great of my time for the
last fifty years or so.


What are your preliminary conclusions as to how to prevent this?
Obviously, ruling out the "stupid acts" is fairly easy, but I also
wonder about the pilots who really and truly seem very careful and
meticulous yet someone succumb to an apparent moment of weakness.

Matt

Gen Des Barker of the South African Air Force (and ex demonstration and
test pilot) has done an in-depth work on these issues in his book "Zero
Error Margin" where all that has been learned on this subject has been
accumulated in print.
The subject itself is so hefty I wouldn't even try getting into it with
a Usenet post.
Basically what we have discovered in our situation is that although most
display pilots fare well in following set procedures, regulations, and
rules, the breakdown comes at the local level and in many accidents can
be coupled with the psychological circumstances prevailing during an
incident as those circumstances are affecting the individual display pilot.
This is just a pedantic way of saying that what's going on in a pilot's
mental and emotional processes as a display is being flown can under
specific conditions, be a killer.
The fact that we accept these conditions as being present and a danger
doesn't really help us much in solving the issue. The reason for this is
that each pilot will have a specific tolerance for situational
awareness, cockpit over task, and distraction.
In other words, you can take a highly trained professional pilot, fully
checked out on a specific type of aircraft, and with a proven over time
ability to fly a specific demonstration, and that pilot can on a
specific day at a specific instant, make a fatal error.
Again, we realize this can occur, but the actual solution alludes us.
Where we are right now is in making sure we educate the community so
they are collectively aware that this danger lurks out there waiting.
By educating the community to the problem rather than trying to find a
specific "fix" that we believe doesn't exist, we hope to better the
safety record.
Each pilot in other words, is being encouraged and REMINDED, to be in a
constant state of self evaluation as to the ability to perform at any
given time and place.
It ain't much......but it helps!

--
Dudley Henriques

On Oct 1, 11:20 am, Jay Honeck wrote:
Sadly, I have to admit that our fear of harming our engine has far
outweighed our fear of an engine-out landing. There is simply nothing
you can do to your engine (in normal use) that is worse than simulated
engine-out landings, so we do them very rarely.

We used to practice them regularly in rental birds...


Jay,
If you did practice emergency engine-out landing regularly in
rental birds, you must have believed that it was something useful, so
why doing it very rarely in your own bird?
I have stated it in a previous post (when you mentioned that you
did not practice short field landings in your bird either) that IMHO,
no amount of money is worth life or my limbs ;-). We spent $15K
overhauling our engine few years ago; the total cost including labor
was over $20K. I fly my Cardinal the same way as I flew training
school planes. We practiced emergency procedures and short field
landings regularly. Last month, we learned a great way to fly from an
instructor who specialized in Cardinal flying. One of the maneuvers
we learned was the spiral emergency descent. I could not believe how
we could do steep spiral 2000' over the number, dropped like a 'coke
machine', executed a super slip, kicked it out the last few seconds
and landed as soft as a butterfly right over the number. I had only
done it once on my own after the training but plan to do it more
often. I don't believe in shock cooling and seriously doubt that such
maneuver can harm my engine. Even if it does shorten the life of my
engine, I will continue to practice it until I can execute it
flawlessly all the time. I may never need to use the skill for real
but knowing that I am ready to do it in any situation boosts my
confidence tremendously. Besides, it is sheer exhilaration practicing
the maneuver. Definitely worth the price of the engine overhaul ;-)

Hai Longworth

Bertie the Bunyip writes:

How would you know?

The principles of risk management and safety are largely indepedent of
aviation and certainly don't require any piloting experience. Most people are
taught many of them in driver education, although many don't absorb what they
are taught.

Mxsmanic,

The principles of risk management and safety are largely indepedent of
aviation and certainly don't require any piloting experience.


True. However, they require other things you lack.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

----clip----

I'd be interested to know, of those who survive engine failures or
other occurrences that bring airplanes down, what percentage give up
flying.

Shirl

************************************************** ******

Shirl

I ejected from a fighter type aircraft, in the middle of winter, in
the middle of a snow storm, in the middle of Greenland and after being
picked up by a Danish chopper and my return to the 'Big PX', jumped in
another jet and started flying at regular intervals again.

Not even bad dreams.

Continued to fly GA and instruct, after retirement, until came down
with A-Fib which I felt it was not then safe for me to fly.

Now get my kicks from reading and posting to users groups )

Big John

On Oct 2, 12:27 am, Jay Honeck wrote:

The average privately owned GA aircraft is flown AT MOST once a week.
As a result, rust (from inactivity) is the #1 killer of the average,
privately owned GA engine. Many don't make TBO because of
inactivity.

Touch & goes are the #1 worst thing you can do to your engine. Flight
school planes do them all day long, but it's because they are flown
daily, sometimes 8 hours per day, and they therefore NEVER experience
the ravages of inactivity. Therefore, although it's STILL the worst
thing you can do, the engines often make it to TBO simply because they
are flown all day, every day.

Are the engines designed to take this kind of abuse? Sure. But they
were designed to be run daily, not weekly, too. And when you are
paying something in the range of $20,000 for an overhaul (as we did
for our O-540) we don't generally make a practice of stressing the
engine any more than necessary.
--

Interesting points you bring up here Jay. I've had similar
conversations with the maintenance mgr at the flight school I taught
at a few years back. As the consumate gearhead, I'm always picking up
data points from mechanics & operators/pilots and attempting to
separate real usable advice from the old wives' tales (and outright
BS) which seem to be prevalent in aviation.

Letting a plane sit idle is bad as it invites corrosion & seals drying
out etc. Starting the engine and letting it run for a 10 minutes
(thinking you're helping by circulating oil) and shutting it down is
even worse, as all that does is introduce more moisture into the
engine. You can't get an engine up to operating temp without flying
it, which will evaporate moisture in the crankcase. Flying is the only
way to properly excercise all the plane's systems IMHO.

Touch & go landings are probably harder on an engine than cruise
flight because of the short cycle heat/cool effect from full power/low
airspeed flight followed by reduced/idle power (repeat ad nauseum) I
think this is much less an issue in a low HP engine like the 160/180HP
O-320/O-360 or even the 200hp IO-360. I'd never do T&G with a high HP
plane like a Saratoga/C210/Bonanza because those engines generate more
heat (I'm told) because of their higher power output, and air cooled
engines can only dissipate so much heat effectively. I have talked to
one pilot who did T&G landings somewhat regularly in a Turbo Bonanza,
which made me cringe. I doubt that engine made it to TBO with its
original cylinders. For those planes, full stop & taxi back landings
are preferred. They also eliminate the possibility of grabbing the
gear handle instead of the flaps when cleaning up the plane on the go.
(seen this happen a few times with predictable results)

After hearing all the stories and warnings about shock cooling, I've
come to understand it's an issue mainly with turbo'd high HP engines
(Duke, 421, P-Navajo) that operate in the flight levels where the
cooling effect is not great. A "chop n drop" approach without careful
CHT monitoring can cost big $$$ if cylinders cool too fast and warp.
This just isn't a problem in a low HP, non-turbo'd aircraft IMO. It
doesn't mean you can be ham-fisted when operating your engine, just
that there's a bigger margin for error with a lower performance acft.

BTW, did your 540 overhaul only cost $20k? That sounds like a steal!

Will