[Rob L]

Good vid.

I think it's a good video but poorly presented.

[This post not aimed at FD, it's aimed at the education of all]:

There is a significant difference between a slip and a skid (inside or outside slip...the terminology is the same). In flight, all aircraft can do both. The skid (or outside slip) is what causes most crashes .

Forward slips are commonly called side-slips ; there are many videos etc on the internet to show this safe manoeuver.

But outside skids can lead to the scenario that FD's video shows. I have twice suffered the latter; but on both occasions I was less than 5 feet AGL and landed straight ahead; lesson learned! I would not wish the same at 50 feet AGL. Essentially I suffered a stall/incipient spin at 5' AGL

I now regularly practice outside skids (at > 500AGL) just for the practice (my aircraft has no flaps...skidding turns (which are outside slips) are great fun! It's like drifting bikes or cars, but in the air.

[SteveX]

Another confession, I never check the stall warner. Shock horror! If I did and it didn't work, am I supposed to not fly?

Admit that at times you are so crass that it is sometimes difficult to determine whether you are just winding people up or indeed just not very smart.

I will do the smart thing and stop interacting with you on this thread as it might detract from the useful posts others are making.

Promise no wind ups! What I am doing is questioning quite often the typical GA mantras we hear too often and which are outdated. What I thought people might have mentioned is one reason to test the stall warner is so it can be reported if not working. Now that's fine. Day vfr I never turn on the master and do the walk around to see if lights are working. If not that won't stop me flying. But it does mean someone else doing a check would note it for maintenance perhaps.

Here is another one, do people routinely check for water in fuel if the aircraft has flown that day and has not been refueled since? If so why?

I like challenging ingrained protocols in most things and aviation is ripe for ripping apart. Doing up bloody seat belts after use, what, just so the next person has to then undo them. What a load of tosh!! Don't do it in my car for the wife so why is that also a relic in some parts.

And then we leave the keys to our £50k machines inside and the doors unlocked.............

[PeteSpencer]

And then we leave the keys to our £50k machines inside and the doors unlocked.............

No we don't:

Because if we do, some scrote breaks in and nicks the keys: Along the the ELB and liferaft.

Necessitating phone calls to Kinloss and a change of a/c locks.

Not to mention the insurance faff.

Ask me how I know.

[Straight Level]

Before taking off, I double check everything because the wife will kill me if I come home dead.

[TopCat]

Here is another one, do people routinely check for water in fuel if the aircraft has flown that day and has not been refueled since? If so why?

If it's been flown by me that day and not refueled since, then no.

If it's been flown not by me, then definitely. How do I know it was checked properly otherwise?

And after refueling.

Much as I enjoy your trolling, @SteveX, and yet still feel slightly sorry for poor old FD while imagining him frothing at the mouth, I think you need to sharpen up your questions a bit. If you're going to attack shibboleths, I think they ought to be a bit better

And I think my reason for checking the stall warner was better than yours

[TopCat]

I don't do any mags check or full and free movement until the power and vital checks just before going. This is because in years of flying I've never had to return to parking because of a problem with either of those things.

Saving the need to taxy back from the hold is not a good primary reason for doing full and free checks before starting the engine.

You should do the full and free checks with the canopy open and the engine off, so that you can do it quietly, slowly, and without the airflow over the control surfaces that changes the way the controls feel.

That way you can slowly move the controls to their extremes, in both directions, feeling for obstruction, and listening for abrasion, without the noise and vibration that comes from having the engine on. You can also look round and see that the control surfaces move properly without your tight seat belt stopping you.

An additional quick waggle at the hold before lining up is fine for making sure that a seat belt isn't caught, or discovering that your passenger is in the way, but it's no substitute for making properly sure that the controls are unrestricted.

[IMCR]

Fuel is a funny thing.

True story I once flew an aircraft regularly that had really quite leaky fuel caps. Never leaked in flight if it was raining, but always accumulated some water if left out the hangar in the rain for a day. I know, I know re my earlier posts about faults and defects but for various reasons we couldnt come up with a solution that could be approved.

Anyway, back to the story. I flew the aircraft on the Tuesday, and went to fly it on the Wednesday. It was a very small group of us so checked the log and no one had used the aircraft in the meantime. Also I handled all the bookings so I already had a pretty good idea it would be as I left it. It had just be brought out the hangar and and I had seen it ready to go in the day before. It was fully aerobatic I inteneded to turn it up side down a bit so was always especially careful about every check.

It hadnt rained even remotely, blue sky and no chance of some isolated shower.

Anyway there was plenty of water in the the drains.

The mystery was easily solved. We had the aircraft cleaned and polished once a month. That previous afternoon the chap had come along and done it, sloshing lots of water over the wings no doubt. This is where the water had come from.

Perhaps I should have noticed it was all sparkly, but then again we kept it looking pretty good anyway.

Glad I always checked the drains even though I was the first and last to fly her.

I can recount a similiar story with a twin where the caps never ever leaked. There was a tendency not to always check the fuel because water was simply never found. Old habits and all that, and on this occasion there was a load of water. How it got there I shall never know and whether it had been there for a few previous flights by others I shall also never know. I am guessing it could only have come from some bad fuel somewhere but sure enough it was more water than I had ever seen in a drain before. It would be a shame to land away in a twin just because of water stopping both engines.

These things do seem to happen and water seems to have a habit of getting into fuel in to many mysterious ways, and when you would otherwise guearantee it would be there.

I am always surprised how often I see a pilot start up, taxi, perform power checks and overlook to ever change tanks, or change tanks almost immediately another potential gotcha with water, and even more so with twins with dual tanks. The second set of tanks never get checked.

The other thing I have noticed and been guilty of many times is the walk around. It all becomes a bit routine, perfuctory and covers the standard things we think we should be checking. However if a few fastners on the engine cowling have popped they dont get noticed because they arent exactly on the list. There are other possibilites. I recall a Chipmonk that picked up some quite severe hangar rash on the flying surfaces which werent noticed during the walk around and might have resulted in jammed ailerons. It was noticeable enough, but wasnt noticed.

[Flyin'Dutch']

Much as I enjoy your trolling, @SteveX, and yet still feel slightly sorry for poor old FD while imagining him frothing at the mouth,

Haha, 25 years marriage, 5 kids and a life time in the health service so it takes a tad more than some dumb posts to get me frothing at the mouth...

What I am aware of though is that there are plenty of silent readers on the forums who may not know how to check the wheat from the chaff and hence the need to address stupid utterances.

Those with a long memory may remember that I used to rile against Skygods making statements about their virility by virtue of how many knots they had taken as a cross wind.

[IMCR]

Landed a few years ago, genuine 60 knots with a good 30 knot component - does this count.

Could barely taxi as the wind kept lifting the up wind wing.

[Ibra]

That is different to and should not be confused with the skidded turn base to final - the video below is my favourite when people ask why the base to final turn can be so deadly....

Thanks for the video, indeed, few things need to be well explained in the base/final turn, there is too much focus on avoiding runway axis overshoot with spilover from nasty cross control skid turn dynamics behind, funnily enough one does not even have to fly straight-in final to land and accepting overshoot will only hurt the pilot ego

There are also few mis-conceptions on base/final turn,
- You should never overshoot the final axis, while it's good to anticipate it, it is not then end of the world, one can even fly opposite base leg and back or fly an offset final if they wish
- You can bank too much and sort it by unloading wings, while true it's only valid for few seconds, it can't go forever and sooner or later you need to take G-load or rate of descente
- Cross control is bad and will cause stalls & spins, well not strictly true, there are 3 configs skid turn, slip turn and forward sideslip...stall in skid turn is the ugly guy
- Speed is king, yes but angle of bank is queen, as throwing lot of power on speed during a turn is bad

On cross controls, the forward sideslip tracking straight line with nose down 1G instead of turnning is very begnin, one will not flip over out of blue in that state, actually, stall in forward slip motion is way more benign than symetric stall level or turn, aircraft will tend to drop it's high wing and center it's ball by itself, what one does not want to do is cross controls in skid TURN at 2G, that is bad, pushing nose down with rudder and raising it with elevator is not funny and very bad idea....I can't opine on stall during slip turns, it depends a lot on the types, but raising nose with rudder and push it with elevator will rarely do any harm

[proteus]

My take on the original question, is to try to be as current as possible, and to try to sharpen skills where the opportunity arises. Also to learn from mistakes I've made and those I've been around have made.

I get that personal risk management is a very individual thing, and some people want to put big safety factors and margins into everything, whereas others want to operate closer to published limits.

I do think a lot of learning and improvement is done when one is at the edge of their comfort / ability. I think back to doing some of my IMC training where we went up on some really blowy fairly miserable days, where I would not have contemplated going up by myself. I learned a great deal on those flights.

[patowalker]

, the engine ran quite rough in the cruise (which was a known problem)

Do you have the experience to know the difference between a 912 running rough and airframe vibration at certain engine rpm while it is running smoothly?

[rusty eagle]

After having carb icing behind a Continental C90 attached to a L4 Cub on full power climb out, I leave the carb heat on until on the ground rather than shut if off at final. I also use a carb icing chart to check probability of icing.

[A4 Pacific]

What I am aware of though is that there are plenty of silent readers on the forums who may not know how to check the wheat from the chaff and hence the need to address stupid utterances.

A very fair point. There is at least one ‘outlier’ contributing a number of posts here. That sobriquet won’t bother them one jot. But it’s not normally a healthy space for a pilot to inhabit.

[Rob P]

Doing up bloody seat belts after use, what, just so the next person has to then undo them. What a load of tosh!! Don't do it in my car for the wife so why is that also a relic in some parts.

Because proper aircraft don't have inertia reel belts and leaving them randomly draped around the seats looks sloppy and is indicative of a sloppy attitude.

Rob P