I don't recall breaking any mirrors, walking under any ladders or seeing any black cats recently... but I just defected my 3rd aircraft in under 24 hours.
WTF?!?!?!?!
I was out at the aeroclub, hoping to run into one of the instructors who specialises in 'Principles of Flight' as I have my exam on Monday and just wanted to pick his brain on one or two things. Unfortunately, he was not sticking around after his flight, so that will have to wait until tomorrow.
Seeing as how it was another sunny, blue sky day, I decided to take the 172 (DJU) for a bit of a jolly. There were a couple of young guys hanging around the club, both new members of the club who are planning on beginning their PPL's soon. Unfortunately, they've both recently injured themselves so are unable to fly 'hands-on'. Knowing how much that would annoy me and seeing as I had a couple of spare seats, I offered them a ride. Being aviation enthusiasts, they naturally jumped at the chance.
Anyway, everything was going well... DJU is a nice smooth aircraft and the conditions today were simply stunning. We went up the harbour, around the SkyTower and then I was heading back out towards Rangitoto Island and Waiheke and noticed the AH was showing 30 degrees of bank while I was straight and level!?!?!?
I knew it had been working, as I had (triple) checked it during taxi and run-up... and it was working fine climbing out of Ardmore, as I had checked my climb angle on take-off.
I checked the suction gauge and it was reading OK... so another AH has toppled on me! arrrrgggghhhh!
Thankfully, an AH is not required for Day[1] VFR flights, I had almost unlimited visibility and the weather was near perfect, so I just continued on and defected the aircraft once we got back to base.
I am planning on going flying with Nick tomorrow... He has told me, I am not allowed to Pre-flight and/or "Drive"... in fact, I'm not allowed to touch anything!
Who said pilots were superstitious???? :-/
This flight: 0.9 PinC
Total Hours: 156.9 (78.9/58.7 Day, 8.6/10.7 Night, 7.0 IFR)
[1] Technically, an Artificial Horizon is not required for Night VFR either, but as a club rule the AH must be working for night flights
This was an awesome currency check
1 year ago
4 comments:
ha ha... sounds like a bad run for you!
I had an AH fail on me during my second solo cross country when training for my PPL... that was a surprise. I haven't managed to "break" 3 aircraft though! :-)
Well done on handling them all fine though!
Mine still takes the cake I reckon. ADF failure on the WU NDB/DME, then the number 1 VOR failing climbing out to OH, then finally the number 2 VOR CDI freezing.
Yeah... the club president wanted to know how much it would cost for me to go fly somewhere else! ;)
Not sure I like the idea of all the 'Nav' instruments failing during an IFR flight... Especially when its a renewal!
Yeah the only thing worse would be the instruments failing when you are in IMC.
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