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WA
In my brief aeronautical career (I've been licensed for about three years, and am coming up on 300 hours) I'm not proud to admit that I've made a series of mistakes that very nearly cost me my life. Like an all too common group of pilots, I suffer from a monumental ego, and in spite of all kinds of warning signs, didn't catch my amazing error. Because I've learned from the mistakes of others, I am obliged to similarly share my humbling experience.
At one time I had ambition to fly a fast complex IFR plane where ever I wanted to, and I spent a lot of money to that end. Below follows the story that adjusted my attitude about taking to the skies, and how I want to do that. I wrote this a while ago, not too long after my accident, and I'll present it now as I wrote it, grammatical warts and all. The story below ends before now, I do have a nice VFR Super Cub now, and if you want to post a response here to my story, I don't mind. I will never forget what I did.
Sometimes you really just want to turn back the clock.
I?d owned my plane, a Cessna Cardinal RG, for almost two years. We?d completed an annual, during which a number of things had been fixed, and in the months leading up to the annual, we?d also fixed a number of items. The plane had spent more than a couple of weeks grounded, but I?d still managed to fly it about 165 hours, including the completion of my PPL. I was gaining confidence flying it, and was looking forward to continuing my training in it. I decided to have a custom panel built for it. After shopping around for a while, and thinking about what it was I wanted to do, I decided to have something really nice built. Who cared if it was worth about as much as the rest of the plane, it was my plane, and I was willing to invest in it for the long term. I finagled a decent deal, and in August during prime flying weather, put the plane in a shop 60 miles from my home. The job was supposed to take one month.
It didn?t take one month, I wasn?t surprised about that, but in spite of maybe one lull, progress was coming along nicely. The guy I?d hired to do the work was doing beautiful work. It did end up taking four months, but it was worth it. Unfortunately, it was now out of annual, but with the assistance of my shop, I got a ferry permit from the FAA. In the middle of December I went to reclaim my plane. After some time looking at everything on the ground, I took off, and flew the mandated direct flight home. I used the one old radio we?d saved from the previous panel because I was most familiar with it, and it was a simple half hour flight I?d done many times before. I got home and put my beauty back in my hangar. She was home!
Click here for full size.
The plane went into the shop for annual, and a few days later I got the dreaded call. The plane had corrosion in the wings where the spar caps met the skin, and it didn?t look good. Why this hadn?t been detected in the pre-buy inspection two years prior is something we won?t go into here. I was rapidly learning just how much I was living with my plane. After we opened one wing by removing an inboard skin, and with an improvised jig supporting the structure, we discovered it was even uglier than it had seemed peering in through an inspection hole. Inter-granular corrosion in the metal of the spar cap was likely. I called around to see if anyone had proper jigs for the wings, and was interested in rebuilding them, but no promising leads played out. It wasn?t economical to rebuild the wings. I called around and got lucky, I found a set of wings at a salvage yard in Kansas that would work. It was particularly lucky in that my plane had a smaller wing tank than most Cardinals, and replacing them with wings having a different sized tank would have required the use of a DER, which I really didn?t want to get into. I flew commercially to Kansas, and after spending a day driving and a night in a motel, inspected the wings personally. They looked really good! I paid the five figure price, and made arrangements to have them trucked to me on an empty aircraft recovery return run.
It took a while for some rigging work to be done, and the installation of the landing lights that weren?t part of the wings in 1972, but after a while the wings were finally ready for painting. I personally trucked them in a very large rental truck to a paint shop, and helped bring them back too. Installation was finally finished after a few more weeks, and I made arrangements to meet the lead mechanic, and perform the test flight. In retrospect, I wish I?d told them they could find a pilot to do the test flight, but I still was pretty happy with the plane, in spite of all the expenses, both expected and unexpected, it had incurred over two years. I felt responsible for it.
It was a really nice day the morning I met the lead mechanic to go fly. I did my preflight, and we got in. She started right up, and in spite of thinking ?okay, now is not the time to play with the panel?, I couldn?t resist turning everything on. In case you?re wondering by now, yes I was using a check list. I was also really very happy to be flying my plane again after not flying it for about eight months. I?d borrowed a friends Cardinal for my biannual two weeks before that flight, and had spent some time flying with my instructor, but that wasn?t the same as getting to fly my plane.
For some reason, I never noticed that the ailerons were moving in the wrong direction. They did move smoothly and proportionately from stop to stop, and felt normal. I sure had every reason to check them twice, and I have been taught the common mnemonic devices to remember which way they are supposed to go. I?m sure that if my tail feathers had been backwards it would have set off red lights in my brain, but for some reason I never got it. Up until the day of my accident, it had always required a moment of consideration to remember which way the ailerons were supposed to go, but not so when I thought about the rudder or the elevator. I was thinking about a lot of things, but which way the ailerons are supposed to go wasn?t one of them. After getting clearance, we took the runway, and started a take off roll.
We did make it off the ground. There was front quartering wind with probably about a 5-8 MPH crosswind component. As we left the ground, the plane began to roll a bit to the left in response to the wind from the right. I attempted to adjust with a little bit of aileron input to the right and things began to feel funny. I thought something was dragging the left wing, and got the idea that the wings were badly out of rig. Instinctively, much like riding a bicycle, I tried to regain my balance, and went to full stop. The plane did an accelerating bank over to the left until the left wing tip dragged on the runway. I think the wing tip sort of bounced off the runway, and we were turned around by the force until we were facing back the way we came. We hit the runway nose low going backwards, but mostly level. I did see the pavement coming, but I never had time to panic or get scared, all I had time to do was yell ?Oh sh*t!?. We slid backwards on the main gear and smashed nose about 250? until we went backwards, tail high, through the back half of a Beech Musketeer tied down off the runway, and came to a stop. I said ?Well, we?re alive?, my passenger said ?Let?s get out of this thing?. We did.
As I said, I never did get it. The aileron reversal was pointed out to me at the scene of the accident while I was talking to the deputies and fire department officials. The FAA guy was there too, and actually was pretty decent about the whole thing. I got a small cut on my nose from one of those hard plastic sun visors you can install (I?m not sure they are a good idea), but otherwise no one was hurt. That is pretty amazing, this all happened at a pretty busy airport where traffic could have resulted in a much bigger mess. We had full tanks, and every once in a while I think about what would have happened if one of the tanks had ruptured, but not for very long. If there hadn?t been any wind, we could have had enough altitude so that the results would have surely been fatal.
I sure do regret this event. I love planes, and I hate being responsible for there being two less around to fly. The mechanic who was in the plane with me, and who supervised and signed off on the work is a pretty decent guy, and he?s taken this pretty hard. I?m very happy to be alive.
I am still flying. The FAA re-examined me with particular attention to pre-flight, and hasn?t taken any enforcement action against me, they sent me a letter saying I could keep all my privileges. I?m in the process of buying another plane, but I?m doing things a bit different this time around. I?m shopping for a VFR Super Cub with the money I got from the shop?s insurance company. I may continue my IFR training some day, but for now, I want to fly outside of the cockpit, and not spend a lot of attention on instruments.
There are a bunch of old timers saying right now ?See, I told you all that new fangled stuff confuses you?. I can?t quite agree with that, because I think a lot of the new devices make navigation much less of a chore. But I do think there are many elements to flying, and a test flight is something that can easily be overloaded.
I?m asking anyone who reads this to please respect my privacy. You may meet me face to face someday, and if you do I?ll be happy to talk to you about this accident, but I wouldn?t mind forgetting it either.
-------------------------
If you screw up like I did, you too can have one of these, an NTSB report:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20010426X00818&key=1
I've got lots of pictures, here are a few:
Click here for full size.
Can you see what I missed? If you look closely, you can tell which way the yoke is pointing...
Click here for full size.
Later in the hangar:
Click here for full size.
Waving good-bye...
Click here for full size.
At one time I had ambition to fly a fast complex IFR plane where ever I wanted to, and I spent a lot of money to that end. Below follows the story that adjusted my attitude about taking to the skies, and how I want to do that. I wrote this a while ago, not too long after my accident, and I'll present it now as I wrote it, grammatical warts and all. The story below ends before now, I do have a nice VFR Super Cub now, and if you want to post a response here to my story, I don't mind. I will never forget what I did.
Sometimes you really just want to turn back the clock.
I?d owned my plane, a Cessna Cardinal RG, for almost two years. We?d completed an annual, during which a number of things had been fixed, and in the months leading up to the annual, we?d also fixed a number of items. The plane had spent more than a couple of weeks grounded, but I?d still managed to fly it about 165 hours, including the completion of my PPL. I was gaining confidence flying it, and was looking forward to continuing my training in it. I decided to have a custom panel built for it. After shopping around for a while, and thinking about what it was I wanted to do, I decided to have something really nice built. Who cared if it was worth about as much as the rest of the plane, it was my plane, and I was willing to invest in it for the long term. I finagled a decent deal, and in August during prime flying weather, put the plane in a shop 60 miles from my home. The job was supposed to take one month.
It didn?t take one month, I wasn?t surprised about that, but in spite of maybe one lull, progress was coming along nicely. The guy I?d hired to do the work was doing beautiful work. It did end up taking four months, but it was worth it. Unfortunately, it was now out of annual, but with the assistance of my shop, I got a ferry permit from the FAA. In the middle of December I went to reclaim my plane. After some time looking at everything on the ground, I took off, and flew the mandated direct flight home. I used the one old radio we?d saved from the previous panel because I was most familiar with it, and it was a simple half hour flight I?d done many times before. I got home and put my beauty back in my hangar. She was home!
Click here for full size.
The plane went into the shop for annual, and a few days later I got the dreaded call. The plane had corrosion in the wings where the spar caps met the skin, and it didn?t look good. Why this hadn?t been detected in the pre-buy inspection two years prior is something we won?t go into here. I was rapidly learning just how much I was living with my plane. After we opened one wing by removing an inboard skin, and with an improvised jig supporting the structure, we discovered it was even uglier than it had seemed peering in through an inspection hole. Inter-granular corrosion in the metal of the spar cap was likely. I called around to see if anyone had proper jigs for the wings, and was interested in rebuilding them, but no promising leads played out. It wasn?t economical to rebuild the wings. I called around and got lucky, I found a set of wings at a salvage yard in Kansas that would work. It was particularly lucky in that my plane had a smaller wing tank than most Cardinals, and replacing them with wings having a different sized tank would have required the use of a DER, which I really didn?t want to get into. I flew commercially to Kansas, and after spending a day driving and a night in a motel, inspected the wings personally. They looked really good! I paid the five figure price, and made arrangements to have them trucked to me on an empty aircraft recovery return run.
It took a while for some rigging work to be done, and the installation of the landing lights that weren?t part of the wings in 1972, but after a while the wings were finally ready for painting. I personally trucked them in a very large rental truck to a paint shop, and helped bring them back too. Installation was finally finished after a few more weeks, and I made arrangements to meet the lead mechanic, and perform the test flight. In retrospect, I wish I?d told them they could find a pilot to do the test flight, but I still was pretty happy with the plane, in spite of all the expenses, both expected and unexpected, it had incurred over two years. I felt responsible for it.
It was a really nice day the morning I met the lead mechanic to go fly. I did my preflight, and we got in. She started right up, and in spite of thinking ?okay, now is not the time to play with the panel?, I couldn?t resist turning everything on. In case you?re wondering by now, yes I was using a check list. I was also really very happy to be flying my plane again after not flying it for about eight months. I?d borrowed a friends Cardinal for my biannual two weeks before that flight, and had spent some time flying with my instructor, but that wasn?t the same as getting to fly my plane.
For some reason, I never noticed that the ailerons were moving in the wrong direction. They did move smoothly and proportionately from stop to stop, and felt normal. I sure had every reason to check them twice, and I have been taught the common mnemonic devices to remember which way they are supposed to go. I?m sure that if my tail feathers had been backwards it would have set off red lights in my brain, but for some reason I never got it. Up until the day of my accident, it had always required a moment of consideration to remember which way the ailerons were supposed to go, but not so when I thought about the rudder or the elevator. I was thinking about a lot of things, but which way the ailerons are supposed to go wasn?t one of them. After getting clearance, we took the runway, and started a take off roll.
We did make it off the ground. There was front quartering wind with probably about a 5-8 MPH crosswind component. As we left the ground, the plane began to roll a bit to the left in response to the wind from the right. I attempted to adjust with a little bit of aileron input to the right and things began to feel funny. I thought something was dragging the left wing, and got the idea that the wings were badly out of rig. Instinctively, much like riding a bicycle, I tried to regain my balance, and went to full stop. The plane did an accelerating bank over to the left until the left wing tip dragged on the runway. I think the wing tip sort of bounced off the runway, and we were turned around by the force until we were facing back the way we came. We hit the runway nose low going backwards, but mostly level. I did see the pavement coming, but I never had time to panic or get scared, all I had time to do was yell ?Oh sh*t!?. We slid backwards on the main gear and smashed nose about 250? until we went backwards, tail high, through the back half of a Beech Musketeer tied down off the runway, and came to a stop. I said ?Well, we?re alive?, my passenger said ?Let?s get out of this thing?. We did.
As I said, I never did get it. The aileron reversal was pointed out to me at the scene of the accident while I was talking to the deputies and fire department officials. The FAA guy was there too, and actually was pretty decent about the whole thing. I got a small cut on my nose from one of those hard plastic sun visors you can install (I?m not sure they are a good idea), but otherwise no one was hurt. That is pretty amazing, this all happened at a pretty busy airport where traffic could have resulted in a much bigger mess. We had full tanks, and every once in a while I think about what would have happened if one of the tanks had ruptured, but not for very long. If there hadn?t been any wind, we could have had enough altitude so that the results would have surely been fatal.
I sure do regret this event. I love planes, and I hate being responsible for there being two less around to fly. The mechanic who was in the plane with me, and who supervised and signed off on the work is a pretty decent guy, and he?s taken this pretty hard. I?m very happy to be alive.
I am still flying. The FAA re-examined me with particular attention to pre-flight, and hasn?t taken any enforcement action against me, they sent me a letter saying I could keep all my privileges. I?m in the process of buying another plane, but I?m doing things a bit different this time around. I?m shopping for a VFR Super Cub with the money I got from the shop?s insurance company. I may continue my IFR training some day, but for now, I want to fly outside of the cockpit, and not spend a lot of attention on instruments.
There are a bunch of old timers saying right now ?See, I told you all that new fangled stuff confuses you?. I can?t quite agree with that, because I think a lot of the new devices make navigation much less of a chore. But I do think there are many elements to flying, and a test flight is something that can easily be overloaded.
I?m asking anyone who reads this to please respect my privacy. You may meet me face to face someday, and if you do I?ll be happy to talk to you about this accident, but I wouldn?t mind forgetting it either.
-------------------------
If you screw up like I did, you too can have one of these, an NTSB report:
http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20010426X00818&key=1
I've got lots of pictures, here are a few:
Click here for full size.
Can you see what I missed? If you look closely, you can tell which way the yoke is pointing...
Click here for full size.
Later in the hangar:
Click here for full size.
Waving good-bye...
Click here for full size.
and seen many friends do it also.
