Scudrunners

This guy had all the signs of an alternator failure so as one would expect he hustled down to land and rear-ended another airplane. As one does.

Thumbing through the comments… not a single complementary one.


You don’t often side with the FAA enforcement branch, but…

These are the private pilots I keep telling you about.

This guy needs a form 409 or whatever they call it this week.

Well… I love chatting on radios in airplanes just as much as most and more than some pilots but, if it quits I wouldn’t call that an emergency, unless you really want it to be one.

What was the rush to land?

Unless the guy was bingo fuel too. I suppose it’s possible.

In my opinion, the poor bugger created an emergency, then attempted to upgrade it to a catastrophe, during his unnecessary panic.

Calm down buddy, it’s not a fly by wire plane, it still fully functioning. You’re the one the radio couldn’t protect that other guy from.

I blame the parents. In this case, the CFI and DPE that signed off on this private pilot.

Yeah? That seems completely unnecessary.

Do you figure they told him, “If you have an electrical failure crash into something. Preferably another plane.”?

I bet they’re mortified or at least embarrassed.

completely unnecessary.

David: you don't understand how bad flight training is now. This is a consequence of having a flight instructor that doesn't know anything, and a Santa Claus DPE.

Last week a bunch of private pilots were talking, and they thought it was a great idea that one of them declared a mayday when their alternator kicked offline. Same same. Without a radio and a glass panel their ability to fly an airplane was in jeopardy.

Around 10 years ago, a couple guys bought a really nice RV-6A. Constant speed prop, no steam gauges, had these two panels with black frames, one for flight instruments and the other for engine. Really nice. I got in the airplane with the second owner, he told me he expected to die if the panels went blank,

I was fucking incredulous. I pulled the breakers on the two panels, we started up, taxied out, took off, did slow flight and stalls in the practice area, flew back to the airport and landed ... with no gauges at all.

The new owner couldn't believe you could look outside at the Big Attitude Indicator (horizon) and that Attitude + Power = Performance. Hey, the crew of AF447 didn't know about that stuff, either.

When I was still living in Canada, sometimes they would make me go up with a student in a 172. Sigh. I would carry out a couple pieces of paper that we would use to cover all the dashboard up, pushing it through all the knobs that stuck out. Students couldn't believe that they could fly an airplane by looking outside. Many instructors thought that was a VERY FUCKING BAD THING to do. Like I could care. Feel free to join the crowd that's trying to revoke my ATPL, David.

Reminds me of this meme

If you can’t be comfortably lost in an airplane what are you even doing?