As they say, confession is good for the soul. Unfortunately, a lot of folks who post on aviation boards use such confessions by others, or even honest questions posed about piloting technique, as an excuse to climb up on the high horse, make generalizations ("a lot of big equipment pilots tend to ..."), and make critical comments of others. We see that a little too often on BCP, but the same thing is evident on just about any internet board, aviation or otherwise, more or less. Goes with the internet, apparently.

Most of the backcountry piloting community - to which I'm a relatively late arriver - used to look up to Sparky Imesson as the godfather of backcountry piloting technique, who literally wrote the book. Then he cracked up in the mountains of his beloved Montana awhile back. We don't know the how or why, but even the godfather is not immune from human error or sometimes just plain rotten luck.

None of us is immune to bad techniques, bad decisions, bad attitudes, or bad performance of one kind or another on any given flight ... even when flying airplanes with which we are intimately familiar. Humility, and a non-judgmental attitude are of great value, because ... "there, but for the grace of God, go I ...". That's how we learn to respect what we don't know.

Yup, The wife and I took a run to Mackay last fall, all was well untill I decided the wind was blowing down the runway hard enough I could short us on a little runway. Just about the time I was cutting power to abort takeoff, a gust of wind shoved us about ten feet in the air and left me no choice but to give 'er heck again. It scared me more than her watching the power lines scoot under us. Lessons learned, use ALL the runway no matter what. And respect DA as well.

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Topic diverged to major procedural debate...split to Standards for pattern entry in Theory, Practice, and Procedures. -Z