Dirtstrip,

Years ago a buddy of mine and his wife went out for supper in the plane. Through a series of events, it was dark when they got back to the farm, on a moonless night. Bull headedness would not allow a landing at an airport (same theory as stopping for directions). It took 3 passes to figure out where the strip was, but they made it down. My buddies wife said he was going to install runway lights. 4000 feet of unground wire later, he had complied. Steve

steve wrote:Dirtstrip,

Years ago a buddy of mine and his wife went out for supper in the plane. Through a series of events, it was dark when they got back to the farm, on a moonless night. Bull headedness would not allow a landing at an airport (same theory as stopping for directions). It took 3 passes to figure out where the strip was, but they made it down. My buddies wife said he was going to install runway lights. 4000 feet of unground wire later, he had complied. Steve

I myself have several more
Landing at wrong airport -twice both at night years before GPS .
Landing on Highway in Texas with highway patrol watching --- yes I got a ticket ---Thunderstorm didn't seem to affect him
Taking off and landings on taxiways and ramps.

Damn, we have the same friend. Landing one dark and stormy night in a PA-18 and having to go look at the label on the pay phone to see what airport we, uhhh, I mean they, were at.

Gump

My friend landed at King County while talking to Renton tower. Switched over to ground and asked for taxi directions to FBO. Tower guy laughed and said u can't get there from here. My "friend" asked why not, tower said because it is not on this airport. "friend" asked for directions to FBO that sold maps.

GumpAir wrote:Damn, we have the same friend. Landing one dark and stormy night in a PA-18 and having to go look at the label on the pay phone to see what airport we, uhhh, I mean they, were at.

Gump

Kind of like checking the green freeways signs in a snow storm to see how far it is to where ever it goes.

I knew where I was going, I just didn't quite know exactly where I was at that moment... Sometimes ya can't worry about the small details. Besides, I had to pee.

Gump

I got a couple more, guy I know, his dads a good customer of ours flys his dads T210 down to drop a load of ice cream to his buddies that are on a float trip down the Colorado river from Moab to Hite. He finds them and makes a low pass down canyon and drops ice cream, low and slow he yanks the 210 up, stalls and lands in river. His buddies now pull him and his passenger out of the bird as it sinks in river. i didn't have the guts to ask his dad if he got any of the ice cream. A number of years later his dad and and dads girlfriend flew another 210 into the side of a mountain west of Beuna Vista,CO. trying to get to Lake Powell in crap weather.
Several years ago a V-tail landed at our home airport In Kremmling with oil all over his windshield and engine sized. Upon pulling the cowl a large water pump plier was found laying on top of the oil cooler and had rubbed a hole thru the top of cooler. Wonder how long it was on there.
Ron

I had a good friend of mine get assigned a doctor as a student at our flight school. One Saturday morning, the good doctor arrived early and began his preflight on the C-152. My friend showed up late, and taking the doctor's word as Gospel, got in the plane after a cursory check. 1.5 hours later, the engine quits due to fuel exhaustion and they destroy the 152 while attempting a dead stick landing on a dirt road. The doctor was quoted in the accident investigation saying he checked the tanks and they were topped off. Not sure how many here are doctors, but I've met a few who were not detail oriented when it came to flying.

Trust, but verify.

Wow, reminds me of stuff a buddy of mine did too...

This buddy decided to fly out to the farm strip to see another buddy who had flown out earlier. It was nearing the end of the day and this buddy knew that he would likely arrive slightly after legal light but hey it should be OK, right? What this buddy didn't factor in was that there was a stiff headwind and what should have been a 1 hr flight started to look like 1:45. About 1/2 way there legal light is done and the buddy wonders what he should do. There are a few lighted airports nearby but not having any night flying experience or rating this buddy doesn't even know how to activate the runway lights and what if he should get in trouble for flying at night without a rating. So.. he presses on being bullheaded and needing to 'get there'. Thinking that there should still be enough light to see for a landing, "It'll be OK, I think". Getting close now, but man it's getting dark. Buddy can barely make out the ground but he spots the farm and sets up his approach. Getting near the ground now and the grass strip is invisible somewhere below. 100', 50' dunno. There's a small lake at the end of the strip, but he can't see it either. The horizon is rising on all sides. Still can't see and he senses that the lake might be a factor if the ground doesn't come into view soon. About to add power and climb up to review options, the landing light reflects off the stubble in the field just to the left. Being able to see something and more importantly, something he can land on, he veers left, flares out over the stubble and sets the plane down and rolls to a stop breathing heavily. Buddy's other buddy says later, "I wouldn't make a habit of doing that." amen.

Buddy has a nice Citabria. He hasn't done any aerobatics in his Citab before but would like to try some. Buddy invites a friend with some experience to try out a few loops and rolls. Buddy's friend is waiting so he rushes the preflight. Off they go. A couple of rolls and a few loops and buddy decides he's had enough, in fact, he decides that aerobatics may not be for him. Back at the strip buddy notices that there is some oil dripping from beneath the cowl. He lifts the access panel for a look and as has been said before there was a nice coat of corrosion proofing splattered over the engine and firewall and there's the cap/dipstick sitting loose on top. Turns out only a quart escaped but what a mess to my .. er his airplane.

Andy

Back in the 80's fuel crunch, on a trip to the out islands in the Bahama's we were advised that no fuel was available to top off and would not be available for some time. To pass the time a little fishing was in order. When we returned a day later to check on the situation, I found I was in need of quite a bit more fuel with the gas caps laying on the wings and several of my neighbors airplane parts, wingtips etc laying all over the tarmack from where they had trouble getting close with their fuel truck (fortunately for me I was only missing what little fuel I had left). Miraculously, a three of the largest Bahamians I have ever seen just had a shipment of fuel available to top the plane at their new market prices. After a discussion which came close to ending very badly it was elected to cut the losses and return another day. I have replayed that scenario many times in my head with a different outcome for the "fuel guys".

A friend of mine was with me at Undergraduate Pilot Training, Vance in '01 and came into the Air Force with a CFI already. Instead of doing IFT at the local flight school, the flight school owner asks him to ferry a Cherokee Six to SBA to the new owners. Long trip in marginal VFR (January) in a marginally equipped airplane, mostly scud running. On the last leg of the trip, my buddy elects to take off and fly underneath an overcast deck at 2000' MSL along the shoreline from Santa Monica to SBA. The deck then turns to showers, then rain, visibility down to less than a mile. Clouds have moved in behind him, no way back to Santa Monica in VMC conditions. Then all at once, he's in a cloud at 500' MSL, a mile out from the shoreline. Thirty long seconds and a few prayers later, he pops out in a hole and sees a huge runway through the rain to the east, with all the lights on. Quick check of the chart, it's Pt. Magu NAS.

Pilot: "I need to land!"
Tower: "Are you declaring an emergency?"
Pilot: "No, but I need to land RIGHT NOW!"
Tower: "Cleared to land any runway."

After the Sheriff's bomb sniffing dog gets done going through the plane, they haul said buddy up to base ops to have a word. After a few minutes of conversation, it comes out that this guy is in the USAF and presents his DoD ID card. In the end, happy ending. They gave the guy a BOQ room for the night and got a PPR to depart the next day for SBA.

***Post Script: When he got to SBA, the buyers decided they didn't want the plane, and sent him in the Cherokee back to Enid, OK!***

Thread bump.

Two buddies (meaning that at least one of them couldn't have been me ), both pilots, decide to go for winter flight in the years before they owned a hangar at their strip.
Go outside, remove covers from wings, both walk around Cub for preflight.
Crawl in, take off, notice sluggish response to elevator inputs on departure.
Visually inspect elevators out window, stay in pattern, land immediately.

Get out, remove covers from elevators, both blame each other for not taking them off in the first place.

Glad they didn't crash--would have been hard to live down that accident report...

A friend and I where going to go fly in to the White Mountains with his 172. I let him do the walk around while he was adding fuel to the tanks. We loaded up the plane and took off for the flight. A hour and a half later I started smelling fuel and we noticed the fuel was low in the right tank. After we landed we look and noticed the gas cap was not in placed and missing. He for got to put the fuel cap back on. He asked me why I didn't notice it before we took off.
I told him its his plane he is the pilot in command. It was his responsibility to check be for each flight. I always do a walk around before each flight. True story..

Ken in Alaska

I had a buddy that took off from Montague in CA bound for the Arlington WA EAA confab. It's CAVU so who needs a weather briefing you know? So about Salem he notices a wall of weather over the Columbia River and decides to enquire of Flight Service what's the deal. VFR not recommended so by now he's 6000' over PDX with a discreet squawk. He's dodging clouds by now so he calls Portland Approach and tells them he's going to land at Evergreen. They say fine, squawk 1200 and resume own navigation and by the way f**k off we're busy. So this dim wit hasn't got a clue what the designator is for Evergreen so he's looking for the damn 3 magic letters to punch into the Loran, dials the prop back to 2000rpm trying to peel off some of his 165 mph so he can get the gear out, trying to loose 6000' and dodging clouds and rain.

He finally gets rid of enough speed and altitude to get the gear out, gives up on the loran and resorts to the sectional. He's into Worshington by now. He enquires of his passenger, who grew up in the area, about the location of Evergreen airport to which query she replies; "It's across the river". So he crosses the river, spots the REIL at PDX and gets set up for a straight in and announces his intention on the CTAF for Evergreen. His ever helpful passenger wonders aloud if there would normally be 747s parked on the ramp at Evergreen. So our intrepid aviator veers hard right, re-crosses the Columbia, spots the beacon at Evergreen and enters a normal pattern and lands.

So he doesn't even park the Mooney, he just taxis up near the FBO, jumps out and enquires of the folks sitting on the couch there drinking coffee if anybody knows the number for the tower at PDX. He's directed to the pay phone on the wall where the correct number is posted along with numbers for various other services. For a good time call..... So he calls the shift captain and gets a half hour ass chewing for busting not only PDX but also Troutdale. He's warned that if any heavy had to go around he could be billed for fuel.

All the fellows drinking coffee there had a ball at my buddies expense. Apparently it had been done before. He later filed his report with NASA and got off scot free.

EB

Chatting with a fellow pilot, my buddy filled up an L-19 with JP and didn't notice until he looked at the receipt. Fortunately saw that before he started the engine.

My buddy once did a nice series of aerobatics in the L-19 with his fellow pilot and after a while they noticed that neither one was flying the aircraft (no intercom).

My buddy once pushed on into a sandstorm in the southern Sahara. Visibility at altitude was fine but was down to about 300 feet on the ground at the destination airport. Not enough fuel left to go far enough to get out of the sandstorm conditions. He had to shoot the ILS anyway...9 passengers on board.

The dumbest thing my buddy did was to continue to work for an operation that had amateur maintenance, little pay and dangerous conditions just so he could get experience.

Gump, that was good. I like that one to funny

This may be my new favorite thread. You guys are all making me feel a lot better that I may not be the only one who has a buddy who can sometimes be a complete dipshit.

I had this buddy who had to take a little 5 hr flight to get his plane inspected. Planned for one fuel stop. Did a good walk around in the morning, put 10 gallons of fuel in, left one fuel cap off so he could dump the fuel back in when he checked the tank drains. He couldn't find his little straining cup, so since he'd just put fresh fuel in its good enough, jumps in the plane and takes off. About 40 minutes into the flight he realizes that one tank is empty the the other one is showing full. Well that's odd... :shock: oh shit... he remembers that he had left one cap off. Luckily there is an airport about 10 minutes away, and with a few sputters he makes it there and lands, with 3 gallons of fuel remaining. 10 more gallons of fuel and some duct tape for a fuel cap and he'd learned a valuable lesson... and felt very stupid.

Only time my, er, his Citabria ever burned 30 GPH...

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

At this airport my BUDDY fly's to, he has a vacation home there. When a storm is passing by the wind gets up to 25 er so right down the taxi way which is 90* to the runway. Rather than taxi 1/2 mile to the Xwind RW my BUDDY just takes off from the ramp/taxi way. Small, slow AP so no big deal my BUDDY tells me.

Taxied out to takeoff a couple months ago, ground tells me there will be a delay... somebody landing with a gear issue. So I get to watch the local FAA examiner's twin commanche make a couple passes with the towbar still firmly attached to the nose wheel. AFTER I pass my next checkride I'll ask him about it.

(this, of course, could NEVER happen to me)