Not a Club issue, Rw2. I jump around too much. MTV thought I was talking about club airplanes when I was talking about work airplanes. He was correct to nail my incompetence regardless of work or club.

contactflying wrote:Not a Club issue, Rw2. I jump around too much. MTV thought I was talking about club airplanes when I was talking about work airplanes. He was correct to nail my incompetence regardless of work or club.

Ah, gotcha. I thought he was responding to my initial note.

It's hard to question an assumption you don't know you've made.

rw2 wrote:

contactflying wrote:Not a Club issue, Rw2. I jump around too much. MTV thought I was talking about club airplanes when I was talking about work airplanes. He was correct to nail my incompetence regardless of work or club.

Ah, gotcha. I thought he was responding to my initial note.

I was, and I still am. If your culture was that great, you wouldn't be buying so much hardware. No offense intended, but I maintain that you're oversimplifying this, and that is dangerous. I'd bet if you really look carefully, you'll find there may be more to the story.

Maybe, but my point is, I'd still look pretty hard.

Denial is not just a River in Egypt, as they say.

MTV

It occurs to me that one issue may be that your club, rw2, is running some really disparate airplanes, if it has an Arrow and a Maule. Regardless of the number of hours, if a pilot flies one regularly and then switches to an entirely different airplane, especially fixed gear to retract, it's an accident waiting to happen. That would help explain the gear-up circumstance.

Similarly, the difference in fuel selectors could be a large factor. I'm not a Maule driver, but don't they have a left, both, right, and off position like smaller Cessnas, and you would use both for take off? Since I have a few hours in Arrows, I know their fuel selector is left, right, and off, so only one is selected for take off--and the fuel pump is supposed to be activated as well. But the problem is that the positioning of the Arrow fuel selector is at 10:30 for the left tank and 1:30 for the right tank, and after a certain amount of hours, the detents are not only hard to feel, but they are so much less noticeable that it's easy to put the lever in between the left and right tanks, effectively shutting off the fuel. A pilot accustomed to the 12 o'clock=both position of the Maule might logically think he had selected both on the Arrow, or in any event didn't have the lever positioned at the position where it should have been (on that note, I recall that one of the Arrows I flew, if I flew at night, I used a flashlight to make sure the lever pointed at the correct tank position, because the detents weren't detectable by feel).

So how to solve the problem? Not sure, but when multiple people fly multiple airplanes, mandatory frequent safety meetings emphasizing the differences in the aircraft systems is one way to consider. Shortening up the time between currency flights with a CFI might be another.

Good luck on changing things so that yet another aircraft won't get pranged.

Cary

Cary wrote:It occurs to me that one issue may be that your club, rw2, is running some really disparate airplanes, if it has an Arrow and a Maule.

Yeah, that would be quite the club! Nah, the club has two pipers and two cessnas. The Maule is my personal plane.

Even though those are much more similar than would be a Maule and an Arrow we do still find that people generally fly either the high wings or the low.

Further, we have (or had) additional training and currency requirements for the Arrows due to them being complex.

mtv wrote:Denali is not just a River in Egypt, as they say.

Or in Alaska, if you're dyslexic... I had to read that three times...
The mental-grooming toward AK around here.... cronic