Bit hard by complacency/inattention.

[Orange Anchor]

Okay. So now you realize you are human and humans make mistakes. We know in any endeavor, two things are fact.. things break and people make mistakes. This info is very applicable to flying although we often delude ourselves into thinking emergencies only happen to others and we should never make mistakes.

You have just incurred the first of what you hope will be only 'scorch marks' as a friend of mine refers to them. Watch someone who has flown a while and you will note the 'scorch marks'. If they have had an engine failure, they will spend a few more minutes preflighting the engine. Flap problem? They will check the flaps, shake 'em, check the nuts and bolts, etc. Brake problem? They will spend a few more seconds checking the pucks, lines, etc. Everyone has 'scorch marks' if they fly long enough.

You have obviously spent more than a few minutes thinking about this error. Good. You have debriefed yourself and recognized the error but it needs to go beyond that. What was really going on? Did the pax have any influence on your focus? Why the intense focus on pattern altitude at the expense of overall awareness of where you are? Have their been other times where you lost the big picture?

Everyone errs and with luck and skill, you will avoid (or to use the jargon 'mitigate') the negative consequences of error.

Enjoy your next flight.

 

[retread]

On one approach he seen i was watching my airspeed, so he covered it up. Funny thing happened; I had probably one of my best landings I ever had up to that point! Because my attention went back outside!

Keep the eyes outside!
:nana2:

I did my commercial training in a Cutlass. After receiving about 6 hours of dual on the commercial maneuvers and complex aircraft familiarization my instructor told me "Hell, I can't show you anything else. Just go out and practice. And remember to put the gear down before you land". Good advice. Anyway, on my second time alone in the airplane I roll for take off with everything normal. Engine in the green and airspeed coming off the peg. A couple of seconds later and she's ready to fly. I feed in a little backpressure on the yoke and off we go. Airspeed and power correct, oil pressure and temp good, positive rate of climb and with the runway falling away I reach over and pull the gear up, adjust pitch slightly, trim and verfiy airspeed. Everything normal. Then, it's a bit before I look back at the panel while I'm scanning for traffic, departing the pattern and announcing my intentions. When I do glance back at the ASI I'm shocked to see the needle is no longer indicating Vy, but rather is laying lazily against the peg as if we were sitting on the ramp! VSI still showing a climb, as is the altimeter so I know the static system's ok. What to do? Summoning all my training, intelligence, and 320 hours of flight experience I did what any good pilot would do.....I tapped the ASI with my finger. Nothing. I wheeled it around, reentered the pattern and made a fairly normal approach and landing (yes, I remembered to put the gear down) using nothing but pitch, power, MK1 eyeball and ears. After shut down I examined the pitot tube, expecting to find a junebug wedged in there, but nothing was to be seen. The ASI had simply packed it up. I handed in the keys, reported the problem and went home to have a beer and think about it. If it was something that I had to experience, I'm just glad I had the flight hours that I did when it happened. As it was, it was fairly a non-event. But what if had happened when I was a 14 hour solo student?anic: The outcome might have been somewhat different. I decided that when I received my CFI ticket, before I signed off a student for solo I'd make sure to include at least 1 approach and landing without the ASI. Just in case.

 

[ppragman]

I've got about 120 hours. Last week, I made a mistake so profound, I'm still having a difficult time accepting the fact that I did this.

This was a rare occasion that I had a passenger. Further adding to the embarrassment, he's a regional airline pilot.

For some reason, I confused the 1,600' field elevation as being the pattern altitude. So determined to make the damn altimeter read 1,600' feet, we ended up at something like 400' AGL on downwind.

It should have been so obvious to me that we were too low, but I didn't even question it until he spoke up. My damn head was buried in the cockpit, just waiting for the “TPA” to be indicated on the altimeter. Little did I realize the “TPA” I was shooting for would have put me in the trees.

Now, I know I wouldn't have run the plane into the ground, but I just can't believe I made an error of that magnitude, and that I allowed the situation to progress as far as it did.

This has really been bothering me for the past few days. I thought I was better than this, but obviously not.

Let's not kid ourselves, if you flew with someone who did that; you'd never fly with them again.

Don't worry that much about it, keep in mind that if it doesn't look right its probably not. Think about one day when you have to get special VFR to get into someplace without a good IAP, or you're trying to get into your home port. You might haveto fly a pattern at 500AGL. It happens all the time. Just be advised that a traffic pattern is a visual maneuver and you should be concerned primarily with what you see outside rather than a fairly arbitrary number like 1000' or 900' or 800' or 600'. Regardless, one mistake, or two mistakes or even 1000 mistakes do not make you a bad pilot. Its what you learn from them that makes or breaks you as a good airman.