Private Pilot Disasters - 1

A License to Learn

This is VH-CIY, a Cessna 172 four seat light aircraft, and in 1989 it was the pride of the fleet at Bathurst Aero Club. This is where I learned to fly, over 81.3 hours across 19 months. I was freshly minted as an unrestricted private pilot in April 1991.

As Chief Instructor Jerry Trevor-Jones shook my hand, he said the immortal words that haunt me today.

'This isn't a license to fly. It's a license to keep on learning'.

The decade that followed shaped my strategic thinking.

June 30 1991 dawned cold and cloudy. I'd risen earlier, and received a weather fax from the call back service. I was flying my family to Queensland to escape the mountain winter, we were packed and excited. Weather would be the only thing stopping me.

Since being licensed I'd done some local flights, and taken the wife and kids to Dubbo zoo for a day, round trip 2.1 hours. To drive would have taken around 6 hours.

I was 44, my wife Caroline was with me, along with Sarah (13) and Jess (4).


MISTAKE ONE

Brimming with confidence I loaded us into the Cessna, having weighed everything and planned where to stash what. I had full fuel, the tanks held 150 litres which clearly took take our weight over limits. That gave me a little over 5 hours safe flying time.

I guess my reasoning was that I had a long runway, cold air which makes for a shorter take off, and safe weather to the west as the cloud cover was reported as thinning out in that direction.

The clouds at Bathurst were 6 octa's, which means 6/8ths overcast. Not a good start, but they were 1,500 feet over the airport, itself at 2,400' elevation. Bathurst is fairly high for an Australian airport.

Planning to fly to Lismore for fuel, the track took me slightly east of Mudgee and the clouds thickened. I was licenced for Visual Flight Rules, which meant I had to be at least 1,000' BELOW cloud, or 2km AWAY from clouds at my level. I could not fly over the top of cloud, unless I could see the ground through the gaps.

I took off over overweight.


MISTAKE TWO

Sure enough, the clouds came down over Coolah. I was compressed between cloud and terrain, and could only turn back. So I punched up through the clouds, as I could see the layer was thin. Once through, I adjusted track north-east, to take us away from the clouds.

Once in stable cruise at about 8,000 feet, I re-planned the route on my charts. This was before the age of GPS. All navigation was visual, with the track drawn in pencil on a chart, and progress measured using time intervals. Landmarks should come under the nose of the plane on time, and if delayed that means a head wind. If we are off track and the landmark is left, then we have a crosswind.

Calculations were done using a 'computer' like this:

Being freshly trained, I was proficient and the flight track and planning was all happening perfectly well. Eventually we arrived at Lismore, having tracked via Gunnedah, Armidale, and Grafton. The cloud was behind us.

We landed after 4.2 hours, one of my longest flight legs. I taxied direct to the toilet block.

According to training, and following flight rules. I should have turned back at Coolah.


MISTAKE THREE

Next leg, after sandwiches and thermos tea, was to Coolangatta, which is in controlled air space. I got clearances and managed to land and vacate the runway in between Qantas and Ansett 737's. My training had taken me through Canberra airport a few times, so this wasn't an issue.

After fuel, we flew a long leg which included Moreton Bay. We were in the light aircraft lane, but near Peel Island a huge black mess of rain sat in our way. I put the nose of the aircraft inside, to 'have a look', and didn't like what I could not see. We looped back and I got clearance from Brisbane Centre to track in towards Wynnum. They vectored me low over the bay, under the Brisbane Airport traffic and away from the weather.

We flew over Bundaberg, and landed at Gladstone for fuel.

At this stage, I planned to stay on Great Keppel Island a few days. Just 80km from Gladstone, I was fueling up for the next leg, either north or west, depending on what we decided after we had had some quality time in the winter sun.

I had the airstrip data for Great Keppel. It was 700m long, which wasn't super great but I could get airborne from that with my load. So I filled the fuel to the lower marker, to give me about 3.5 hours flying time.

Here's the runway, looking from the beach. Note it has quite a slope. On departure several days later, I pondered this. I'd watched the windsocks, showing a reasonable wind from the south whipping down the runway.

I did the calculations based on the forecast wind - 15 knots - and added a fudge factor. I put the published slope data into the calculation too. I should be fine!

I was taking off to the South, into the wind, which is what I was trained to do. But the takeoff roll, up that slope, with a legal full load, was slower than I liked. I had an abort point picked out about 2/3rds up the runway, and hit that point at about 45 knots - well short of the 63 knots I needed. I pressed on, and at the end of the runway pulled up with an immediate stall horn.

I hadn't had that before, I was at a shade under 60 knots but the wind at the crest of the hill was playing tricks. Instinctively I pushed the nose down, and we flew over the top of the hill at about 10' off the deck. Luckily there were no obstacles, and I could disappear off the end of the island and fly level over the rocks and ocean until I had enough speed to climb. Slowly.

I should have taken off with a tail wind, down that hill, at enormous speed.


MISTAKE FOUR

I was freaked out by the first three. We refueled at Emerald, stopped at Long Reach, navigated across the wastelands to Charleville, and refueled there.




The two runways gave me a choice, I took the longer one but again didn't factor the lethargic performance of the Cessna 180 hp engine. We passed over the trees at the end of the runway far too low for comfort.



The weather again closed in as I headed towards the mountain ranges, forcing me to stop for the night at Narrabri, where we took a taxi to a motel for the night. Next day was slightly better, but again clouds hung low over the Warrumbungle Ranges, so I had to go low and track west over the Pilliga forest until I crossed the Coonamble road. Then I followed that to Dubbo.

Clouds sat east, and we had to go east to get home. So I took off and had a look. Over Wellington it was nasty, so I flew back to Dubbo for another night in a motel. The next day was clear enough, and we returned home on July 14th.

I'm not sure how many mistakes were made here, but the choice of runway at Chareville, with the obstruction factor at the end, was the most glaring.


CONCLUSIONS

We made it back, safe and happy. I broke various flight rules, and made various poor airmanship decisions. There was still 14 years of flying ahead of me, and I plainly survived to write this, in 2014.

Thanks for reading!