Thank you all for your input – lots of excellent, thought-provoking replies. As some of you mentioned, I’m starting to sense that at 80 hrs, I’ve got enough knowledge and experience to be dangerous.
One of my challenges at this stage is to try and set myself longer and more demanding flights, without overstepping the mark and scaring myself too much (let alone killing anyone). Sometimes finding that balance can be tricky (what exactly are my crosswind limits – when should I go up for some practice & when should I stay at home?), and is one of the reasons for asking for advice here.
In the scenario I outlined, without doubt the 1st mistake was to launch in the first place, closely followed by the decision to continue with the flight and leave the relative safety of the circuit. Trust me, on a day like that, I would either be down the pub (preferably with Reddo)
or thumbing through some ATPL notes (if she wasn’t available)
. The point of playing devil’s advocate was to consider what my actions would be if I did ever cock-things up badly enough to land myself in that situation.
Thanks to your advice, I would be much more decisive in taking the (tough) decision to land in a field and risk damaging the aircraft, rather than using my limited IF experience to risk damaging myself.
Please keep the replies coming – I’m particularly interested in how people have dealt with similar situations themselves. ‘Tis an awful lot cheaper to learn from other people’s mistakes!