Things You Missed on the Inspection

[poteroo]

Ever landed at YXXX, shut down, and been greeted with something like:

'that was a cool bit of flying to miss the new powerlines off the end of the strip'.

You immediately break into a cold sweat because you'd never seen the bloody things!


In a similar vein, you land in a paddock , taxi over to the corner, shut down, and decide to walk back along your landing track.

you collect several strands of loose fence wire, which by some small miracle, you've missed completely!

More cold sweat...this time economics driven!


Be interested in how many other professional drivers have totally missed stuff on approach,or on the ground, and this after they'd done a decent low level inspection.

happy days,

[locusthunter]

Umm- The grass on one particular strip looked a little shorter from the air...
Result: grass stains on the leading edge...of a C210!

:ooh:

[Capt Fathom]

grass stains on the leading edge...of a C210If you do the strip inspection inverted, you do get a closer look! :E

[ginjockey]

I flew a charter into a grass strip on cattle station once, piper lance, five pax. Never been there before, strip was short grass with one lusher patch of grass about one third of the way down it, overflew the strip and had a good look at the general shape and width of the landing area while the owners chased some horse off the field in a landcruiser. They were eating grass from the greener bit on the strip.

Flew a circuit, touched down and slowed down. Only on the taxi back did i notice the main wheel tracks passed either side of the greener patch of grass .....which was in fact a four foot deep hole about a metre wide and filled with water. The horses were drinking out of it, not eating and the nose wheel was fortunately just off the ground until after I passed over it. I almost messed my pants when I saw it but the station owner thought I was a legend.

That could have been really unpleasant for everyone.

Gin

[Aussie FI 3A]

Almost cleaned up a cow once.
Did a prec search, did a stock shuffle run (get em all on one side). Bloody farmer the gate open though and 1 calf came through in front as the wheels touched down. Went round (but shouldn't have as it was a one way strip) and collected the tops of the pine trees at the end. Green marks on the underbelly, brown on the underpants.

Moral of the story: Committed to land means committed to land! Even if your eating veal for the next week.

P.S. make sure you get cow dung off the flaps quick as it rips off the paint if you leave it too long.

Cheers

[Baldricks Mum]

Took off from a western Queensland property once and missed the single strand wire by inches. Had 2 other instructors on board and one Student in a woefully overloaded C-172. We backtracked to where we thought was the end of the runway and then powered up, just managed a climb on a hot day and missed the wire luckily. When we turned crosswind, we all realised we had only used less than half of the strip. The longer grass on one end made it look as though that was all we had.

Close one indeed. I don't know how I would have explained the accident to CASA let alone Mrs Baldrick's Mum....

[Islander Jock]

Flying RH seat with the owner of a twin into a strip just outside of Geraldton. On final I saw a fenceline just across the undershoot and casually informed the pilot. He acknowledged and at the same time the glide path became more and more shallow. My volume and pitch increased as I reiterated "Fence across the threshold" to which he replied again "Got it".

Sure enough just as he pulled the the power off in the flare, he GOT IT!

Luckily the wire was hit by leading edge of the mains and pulled underneath and clear. Hate to think what would have happened if it rode up and wrapped itself around the wheel strut.:eek:

By the time we taxied and shut down, the people on the ground were recoving about 50m of 2.5mm fencing wire ripped from it's posts.

[Pinky the pilot]

Islander Jock; Hope you had a few words with the person concerned afterwards.

You only live twice. Once when
you're born. Once when
you've looked death in the face.

[poteroo]

Islander Jock

If you flew much around Geraldton you'd have possibly visited an ag/private strip approx 3nm SE of Northampton, on the Nabawa road. It was known as Chilmony-Bowes, or 'The Bowes' and used to be a very busy ag strip in the 70's.

Had a near midway super dump on the top of the hill, with the south end of the strip passing thru a wide 'cocky gate' - which was near invisible. Lots of visiting PVT types used to run a straight in from the south, pull up at the gate, open it, then taxi up to the hill top to park.

Heard of several 'incidents' there over the years, but luckily, nothing worse. All it needed was a marker on said gate.

UHF handheld radios, and CDMA mobiles make it a whole lot easier to arrange things these days.


happy days,

[Nil defects]

Landed a Navajo on a homestead strip once that looked a hell of a lot shorter than quoted. Anyway, managed to get in and taxiied up to homestead.

Cocky comes out to meet us and says in his great accent:

"most of the guys use the big strip on the other side over there."

:\

[Islander Jock]

Pinky,
couldn't really say too much, it was his aeroplane after all. To make his weekend worse though, after a fefuelling he didn't secure the tip tank cap properly and it did not have a tethering chain attached. Well a few phone calls to Mssrs Britton and Norman and $540 AUD got him a new cap. A Dolmio spaghetti sauce jar secured with gaffa tape did a fine job in the meantime though.

RV6,
Never landed on the strip up that way but do remember as a new PPL with the ink still drying on my licence I visited the meatbomb strip near Pinjarra. Never had seen it before either on the ground or from the air so was guided over the radio by one of the jump pilots to it's location. Nice strong wind blowing straight up the strip from the south but what I didn't realize was that the strip only started at the hangar and south from there. Old muggins me landed north of the hangar on what I was informed after the event was the vehicle access road. Amazing where you can put a C150 down with a good headwind. :ok: Nice bit of taxiing also I thought as I dodged the parked cars.;)