On 28-Dec-2003, Terry wrote:

QUESTION... What would you have done?


Here's a little "hangar flying" story relating to this topic which you might
find interesting.

Last February my wife and I were flying from Newport, Oregon (ONP) to our
home base in Everett, Washington (PAE). The weather was truly crappy, but
freezing levels were high enough to allow for a safe hour plus 40 IFR
flight. About 20 minutes into the flight I happened to notice that one of
the fuel caps on the Arrow was off at an angle, indicating that it was not
firmly secured. In fact, it looked like it might fly off any second. While
cursing myself for being careless on my pre-flight inspection, I realized
that this really was not an emergency. Even if the cap flew off and I lost
all of the fuel in that tank I had more than enough in the other tank to
complete the flight safely. On the other hand, those caps are expensive and
I did not relish the idea of flying along spewing fuel over the countryside,
so I decided to land at Hillsboro (HIO) which was nearly below us at the
time.

Weather on the approach was very wet and bumpy, but the ceiling was at
around 1000 feet, making for an easy ILS. After landing I asked ground
control to just let me shut down off the taxiway for a few minutes while I
got out to secure the gas cap -- turns out it was on tight enough that it
would have remained aboard anyway -- and use my cellphone to call in a new
IFR flight plan for the remainder of our flight home. All told I we were
probably parked for maybe 10 minutes before we got the new clearance and
fired up for takeoff. Now, having just flown the plane with everything
(except the gas cap) seemingly in good order, I was tempted to forego the
runup, but then I considered the weather conditions (pouring rain, strictly
IFR) and reached for the checklist. Of course, when I checked the left mag
the engine missed badly. Probably a fouled plug. However, no amount of
jockeying of throttle and mixture was effective at clearing things up. So I
taxied to "Hangar 53", one of the maintenance FBOs at HIO. The folks there
could not have been more helpful. They dropped what they were doing, pulled
our Arrow in out of the rain, and went to work. Unfortunately, after an
hour or so, they concluded that the problem was in the mag. They did not
have a replacement available, so I was stuck. We ended up renting a car for
the 3.5 hour drive home.

Was I tempted to take off with one sick mag for the flight home of a little
over an hour? NO WAY! The crappy weather was enough of a worry. I THINK I
would have been disciplined enough to say NO even if the weather had been
CAVU, even with my wife protesting that the plane was flying just fine
minutes ago. What's really interesting is that the left mag failed in
flight (it was working fine during the runup before takeoff at ONP) and I
would not have known about it if I hadn't decided to land because of the
fuel cap. If I had instead continued, and the right mag failed while IFR,
the gas cap would have become the least of my worries.

--
-Elliott Drucker