Many of us have thousands of GA hours. All of us dumb professional pilots know that you could do some aerobatics in non certified GA aircraft. The question is: WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU WANT TO? Why take such a risk? How many pilots with serious aerobatic training think this doesn't involve greater risk than such maneuvers in a properly certified aircraft? It’s all about risk. (To you, the plane, your certificate etc.)
No matter how safely you can do them I promise there are many nice people at the FSDO who are "here to help," that will hang you out to dry if they catch wind of such behavior. Can anyone seriously argue against that?
Most of the GA accidents we read about involve some form of carelessness, and most pilots here, at one time or another, have done less than wise things while piloting an airplane. Most looked back and said: “Whoa that was dumb. Maybe I shouldn’t try that again.” However some people don’t think that way. Negative reinforcement gets a lot of pilots into trouble. When you survive a situation that involved greater risk, you tend to think you can safely do it again, and many times you can. Sometimes you never pay the piper, so to speak. On the other hand lots of pilots that think this way eventually do break something, get violated or sometimes they run out of all 9 lives. These are the types of people that fly in ice in uncertified aircraft. . . . . Fall asleep with the autopilot on, but set their watch alarm to wake them every 10 minutes. . . . . Go below mins on approaches. . . . Take off or land in dangerous conditions. . . . . Do cruddy preflights and preflight planning. . . . . Go flying with alcohol in their systems. . . . .Enjoy flying low enough that you have to get the pine boughs out of the landing gear on the post flight. (I'm not making that up.) . . . .Take off overweight on hot days. . . . . Don't manage fuel responsibly . . . . The list goes on. WHY TAKE RISKS LIKE THAT?
Either way congrats on making such a bloody long thread!
The stuff that's bold is not illegal, and not violateable depending on the circumstance, but is opinion, and the stuff in red is opinion.
Let's start with the first red one. That's an opinion, if you fly to the same place five times a day, in the same airplane, is your preflight going to be all that involved? No. You're going to do a quick walk walk around, nothings bent, oils good, you're gone. Why? Because at your post flight yesterday you check the airplane out good before you tucked her there's no maintenance in the book, and nobody's clearly backed a forklift into it. A preflights quality is definately something that's subjective. And since its damn near impossible to know all available information pertaining to the flight,
all of our preflights probably aren't too legal either.
Number two, that is subjective there, I know plenty of people who's fuel management is "burn a tank dry, if I'm not over half way there its time to divert or turn back." Is constantly switching tanks every 15minutes any better? Your fuel will be balanced, but you'll be sweating when you have 4 gallons in each tank and the gauges are practically on empty.
Bolded #1, what are dangerous conditions? Slick runway? Gravel? Narrow? Up slope? Crosswind? There is no definition of "takeoff into dangerous conditions," who chooses what is dangerous, nobody. Look, I know people who think a 3000' runway is short, its not, and its not dangerous. None of things are dangerous, not even in combination, they only become dangerous when the extent of the variation exceeds the pilot's ability to safely handle them.
Bolded #2, not illegal. There are plenty of times part 91 when I zip back along dodging moose and trees and looking for fish or bears. If you are 500' from persons or property, you are golden. Your reaction time for reacting to an engine failure maybe reduced, but you're really not any less safe providing you maintain clearance with the ground.
As for the others, booze is bad, so is overweight, and that watch thing is rediculous, however, ice happens. Its not something you want, but sometimes even when planned around you can still run into it. Based on where you are at, and knowledge of terrain, it sometimes may be better to keep on truckin than to turn around and fly back through it, try to keep an open mind. By the way, every time I shoot an approach that terminates in a landing I descend below minimums.
These posts that just blanket statement things tend to aggravate me, though I'm guilty as the next guy for posting them. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and vary few things are set in stone. Sleepy time.
