Faced with a decision, I always ask myself "How would this look at the
inquest?" If I made the wrong decision, and it came out at the inquest that
I had the information I needed to make the right decision and ignored it, my
friends in the aviation community would say "Gee, I thought he was smarter
than that." Don't want that to happen.

I also don't want the newspaper articles to parrot "He was a good pilot"
quotes from friends when it is apparent from the circumstances of my demise
that I was a lousy pilot.

Bob Gardner

"BillC85" wrote in message
...
Good day,

I got caught in some weather the other day and had to 180 outa there.

Punched up goto nearest on the Lowrance, put the Love Boat down, called
wifey for a ride home (three hours by car), and the airplane still sits at
the unscheduled stop waiting to finish the flight, probably tomorrow.

My question is this;

Why do you 180 instead of pressing on? What are your motivations? What
goes
through your head?

Here are mine for this particular event in order of priority more or less;

1. I didn't want to embarrass myself by having to put down on a road or
field and causing a big scene.
2. I didn't want to bend the airplane by having to put down on a road or
field.
3. I didn't want to die in a CFIT (closely related to the first part of
number 1 above).
4. I didn't want my wife to be without a husband.
5. I didn't want my dogs to be without a Dad.
6. I didn't want to inconvenience my wife.

I know there are steely eyed pilots out there who will flame me for having
to come up with so many arguments for the 180 but these are the things
that
went through my head. You'll notice dying was actually number three.
That's kind of interesting in that it reveals something about my ego. If
it
had come right down to the moment however, things probably would have
switched around a bit.

Thoughts?

BillC