how i almost died vol. 1
two entries in one day. scroll down or the first one. this one is too good to not put in here and i didnt think of it til now. so here goes.
the other day i had a mega long day in the air, 6.5 hours worth. went to lebanon, nh and then to rutland, vt, back to providence, to amherst, ma, back to providence. well...i almost didnt go anywhere.
know how when you are coming in to land in a big airliner you can feel yourself slow down quite a bit rather quickly, and if you look at the wing, the trailing edge of the wing is now split and pointing down? those are flaps. flaps give you more lift (the force that keeps you up) while allowing you to fly slower. in my plane, i take off with a notch of flaps out, incredibly called take off flaps, or t/o. to land we put out the landing flaps. the landing flaps are much more exaggerated than the t/o flaps ( 45 degrees vs. 15 degrees... huge difference.) so i am taxiing out to the runway and i start going over the pre take off checklist. fuel primer off, fuel pump on, warning lights off, trim neutral, strobe on, flaps t/o. when i check the flaps i accidently hit the switch and lower the flaps to the landing setting. i line up on the runway, push the throttle wide open and off i go...
now...under normal circumstances, if you stay on the runway longer than you should during the take off roll, the plane will start kinda dancing around a bit. this happens around 60mph. at 40mph the plane is starting to come off the ground...waaayyy too early. i immediatly realize something is wrong, but you cant just abort the take off. so i pull back on the stick a little bit...nothing happens. shit. pull back a little harder and im off the groud, but now the stall warning is ringing in my ear. i pitch the nose down to keep the air going over the wings but im still climbing. i pitch down a little more but im still climbing. i pitch down enough that the nose is basically pointing below the horizon but somehow the plane is still climbing like a friggin helicopter. okay, what is going on. i run over all my dials and switches and i realize the landing flaps are out. so you would think that all you have to do is raise the flaps a notch. if only it were that simple.
flaps give you extra lift. if you take away flaps, you take away lift and you literally sink 20 - 30 feet. if i do this and i am too low, i die because i sink right into the ground. so now i have to climb. what do you need to climb? speed. if i go too fast in the plane the flaps will fail, literally tear off the plane and i die. so, i now have to climb out to a safe height, while keeping my speed low, and correct the situation. i climbed out to 500 feet, kept my speed to about 60mp (yup, that slow) and casually raised the flaps up. i laughed my ass off about that one all the way to nh. woops.
i waited a while to tell my instructor. but i finally asked him "hey have you ever taken off with the landing flaps out?" he looks at me and says "hell no, and i wouldnt want to try it either." this coming from a flight instructor with 1000 hours in air compared to my 50. hmm. "well i might have done that last week." "are you serious?" "yup" "holy shit, thats bad. what happened?" i told him, he laughed and then added "well if someone were gonna be able to pull it off, it would have been you. all my other students would freak out and drive the thing straight into the ground." best compliment i recieved all day.
in closing, i definitly wont be making that mistake ever again. but, that was my first brush with disaster. not too bad, but enough to make an instructor raise an eyebrow.
the other day i had a mega long day in the air, 6.5 hours worth. went to lebanon, nh and then to rutland, vt, back to providence, to amherst, ma, back to providence. well...i almost didnt go anywhere.
know how when you are coming in to land in a big airliner you can feel yourself slow down quite a bit rather quickly, and if you look at the wing, the trailing edge of the wing is now split and pointing down? those are flaps. flaps give you more lift (the force that keeps you up) while allowing you to fly slower. in my plane, i take off with a notch of flaps out, incredibly called take off flaps, or t/o. to land we put out the landing flaps. the landing flaps are much more exaggerated than the t/o flaps ( 45 degrees vs. 15 degrees... huge difference.) so i am taxiing out to the runway and i start going over the pre take off checklist. fuel primer off, fuel pump on, warning lights off, trim neutral, strobe on, flaps t/o. when i check the flaps i accidently hit the switch and lower the flaps to the landing setting. i line up on the runway, push the throttle wide open and off i go...
now...under normal circumstances, if you stay on the runway longer than you should during the take off roll, the plane will start kinda dancing around a bit. this happens around 60mph. at 40mph the plane is starting to come off the ground...waaayyy too early. i immediatly realize something is wrong, but you cant just abort the take off. so i pull back on the stick a little bit...nothing happens. shit. pull back a little harder and im off the groud, but now the stall warning is ringing in my ear. i pitch the nose down to keep the air going over the wings but im still climbing. i pitch down a little more but im still climbing. i pitch down enough that the nose is basically pointing below the horizon but somehow the plane is still climbing like a friggin helicopter. okay, what is going on. i run over all my dials and switches and i realize the landing flaps are out. so you would think that all you have to do is raise the flaps a notch. if only it were that simple.
flaps give you extra lift. if you take away flaps, you take away lift and you literally sink 20 - 30 feet. if i do this and i am too low, i die because i sink right into the ground. so now i have to climb. what do you need to climb? speed. if i go too fast in the plane the flaps will fail, literally tear off the plane and i die. so, i now have to climb out to a safe height, while keeping my speed low, and correct the situation. i climbed out to 500 feet, kept my speed to about 60mp (yup, that slow) and casually raised the flaps up. i laughed my ass off about that one all the way to nh. woops.
i waited a while to tell my instructor. but i finally asked him "hey have you ever taken off with the landing flaps out?" he looks at me and says "hell no, and i wouldnt want to try it either." this coming from a flight instructor with 1000 hours in air compared to my 50. hmm. "well i might have done that last week." "are you serious?" "yup" "holy shit, thats bad. what happened?" i told him, he laughed and then added "well if someone were gonna be able to pull it off, it would have been you. all my other students would freak out and drive the thing straight into the ground." best compliment i recieved all day.
in closing, i definitly wont be making that mistake ever again. but, that was my first brush with disaster. not too bad, but enough to make an instructor raise an eyebrow.
posted by Chris Porter at 9:59 PM
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