Originally Posted by
Uplinker
Being clever after the event here, but.......
A red knob for mixture ?? All our lives we have seen red on water taps and car heater controls; meaning heat or hot.
So a student, new to this type, with a hundred other things on their mind is reminded to apply heat, while also flying and controlling the aircraft in the descent.
Their conscious processing capacity is completely used up, with no spare capacity, .....?.
You could give it any colour, even put blinking LED's on it, that won't change anything. The fact is that Fuel cut off and carb heat are very close to eachother and each require a pulling action to activate. I'm sure the student didn't even look down, just grabbed what he thought was the carb heat and pulled. So the red color is not a factor here.
And if we do look at colours... red is danger, red is stop, so don't touch it.
Before you touch carb heat, cabin heat, mixt cut off, look down and identify it. It takes 1 second. But hind sight is easy, it's a mistake easy made and will be made in the future again.
Good job on the FI landing it without injuries.