The danger of assumption

The other night, as we approached rotation speed, we skipped half a dozen
times before breaking cleanly. I made some snide remark about this to Mary,
and assumed that she was holding the nose down too long, causing the skip.

"Poor piloting," I harrumphed to myself... "Danged tires are too expensive
to be mistreated this way," I silently grumbled... (This was the night I
was already in a ****y mood, so everything that had transpired to this point
was fitting into my crappy view of the world at the time...)

Ten minutes later, with me in the left seat, I advanced the throttle
smoothly, reached rotation speed, started to gently pull back -- and skipped
half a dozen times down the runway before breaking cleanly. Dang.

Needless to say, of course, Mary pointed this out to me in blunt and certain
terms... :-)

Here I had assumed that she was holding it down too long before rotation --
but it had now become apparent that she (and I) were in fact rotating
prematurely. Wind conditions were calm, temperatures were in the 80s,
humidity was very high, and a ground fog was developing as we landed.
Otherwise, everything was done according to Hoyle, with 2 notches of flaps
set for take-off.

Usually the plane just "flies itself off" the runway in this
configuration -- but not that night. Conditions of flight were fairly
unusual, for us -- the back seat was empty, no wind, high humidity, fairly
light on fuel -- so I suppose it was just pilot error.

It seems odd, however, that we *both* made the same mistake, which leads me
to wonder if there was something atmospheric going on...

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