Wed Jul 04, 2012 12:12 pm
#1080016
I was just coming up to my MEIR skills test and went up for my 170A pre-test flight. I had been to a wedding and brought a different pair of shoes down that I normally fly with - leather soled Oxfords. The flight went fine until the EFATO, where as usual I tried to apply full rudder opposite to the yaw, and my foot went sliding off the pedal, the aircraft yawed significantly and pitched up as I couldn't get enough rudder authority. I was fairly surprised and thought I'd just stuffed it up, so we did another one, and exactly the same thing happened again. It was only then that I realised it was the shoes I was wearing and that I wasn't getting full rudder.
Next flight, shoes changed, no problems experienced since. It was a massive eye-opener for me though, as I had never realised that choice of shoes in the morning could approach a life or death decision - if I had suffered a real failure I would have simply had to close the live throttle and accept my limited options!
Next flight, shoes changed, no problems experienced since. It was a massive eye-opener for me though, as I had never realised that choice of shoes in the morning could approach a life or death decision - if I had suffered a real failure I would have simply had to close the live throttle and accept my limited options!