Learn To Fly A Broken Airplane

[Colonel]

Power and trim was all I had but it was enough.  The AFM even
has a section on it:

[img width=500 height=328][/img]

My own fault the stick jammed - I did not do a FOD check in the tail
before negative G in a strange airplane.

Another lesson learned.

My friend Freddy had it happen to him twice - once was keys came
out of the pax pockets, and another time a 10-32 1/2 truss head machine
screw floated up.  I never, ever let a mechanic touch my airplane.

Patty Wagstaff had it happen to her.  I think it was the wooden board
under the battery that came loose, moved back and jammed her elevator.

[Colonel]

I remember, back in the mid-90's, I was CFI at Westair in Carp.

I had to do checkouts on pilots in 172's.  Some people were
pretty rough.  Others just needed one circuit.

I remember flying with an AC pilot.  Forget him name.  He had
a hypen.  Wayne, I think, with two last names.  He could really
fly - one of the old breed, long gone now I am sure.

We're on downwind, coming up abeam base, and he's craftily
looking over at me, expecting the power to come back for a PFL.

Too easy.  I tell him, the control column just broke.  Land the aircraft
using only rudders, power and trim.

The trick is to avoid an oscillation in pitch before touchdown.  He did
ok.  He could fly.  Not like the kids today - control column failure would
be certain death because they hadn't received specific training on it,
in a sim beforehand.  Uh huh.

That was actually a pretty common maintenance-induced failure in
those cessna, with their sprockets and chains.  AME's wouldn't put
the cotter pins in, or whatever, when they put them back together
and they would fall apart after a while, when the unsecured nut
backed off.  A friend of mine trashed his 421 turbine conversion
that way - missing cotter pin on landing gear lock nut, gear fucked
up.

Can I have a moment and talk about cotter pins?  Roll your eyes,
Princesses in the white shirts, but ....

Everyone knows that not putting the cotter pins into castellated nuts
and drilled AN bolts is really bad.  I hope.  Right?

However, sometimes maintenance will use undersized cotter pins
because they are easier to get in, than the proper, larger-sized ones.

Don't do that.  Use the correct sized cotter pin with the cross-sectional
area that the application requires.  A cotter pin with half the diameter
has one quarter the cross-sectional area.