Sun Nov 22, 2015 11:51 pm
#1419926
OK, not a big deal, this one, just a reminder ...
The club was short of an aircraft, but were doing their best to give everyone a flight, rather than cancel people. (Which I sort of approve of, in principle, I think. Beats the alternative, which is cancelling all your regular customers so you can keep the trial lessons going.)
Which meant that I got an aircraft somewhat later than my booked time (not a problem), and was asked to bring it back by xx00 for the next punter. Now I know that time pressure kills people, so my reply was along the lines of "sorry mate, it'll be back when it's back".
So I didn't take any short cuts, did I, knowing that way madness lies. Except that I did - I didn't bother to tune in and test all the nav gear on the ground, to save a couple of minutes, 'cos I could do that in the air, whilst still over completely familiar territory.
And when I did fire up the nav gear I discovered that (1) NAV1 wasn't working, and (2) NAV2 wasn't working, and (3) the GPS wasn't working. Good call, eh, not testing them on the ground.
In fact this was nothing other than a minor irritant - I had after all drawn some lines on the map, and I could stay below the cloud and navigate by looking out of the window. And the GPS fixed itself after a few minutes, and eventually I worked out that NAV2 was in some weird mode that I'd never seen before, and found a button to press to get it back to something I knew how to use. (Never did get NAV1 working though.)
Anyway, no harm done, but next time I'm in a hurry I really really won't take any short cuts.
The club was short of an aircraft, but were doing their best to give everyone a flight, rather than cancel people. (Which I sort of approve of, in principle, I think. Beats the alternative, which is cancelling all your regular customers so you can keep the trial lessons going.)
Which meant that I got an aircraft somewhat later than my booked time (not a problem), and was asked to bring it back by xx00 for the next punter. Now I know that time pressure kills people, so my reply was along the lines of "sorry mate, it'll be back when it's back".
So I didn't take any short cuts, did I, knowing that way madness lies. Except that I did - I didn't bother to tune in and test all the nav gear on the ground, to save a couple of minutes, 'cos I could do that in the air, whilst still over completely familiar territory.
And when I did fire up the nav gear I discovered that (1) NAV1 wasn't working, and (2) NAV2 wasn't working, and (3) the GPS wasn't working. Good call, eh, not testing them on the ground.
In fact this was nothing other than a minor irritant - I had after all drawn some lines on the map, and I could stay below the cloud and navigate by looking out of the window. And the GPS fixed itself after a few minutes, and eventually I worked out that NAV2 was in some weird mode that I'd never seen before, and found a button to press to get it back to something I knew how to use. (Never did get NAV1 working though.)
Anyway, no harm done, but next time I'm in a hurry I really really won't take any short cuts.