Lost stories here

Ed Rasimus wrote:
Every IP knows that you have to let the students go a little bit, so
that they can see the outcome of their errors and then the lesson is
reinforced. The difficult judgement call is knowing how far to let
them progress and still be able to make the recovery without damage to
the airplane or the landscape.

Ye olde learning curve!

Didn't happen to me, but to a friend while we were in Basic
Jet in Kingsville, TX. Late in the Fam series, one each student
and IP in a Tango Two, IP in the back. There was a dingus
back there which let the IP slew the directional gyro in order to
test the S.A. of the stud up front. Approaching the end of the
hop, said IP applied said dingus, and said "let's go home."

Stud makes the initial callup to homeplate ("Ready or not, here
I come," more or less), tunes up NASKINGS on the TACAN,
and turns until the arrowhead is at the top of the DG. Time
passes. IP waits. More time passes. Irritation grows in the
back seat. Finally: "Sure looks dry out there." (NASKINGS,
for the uninitiated, sits a few miles off an arm of Baffin Bay,
near the Gulf of Mexico. The bay is visible for mucho miles
prior to arrival). "Yes sir." More JP-5 becomes
smoke and noise. Kingsville Approach, accustomed to this
sort of thing, hasn't commented on the fact that Our Hero hasn't
reported the 5-mile initial yet. "Some kinda drought down
there, huh?" "Yes sir," as before, but a bit nervously, as the
hapless stud begins to twig that Something Is Not Right.
Doesn't usually take more than ten minutes to start seeing signs
of human habitation once headed toward the home patch from
the MOA. IP begins to wonder if Mexican Air Force
interceptors (T-28s) are warming up on the tarmac. Finally,
inevitably: "Doesn't much look like downtown Kingsville down
there, does it?" "No, sir." "Happen to notice the DME lately?"
Student notices that the numbers in Mickey's face are in high
double digits and getting bigger (it's only 100 miles from
NASKINGS to Nuevo Laredo). "Urk." The light dawning,
the stud finally looks at his wet compass and cross-checks
against the setting sun in front of him, says "Toto, I don't think
we're in Kansas any more," and pulls a fast 180. The recovery
was nominal from that point onward. He got a Below for SA
and an Above for making his instructor laugh.



Jeff

On Mon, 8 Jan 2007 13:51:39 -0700, "Jeff Crowell"
wrote:


Didn't happen to me, but to a friend while we were in Basic
Jet in Kingsville, TX. Late in the Fam series, one each student
and IP in a Tango Two, IP in the back. There was a dingus
back there which let the IP slew the directional gyro in order to
test the S.A. of the stud up front. Approaching the end of the
hop, said IP applied said dingus, and said "let's go home."


I've often commented on the "every German goes to Zippers" program
that was ongoing at Willy Air Patch when I was a student.

We had one of the less gifted Luftwaffe types--a 1/Lt and therefore
class commander of his section. On an area solo in the T-37, late in
the afternoon he was doing prescribed acro and maneuvers. When it came
time to come home, his DG had precessed about 30 degrees. He headed
back on compass heading into the setting Arizona sun.

When he started looking for the turn point to head north to the San
Tan mountains and the pattern entry point, he had flown past Coolidge
AZ and mis-identified Casa Grande as the town. Shortly thereafter when
he didn't find the mountains, he went back to start over. Getting
darker by this time.

Finally he admitted being lost and called up Phoenix FSS for a
"practice DF steer"--something that had been demo'ed for him the week
before. (T-37s did not have transponders in those days.) The FSS tell
him they don't do night practice DFs. He says, "give me one of the
other kind."

Successive DF cuts and an obvious compass error finally gets the DF
controller to head him properly north. Now fuel is becoming a factor
and the sun has set. Really dark out. We hadn't yet reached the night
flying phase of training.

"What do you see?" the controller asks.

"Lots of lights"--i.e. Phoenix.

"Head slightly right of the lights. Tell me what you see."

"Now I see a green and split-white beacon." (A military airfield.)

"That's Williams. Head that way. Contact Williams tower."

Tower sees his lights.He sees the base. Fuel is 75 pounds. Wing DO is
on the radio. DO says "bottom your seat and stow lose equipment."

Student complies, then reality dawns and he says, "it's not yet time
for bailing out, it's time for SFO" (simulated flame-out landing
pattern)

We students in the flight room have heard of Artur's plight, so we run
out onto the flightline. Pitch dark. A flashing beacon and nav lights
appear overhead--no engine noise. A weird whistling of wind over metal
wings, usually masked by the howl of two J-69-T-25 Continentals.

He circles and lands out of an ACTUAL flameout pattern. Logs 2 hours
and 27 minutes of flying time--usual mission duration is about an hour
less.

Research of his gradebook shows previous attempts at 13 SFOs with only
one accomplished successfully. Record of actual flameouts is 100%.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org
www.thundertales.blogspot.com

Speaking of flameouts - we nuggets were trying out our brand new North
American FJ-3D Furys out of Barbers Point NAS when the Hawaii Air National
Guard jumped us. While they were demonstrating how to turn and burn in swept
wing fighters one of us (who shall remain unnamed) flames out. But his fuel
gage still showed 600 lb fuel. Tried three air restarts while proceeding to
the high key over Barbers Point. No luck.

By this time everybody in the air was giving advice on how to get on the
ground in one piece. Nevertheless, the letdown, touchdown, and rollout were
exemplary (naturally). Said pilot was a hero for all of five minutes until
the ops officer crawled into the cockpit to check the fuel switch setting.
Yes there was 600 lb. of fuel on board but it was all in the aft tank and
the aft tank had NOT been hooked up when the tail had been reinstalled after
an engine check. With the fuel switch set on sump only instead of sump and
aft our intrepid aviator would have known when it was time of head for the
barn.

Barrier crash story later

WDA
CDR USN Ret.
InFamous Fury Flyer

end

"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 8 Jan 2007 13:51:39 -0700, "Jeff Crowell"
wrote:


Didn't happen to me, but to a friend while we were in Basic
Jet in Kingsville, TX. Late in the Fam series, one each student
and IP in a Tango Two, IP in the back. There was a dingus
back there which let the IP slew the directional gyro in order to
test the S.A. of the stud up front. Approaching the end of the
hop, said IP applied said dingus, and said "let's go home."


I've often commented on the "every German goes to Zippers" program
that was ongoing at Willy Air Patch when I was a student.

We had one of the less gifted Luftwaffe types--a 1/Lt and therefore
class commander of his section. On an area solo in the T-37, late in
the afternoon he was doing prescribed acro and maneuvers. When it came
time to come home, his DG had precessed about 30 degrees. He headed
back on compass heading into the setting Arizona sun.

When he started looking for the turn point to head north to the San
Tan mountains and the pattern entry point, he had flown past Coolidge
AZ and mis-identified Casa Grande as the town. Shortly thereafter when
he didn't find the mountains, he went back to start over. Getting
darker by this time.

Finally he admitted being lost and called up Phoenix FSS for a
"practice DF steer"--something that had been demo'ed for him the week
before. (T-37s did not have transponders in those days.) The FSS tell
him they don't do night practice DFs. He says, "give me one of the
other kind."

Successive DF cuts and an obvious compass error finally gets the DF
controller to head him properly north. Now fuel is becoming a factor
and the sun has set. Really dark out. We hadn't yet reached the night
flying phase of training.

"What do you see?" the controller asks.

"Lots of lights"--i.e. Phoenix.

"Head slightly right of the lights. Tell me what you see."

"Now I see a green and split-white beacon." (A military airfield.)

"That's Williams. Head that way. Contact Williams tower."

Tower sees his lights.He sees the base. Fuel is 75 pounds. Wing DO is
on the radio. DO says "bottom your seat and stow lose equipment."

Student complies, then reality dawns and he says, "it's not yet time
for bailing out, it's time for SFO" (simulated flame-out landing
pattern)

We students in the flight room have heard of Artur's plight, so we run
out onto the flightline. Pitch dark. A flashing beacon and nav lights
appear overhead--no engine noise. A weird whistling of wind over metal
wings, usually masked by the howl of two J-69-T-25 Continentals.

He circles and lands out of an ACTUAL flameout pattern. Logs 2 hours
and 27 minutes of flying time--usual mission duration is about an hour
less.

Research of his gradebook shows previous attempts at 13 SFOs with only
one accomplished successfully. Record of actual flameouts is 100%.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org
www.thundertales.blogspot.com

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With the fuel switch set on sump only instead of sump and
aft our intrepid aviator would have known when it was time of head for the
barn.

I'm not sure what this means.

Jose
--
He who laughs, lasts.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Ed Rasimus writes:

On Mon, 8 Jan 2007 13:51:39 -0700, "Jeff Crowell"
wrote:


Didn't happen to me, but to a friend while we were in Basic
Jet in Kingsville, TX. Late in the Fam series, one each student
and IP in a Tango Two, IP in the back. There was a dingus
back there which let the IP slew the directional gyro in order to
test the S.A. of the stud up front. Approaching the end of the
hop, said IP applied said dingus, and said "let's go home."


I've often commented on the "every German goes to Zippers" program
that was ongoing at Willy Air Patch when I was a student.

We had one of the less gifted Luftwaffe types--a 1/Lt and therefore
class commander of his section. On an area solo in the T-37, late in
the afternoon he was doing prescribed acro and maneuvers. When it came
time to come home, his DG had precessed about 30 degrees. He headed
back on compass heading into the setting Arizona sun.

When he started looking for the turn point to head north to the San
Tan mountains and the pattern entry point, he had flown past Coolidge
AZ and mis-identified Casa Grande as the town. Shortly thereafter when
he didn't find the mountains, he went back to start over. Getting
darker by this time.

Finally he admitted being lost and called up Phoenix FSS for a
"practice DF steer"--something that had been demo'ed for him the week
before. (T-37s did not have transponders in those days.) The FSS tell
him they don't do night practice DFs. He says, "give me one of the
other kind."

Successive DF cuts and an obvious compass error finally gets the DF
controller to head him properly north. Now fuel is becoming a factor
and the sun has set. Really dark out. We hadn't yet reached the night
flying phase of training.

"What do you see?" the controller asks.

"Lots of lights"--i.e. Phoenix.

"Head slightly right of the lights. Tell me what you see."

"Now I see a green and split-white beacon." (A military airfield.)

"That's Williams. Head that way. Contact Williams tower."

Tower sees his lights.He sees the base. Fuel is 75 pounds. Wing DO is
on the radio. DO says "bottom your seat and stow lose equipment."

Student complies, then reality dawns and he says, "it's not yet time
for bailing out, it's time for SFO" (simulated flame-out landing
pattern)

We students in the flight room have heard of Artur's plight, so we run
out onto the flightline. Pitch dark. A flashing beacon and nav lights
appear overhead--no engine noise. A weird whistling of wind over metal
wings, usually masked by the howl of two J-69-T-25 Continentals.

He circles and lands out of an ACTUAL flameout pattern. Logs 2 hours
and 27 minutes of flying time--usual mission duration is about an hour
less.

Research of his gradebook shows previous attempts at 13 SFOs with only
one accomplished successfully. Record of actual flameouts is 100%.

Great story. Sadly I am not a pilot, but can imagine how at times like
the students' SA and neuropathways explode and gear shift several
notches higher, never to come down again!
--
Debian Hint #13: If you don't like the default options used in a Debian
package, you can download the source and build a version which uses the
options you prefer. See http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-pkg_basics.html
(sections 6.13 and 6.14) for more information.

However, bear in mind that most options in most packages can be configured
at runtime, and do not require recompiling the package.

Danny Deger wrote:
snip

What is your favorite "lost" story?

Danny Deger


I won't say where this happened or when in case any of the offending
crew is still married I will say it was back in the day when we could
get away with pictures of naked women under the plexiglass on the
plotter table of HC-130 aircraft. I was sitting in the left scanner seat
listening to the flight deck discussing the latest copy of Hustler. We
were heading in the general direction of a place where the locals would
not be happy to see us. Pilot asked nav where we were. Nav replied "we
should just be passing a large village near a river at 9 o'clock." Pilot
looked and couldn't see it. I stated that we had passed a small village
about 10 minutes before, but there was no river. Nav and pilot agreed
that must be it and went back to the discussion at hand. I decided I
didn't want to hear anymore and a bunk had just become unoccupied so I
crawled in. Not much later things got noisy as we did a very sharp 180.

I never did ask how far we had been off course It never was
discussed when we got back to the states.]

The running gag in that unit was you could tell how confident the nav
was by the width of the lines on his charts.

Dan, U.S. Air Force, retired

Danny Deger wrote:
Post your lost story here, so we can all laugh at them.

My first one is "The lake that shouldn't be there". I was flying from north
of the Dallas/Fort Worth area to my home port of Luck Field which is south
of Fort Worth. No radios of any type in my little Taylorcraft. All was
well. A nice day with reasonable visibility. Some haze but strong VFR.

About halfway to Dallas I come over a lake. A big lake. One that would be
HUGE on my sectional. It was not on the map. I had just been flying for
about 45 minutes on a magnetic heading and keeping close track of time.
There was NO way this lake could be on the ground but not on my map. The
vis was such I couldn't see the buildings of Dallas or Fort Worth. I was
convinced somehow I had gotten lost. I thought maybe the compass was stuck
on the wrong heading. I did a couple of small turns to see if the compass
moved. The compass passed this test.

But my training kicked in -- if in doubt, fly the heading needed and keep
track of time. I did this. After about 20 minutes I got to another lake
and this one was on the map. I was on course.

It turns out my mystery lake was new and not on the maps yet. My map was
current. I swear it was. I never use out of date maps. That's my story
and I am sticking to it :-)

Anyway I was where I thought I was, but very concerned for a while when I
saw that damned lake under me that wasn't supposed to be there.

What is your favorite "lost" story?

Shortly after the end of WWII, I had a flight from Capodichino (Naples, Italy)
to Orly outside of Paris in a C-47. In those days, enroute services were kind
of minimal, so I was tooling along FD&H until I reached what should have been an
enroute checkpoint and I couldn't find it. Maps, pilotage, etc. and still
couldn't recognize anything on the ground that'd give me a clue.

Finally, I spotted what looked like an active airfield, which I gingerly
approached and circled, hoping to see the name of the place painted on the top
of a barn roof or something similar, but no such luck. Finally, I tooled into
the landing pattern and set down. Taxiied up to what appeared to be a Base Ops
of some sort with people standing around out front watching me. I shut down and
got out to approach one and the conversation went something like this:

"Qu'est-ce que c'est le nom ici?. Je suis perdu." (What's the name of this
place? I'm lost.)

"Monsieur, ce place s'appelle Rheims." (Sir, this place is called Rheims)

"Merci, beaucoup.........au revoir!" (Thanks........bye!)

I'd been bucking a hellaceous and totally unexpected headwind and really wasn't
very far off course or far from my destination. I hadn't called to ask for
permission to land, nor had I filed any sort of additional clearance on leaving
to resume my flight. The funny thing about it was that I never heard another
word about that impromptu navigation maneuver from a single soul.....the only
people who knew that it happened were my crew and the Frenchmen on the ground,
and none of us talked.

I shudder to think of what I'd have had to go through if the same thing happened
to me in the States, even at that time.

George Z.

Post your lost story here, so we can all laugh at them.

Just think -- with the advent of GPS, this is one thread that no one
will understand in another 20 years.

Pilot in 2027: "Lost? How could you ever get *lost*?"

:-)

(Actually, it's already true now -- but we all still remember "BG" --
Before GPS...)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
ups.com...
Post your lost story here, so we can all laugh at them.

Just think -- with the advent of GPS, this is one thread that no one
will understand in another 20 years.

Pilot in 2027: "Lost? How could you ever get *lost*?"

I've NEVER been lost. I've been "temporarily disoriented", but NEVER
lost!!!!! :-))))
Dudley Henriques

Dudley Henriques wrote:
I've NEVER been lost. I've been "temporarily disoriented", but NEVER
lost!!!!! :-))))



I wish I could say the same. I've been LOST.

When I was a brand new pilot, I did a night VFR flight from Rock Hill, SC to
Wilmington, NC... at least that was where I wanted to go. Having very little TT
(less than 100 hours), I navigated the same as I did in daytime VFR. At least I
thought I did.

Basically you just flew at about 100 degrees until you got to Laurinburg, then
turned another 10 degrees or so to fly down the railroad tracks until you got to
Wilmington. What I hadn't figured was that most small towns look pretty much
the same at night and I couldn't see the damned tracks.

Anyway, I got to where I thought I should call Wilmington Approach to report I
was inbound for landing and said that I was about 25 miles to the west of the
airport. They gave me a squawk code and then radar identified me.... about 18
miles EAST of the airport. The next landfall would be the island of Bermuda.

Rather than test my swimming abilities to the max, I chose to take their offer
of radar vectors to the airport.

Embarassing, to say the least. I never again navigated by pilotage and /or dead
recconing at night again. From then on it was radio navigation for me at night.



--
Mortimer Schnerd, RN
mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com