Whew - ASI died in flight

On Sat, 01 Jul 2006 16:43:05 GMT, "Marc CYBW"
wrote:

Had my first "incident" in flying after some 175 hours in 172s mostly but
also Warriors and Arrows.

After 4 hours dual and solo learning how to fly my new fractional
ownership 182S, I decided I needed some solo practice and went out for an
hour of flying the circuit. Started my takeoff run and did the usual checks
(power, engine, airspeed) and after I got up to a little over 50 KIAS,
noticed that the plane wanted to fly off. Odd I thought, seemed a little
low, but up we went and once off the ground (maybe 50') noticed the ASI
going DOWN from 50 to 40 to 30 to ZERO. Great - 4 hours into a plane I have
just learned to land and no ASI.

Fortunately the tower (CYBW) was most helpful and called out my ground speed
(no wind today thank goodness) and I carefully stabilized my full flaps
descent at 60 Kts (by the Tower) and landed uneventfully.

Looks like a bug in the pitot tube was just far enough in that I did not
notice it on my pre-flight but the forward motion forced it to completely
block the airflow.

Certainly caught my attention!


Get some dual covering various instruments until you are really
comfortable not needing them. Someone posted they had to do this
before solo, and I totally agree with this approach. Also good to do
on a BFR. I'll probably get flamed for this, but looking inside to
solve a problem when everything you need is available out the window
is completely beyond me. Trim wheels from one airplane to another can
have different indicator positions for the same trim condition, and
(as someone else also said) depending on the loading what you think is
right could be very wrong when only looking at the wheel inside
instead of looking at the flight attitude of the airplane by seeing
the position of the wings and nose relative to the horizon.

With 175 hours I can understand this would get your attention
especially being low time in make and model, and I'm glad it all
worked out well. Do yourself a favor though, and use this experience
to understand what you learn for your private are Minimums. Go find a
good instructor to teach you how to fly VFR without needing any inside
references. It sounds like you spend more time inside than out, and
the fact that you were looking at the VSI 50' off the ground is
disturbing to me.

Good luck!
z