Share your sketchy situation stories!

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firebird313
Airman Basic
Posts: 7
Joined: 27 Jan 2020, 12:38

Share your sketchy situation stories!

Post by firebird313 »

A little event I had with my P-51 Civ prompted me to start this thread.

It is a cold but otherwise good day at Albany Intl (KALB). I had planned to take my P-51, affectionately nicknamed Comet, from their up to the eastern most airfield in the continental US, Machias valley airport (KMVM). I fired up Comet's Merlin and she started right up with 6 seconds prime. She was eager to fly today, and we left runway 1 smooth as silk. We were to cruise at 15,500 feet to take advantage of the tailwinds. However shortly after hitting 9,000, after passing through and taking some time to play in some Mustang Clouds, I noticed something wrong with Comet's panel. The airspeed indicator was rolling back, and rather fast! Thinking I was about to stall, I immediately forced the nose down and slammed the throttle forward. But, to my dismay, it did not help. Perplexingly, the ASI hit 0, and I was still flying just fine, so I leveled off checked the lower right switch panel and surprise surprise, the pitot heat was off. I turned it on, but even after 5 minutes the ASI did not come back to life. So, I was caught in a situation where I had no idea just how fast I was flying or how close I was to airspeed limits. But thanks to Accu-Sim, I could feel the aircraft and hear the wind. I could tell when I was close to stalling. So I made for the nearest airfield I could see, which so happened to be Morse State (KDDH). Knowing how Comet behaves in various situations and judging it safe to do so, I cut my throttle dove down to pattern height around the airport. I circled until I figured I was mostly safe to drop my gear and flaps, and made a greased landing on runway 31. From the time that it went out to the time I touched down, the airspeed indicator never came back to life even with the pitot heat.

My situation was comparatively minor compared to what could happen, but it involves a critical instrument that I doubt any sane pilot would willingly fly without.
What sketchy situations you have found yourself in while flying IRL or in Sim? Share your story!

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ratty
Technical Sergeant
Posts: 896
Joined: 29 Oct 2013, 21:08
Location: KPMP

Re: Share your sketchy situation stories!

Post by ratty »

I had a similar situation with the ASI recently that I wrote about here: https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content. ... The-Season. And the following page has a confession about not going around.
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lorketomi
Airman Basic
Posts: 8
Joined: 02 Jan 2016, 05:14

Re: Share your sketchy situation stories!

Post by lorketomi »

Hello,
It happened a few years back on P3D V3. I planned my flight, refuelled my beloved Cherokee and I did the preflight as always. There were no issues at all, and I happily took off to fly around Northern California, visiting a couple of airports and the Yosemite National Park (all of them are Orbx sceneries). After about 2 hours of flying I was still in the air when my sim felt that was enough for a single flight and quit with a nice OOM. Since I really hate any flights without a landing at the end, I restarted the sim and placed the Cherokee at the same position in the air as it was before the OOM and I continued my flight. The surprise came when I was inbound to land at Pine Mountain Lake Airport. I put the flaps down one click and the aircraft immediately started to roll to the right quite heavily so I closed the flaps and landed with clean wings without any further issues. After I parked the aircraft I made the inspection and found that the right flap hinge felt apart because of a lost bolt.
That was the last time I placed an A2A aircraft directly to the air without a proper preflight. :)

Now the Cherokee has roughly 430 hours in it, and still in a great shape.

Tamas

makapala
Airman
Posts: 47
Joined: 06 Jun 2020, 04:04

Re: Share your sketchy situation stories!

Post by makapala »

We’re talking sim.. for me it was my Round The World in a Cirrus Vision..

absolutely terrifying into PADK Adak Alaska on RNAV and fumes in the gas tank. no alternate.. 1000ft cloudbase and 30+kt wind straight across the rwy left to right.

Add to that, FSX kept trying to vector me into a closed runway.. being so old that crosswind runway has long since closed when the US Army left.

Had to go around.. lost sight of a mountain in the cloud, then went full ifr.. didnt know whether to go up or down. was flying entirely on the g1000. escaped, went around and was happy to land on the grass next to the runway second go!

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