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#1
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"Cub Driver" wrote in message ... After 350 hours there's a SHARP drop. And the elderly pilots have died of natural causes. Not all of us! :-) Dudley Henriques International Fighter Pilots Fellowship Commercial Pilot/ CFI Retired For personal email, please replace the z's with e's. dhenriquesATzarthlinkDOTnzt |
#2
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But: the wind was 11 gusty 18 (which I can handle ... i handled 25 gusty to
35 direct crosswind at Linden. Whoa ! I don't think the statistics are your biggest worry, that's some serious x-wind... |
#3
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At 75 hours I feel like crap in fact and the more I fly the more I see
things or think about things or consider things that I never thought about before. You have, perhaps, put your finger on a phenomenon that I have heretofore never understood: The "Former Pilot." We've all met them. He's the guy at the party who says he has his ticket, but "hasn't flown in ten years." Or he's the guy who "made it to solo, but quit" due to -fill in the blank- reasons. Perhaps all of these folks simply hit a wall of failing self-confidence such as you're describing, and quietly decided to hang it up? Lately Mary has been going through a period of what I call "increased sensitivity" to flying. She's loudly voicing her displeasure with turbulence, and -- when acting as PIC -- rapidly over-corrects against bumps. This, of course, induces even MORE "turbulence," which makes her MORE tense, and soon she's fighting the plane rather than flying it. And having a crappy time doing it. She passed through a similar period at around 200 hours, if I recall correctly. (She has around 400 hours now.) She slowly worked her way through it last time, working her way back into a comfort zone, and I expect she'll be fine again this time, too. Would she have quit flying at 200 hours, without me there to act as a steadying influence? I don't know. All I can say is "Hang in there" -- cuz it gets better over time. -- Jay Honeck Iowa City, IA Pathfinder N56993 www.AlexisParkInn.com "Your Aviation Destination" |
#4
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Or he's the guy who "made it to solo, but quit" due to -fill in the blank- reasons. I came very late to flying, and one of the things that astonished me was how many of my contemporaries had taken flight lessons in their youth. (None of them are flying now. Indeed, I probably wouldn't be flying now if I'd gotten my ticket in 1954.) One gal quit because she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to find her way back to the airport. all the best -- Dan Ford email: (put Cubdriver in subject line) The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com |
#5
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One gal quit because she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to find
her way back to the airport. Well, GPS has pretty much fixed *that* problem... ;-) -- Jay Honeck Iowa City, IA Pathfinder N56993 www.AlexisParkInn.com "Your Aviation Destination" |
#6
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One gal quit because she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to find her way back to the airport. Happened to me, on Block Island. Landed, went for dinner and a walk, decided to walk back to the airport, it was getting dark and the four of us took a wrong turn on one of their roads and ended up walking around half the fat part of the island. It may be small from the air, but it sure is big once you're on foot! Jose -- (for Email, make the obvious changes in my address) |
#7
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One gal quit because she was afraid that she wouldn't be able to find her way back to the airport. all the best -- Dan Ford email: (put Cubdriver in subject line) The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com That's kinda easy to fix though. Everytime I go somewhere I am not familiar with I always write down what VOR radials and what heading i need to be on in order to see the airport on my 10 or 2 o'clock. (generally 10, so I don't need to twist the plane). Just a trick. I bring a piece of paper with frequencies and radials (I figure this out during the planning phase) and heading. Write them down and if I am "over the airport" but don't see it, that's what I do: dial the numbers on the VORs, go there, go on the heading I chose and invariably the airport is just where I expect it to be, right in front of my left (or right wing). Obviously I am talking about good visibility conditions and airports that are reasonably close to VORs. I had to do this a couple of times and it worked. -- Marco Rispoli - NJ, USA / PP-ASEL My on-line aviation community - http://www.thepilotlounge.com |
#8
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Everytime I go somewhere I am not familiar with I always write down what VOR radials and what heading i need to be on in order to see the airport on my 10 or 2 o'clock. (generally 10, so I don't need to twist the plane). Well, she was probably in a Piper Cub or the equivalent. No radio, no VOR, not even a headset to quiet the engine. Though I trained in a Cub, we did of course have earphones and intercom. I can't imagine what it would be like to learn to fly with an instructor who could neither hear you nor see you (unless of course in 1954 they put the student in the front seat). all the best -- Dan Ford email: (put Cubdriver in subject line) The Warbird's Forum www.warbirdforum.com The Piper Cub Forum www.pipercubforum.com |
#9
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"Marco Rispoli" wrote
Between the hours of 50 and 350 you can find about 80% of all pilot-cause accidents. And probably 80% of pilots, too. Look around the airport. Ask people you know (CFI's excluded - I'll get to them later) how many hours they have. Betcha 4 out of 5 will have between 50 and 350. After 350 hours there's a SHARP drop. There's a sharp drop in the number of pilots, too. After 350 hours, most pilots either go pro, or quit. Going pro at that point generally means doing the CFI thing - getting into the right seat of a trainer and going around the pattern. It's pretty hard to get hurt if you never do anything. The numbers that you're citing are pretty meaningless unless you know the experience level distribution of the active pilots. The entire killing zone conjecture is more than likely just bad statistics. I am in the Killing Zone and I have a good 300 hours to go. 3 years in the killing zone ... Or one year. Or ten. All depends on how much you fly. Statistics indicate that pilots that fly less often, crash more often. I don't know that statistics are available to prove this, but I believe it. Why? Because every aviation insurance company I've ever dealt with believed it, and reflected this in the rate structure. These guys have to be right most of the time to turn a profit. A guy who writes a book just has to sound convincing. Guess who I believe? It stands to reason that if you cover a plane that flies 20 hours a year, that's a lot less exposure than covering one that flies 200. But all else being equal, you will get a better annual (not per-hour) rate if you fly your airplane 200 hours a year instead of 20. The company that writes my insurance won't even talk to you if you have the same make and model and don't fly it at least 60 hours a year, and they're happier to see 160. Well ... I am not ready. I don't why I am not ready and I don't know what I am missing but at 75 hours I feel more uncomfortable than I used to feel at 50 or even 25. You have a better idea of how much you don't know. Congratulations - that's the first step on the road to learning. But you can't learn if you don't fly. At 75 hours I feel like crap in fact and the more I fly the more I see things or think about things or consider things that I never thought about before. At 1700+ hours, the same happens to me. You can never know everything, you can never be prepared for every possible eventuality. That's the great lie of aviation training - you can't be trained for everything and you can't be trained for the unexpected. What you actually need is an aviation education - a way of thinking that prepares you to solve unexpected problems and to anticipate situations you were not specifically prepared for. Very little of that happens at the private pilot level, because most students aren't interested and most CFI's aren't capable. So what do you do? Well, you think and you discuss. That's really what hangar flying is supposed to be about. REmember that time that i was in poor visibility? 10 miles? What if I had lost an engine then? My first reaction at that time was to get closer to the ground so I could see more ... and in fact I did. It did help ... but by getting closer to the ground (flat ground ... safe) I was also giving up precious altitude to glide to a safe spot ... and under me there was nothing but trees. I did think about it at the time but the idea of hugging the ground and getting more visibility was more of a priority for me ... And I think your priorities may have been correct. Flying around in low vis puts you at increased risk of inadvertent cloud penetration and possible loss of control. Compared to this, the risk of engine failure may be smaller. No flight can be made risk-free; it is your job as pilot in command first to decide how the flight can be completed with minimum risk and then to decide if that risk level is justified by the rewards of making the flight. Then after the flight was over ... rational thought started creeping back in and i started wondering what the hell was I thinking ... I had good visibility anyway ... I was just uncomfortable in the haze and got comofortable closer to the ground but traded safety for comfort. Did you really? Was the visibility good enough? Then perhaps you made a poor decision. Think you would have been the first? 90% of pilots admit to having made more than a few bad decisions. The other 10% are lying. Oh ... not a big deal I suppose ... the engine did work. The haze wasn't so bad. I made it there and back. But I dont' feel good about it. What I don't feel good about is that I let my sense of comfort take over rational thought. You are second-guessing your decision and discussing it with others. That's part of what accelerates the learning process. Experience isn't just what happens to you - it's also what you get out of it. I'm all for rational thought, but don't discount the value of listening to your gut as well. When you're uncomfortable, there is usually a reason. Having said all that - if the terrain was hostile you likely made a suboptimal decision. OK. Don't do it again. Next time, carefully weigh your options and decide what's the safest way to complete the flight. You are not likely to make this same mistake again, because you've beaten this one to death. Will you make others? Most certainly. But if this one is any indication, they won't be too terribly serious and you will learn from them. Why am I uncomfortable? Is it because I never experienced so much haze and a visibility less than 20 miles? then it's safe. Maybe. There are real risks associated with reduced visibility, especially for someone who is not experienced in it and not prepared to transition to instruments if the need should arise. There is no such thing as safe. There are only degrees of risk. On the other hand, I think the risk you took was reasonable. Flying at 2000 ft isn't a big deal. I would have happily done the same when I had 75 hours. The ground is what hurts. Low level flying is NOT the answer. Plenty of telephone poles to smack into. Sometimes low level flying is the only answer. Obstacles are a lot less dangerous when you can see them clearly. You have to go VERY low for telephone poles (and even cell towers) to be an issue. So I land and one more cross country was over ... a few weeks ago. 4 hours more on my log book. And experience was acquired. You made a mistake. You learned from it. That is what experience is all about. Would it have been better to wait for blue skies to make that flight? You would have learned little or nothing. I am a paranoid flyer. I have a cousin who is a physician with a professional insterest in psychiatry. Once, on a visit, I took him and some other people flying. The plane was parked outside, at an airport I rarely use and whose line boys I really don't trust. Prior to our flight, I carefully went around the airplane. I checked for dents that should not be there, damage to the nose gear, fuel and oil levels, security of stabilator, motion in the ailerons - a normal preflight for those times when the plane has been out of my control. My cousin wathced me carefully. Finally, I turned around and said "A certain amount of paranoia is healthy in a pilot." He could not help but agree. We were going to do the Hudson River tour, but wound up making only a short flight in the vicinity of the airport. I judged the ceilings too low and the visibility insufficient to fly 25 short miles to the Hudson over terrain that wasn't all that flat and none too familiar. Had I been more familiar with the area and flying a slower airplane, I might have felt differently. I'm still not sure the decision was the right one. What I'm trying to tell you is that the paranoia never goes away - or at least it should not. Recently I found out about a failure mode in my airplane - a way that sloppy maintenance on the flap system could kill me. It has killed before. I'm not that concerned about it now - I've practiced the recovery procedure and I am now proficient in it. Except that an engine failure that occurs during the recovery procedure will be very, very bad. But it could have been really ugly had it happened to me unexpectedly. It was ugly for someone else. I've owned that airplane for over three years and have logged over 600 hours in it, after getting the best available training. Nothing is 100%. I am sprouting eyes in the back of my head and I am getting severly suspcious of anything out of the ordinary. Good. You live longer that way. This past weekend was beautiful. But: the wind was 11 gusty 18 (which I can handle ... i handled 25 gusty to 35 direct crosswind at Linden. Nothign I want to do ever again ... but 7 knots of gust factor makes me mildly uncomfortable). But: that weekend we were supposed to fly to cape may But: I was supposed to fly with my wife and a friend of hers that I never met before. But: moderate turbulence on the way was forecasted But: the plane we were supposed to fly (Piper 180) has a "limp" right shock absorber and leaky breaks. Nothing I can't handle ... I can land without breaks. I usually land well within 1000 feet of runway barely touching the breaks. All of the facts above, taken singularly would not present a problem for me. I can take gusts. I can take turbulence. I can take a relatively long cross country. I can take strangers in the plane. I can take limp landing gears and leaky breaks. One at a time. Two of the above would make me think twice. All of them togheter are WAY outside of my envelope. Please keep in mind that none of the things were really THAT bad. I knew that. 11 gusty to 18 is nothing. I have done it plenty of times and the Piper 180 is VERY stable in crossiwinds (I used to do this in the 172 all the time which is a lot worse). My wife's friend flies in puddle jumpers all the time and according to her she can take any weather and she is not scared at all. The brakes are leaky but I don't generally use brakes other than if I am in a hurry to get out of the runway in case people need to land. I can land on one wheel (keeping the limp wheel off the runway for a bit) and my landings are generally soft (especially lately). But all of these factors just made me stop in my tracks and just say No. I am reading this book and I am thinking: am I taking this too seriously? Am I refusing to fly when it's perfectly safe to do so? Am I being too careful? But the most pressing question that is gravitating my mind is: am I "damaging" my experience by avoiding danger and risk and thus never learning how to deal with it? Is it wise not to push the envelope at all? Wouldn't it be wiser to push a little bit more and just learn how to deal with the problems? I mean ... you gotta see the problem and solve it in order to learn anything and if I am too defensive of a flyer ... I will never learn. Give all of the above considerations ... should I have flown last weekend instead? I am still thinking about this ... and i don't know that i have the answer ... yet. And I don't know if I will have the answer out of the killing zone ... at 400 hours. Or 1000. Everything you say makes perfect sense. You've made excellent arguments for both decisions. Both the risks of the go decision (gusty crosswinds plus weak gear plus bad brakes plus factors likely to degrade pilot performance) and the risks of the no-go decision (limiting your expereince by avoiding the edges of the envelope) are very, very real. There is not a damn thing I can tell you about this, with my 1700+ hours of experience, that you have not already considered. We can discuss the fine points of the risks, but for 75 hours I think your asessment is very, very solid. Are you taking the book too seriously? Yes and no. The 50 to 350 hours thing is bogus, because the statistics are bogus. Sure, that's the steep part of the learning curve - but with solid training there's no reason you should not get through that. You've been taught to handle 25G35, so odds are your handwork is fine. You're asking all the right questions, so there's nothing wrong with your headwork. Frankly, I don't think you made a bad call on that trip. Too many little things that weren't right. I think I would have made the same decision at your experience level. Would you have made it? Probably. And maybe you would have caught a gust at just the wrong time and thumped on the gear, and the weak oleo would have chosen that time to blow an already leaky seal or Schreder valve and collapse, and with weak brakes you would not have had the control to keep it on the runway in the crosswind. Or worse, those weak brakes could have locked up - asymmetrically. Had it happen once - took everything I had to keep it on the runway. I had over 1000 hours then. Rental planes are mostly junk, and I won't tell you never to fly one that's less that perfect (else you would never fly) but why stack the odds against yourself by taking a plane with known deficiencies in conditions that will maximally aggravate those deficincies? Does this mean you should never push your envelope? Not at all. The risk of not learning because you never leave your comfort zone is very real. But from where I'm sitting, it sounds like you're making reasonable choices. Yes, you're sweating them all and second-guessing every one of them after the fact, but that's healthy. It's accelerating your development as a pilot. The risks of flying small airplanes are very, very real. The drive to the airport is the safest part of the trip, not the most dangerous. We lose one in 2000 of our number to crashes every year, and nearly every one of those pilots launched confident that he would return to earth safely. I can't tell you this is safe. What I can tell you is that from where I'm sitting, with over a decade of flying behind me, it sounds to me like you're thinking this through - and that has to count for something. Michael |
#10
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Flying at 2000 ft isn't a big deal. I would have happily done the same when I had 75 hours. I love flying low. A lot of pilots are afraid of it, both because of obstacles and navigation. I know pilots who won't take off without a working GPS. AT 1000 feet, you can't see all that far, and the sectional is not detailled enough to corroborate with most of what you will see. Much of your navigation will be ded reckoning, confirmed by pilotage. At 4000 feet, the picture is quite different. I think it's vitally important that pilots, new ones especially, get some real low level cross country experience. It will save your bacon one day. IT builds faith in your ability to hold a course and know where you are. It also gives you good planning experience (you have to plan well - find the obstacles on the map, and loook out the window for the ones that aren't on the map. Too many pilots just climb high and turn on the autopilot. They get stuck under an overcast, they don't know what to do. Jose -- (for Email, make the obvious changes in my address) |
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