Close Calls Anyone?

Lets see, off the top of my head: I had a student pull the mixture, instead of the throttle during a stall. I just entered the d/w after a touch n go, when another a/c (turning crosswind waaaaay too early) nearly scraped our gear. And finally, my fault, ATC advised traffiic, and suggested altitude, sure, I had traffic insight, i advised "insight will maintain visual" when out of nowhere a commuter caught my attention. Like forrest said, "thats all i have to say about that."
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I had two close calls very early on during my private pilot training. Luckily, my instructor was with me both times.

First: This was my first instructor who was a bit of a loose cannon. He quit right I was about to solo. Anyway, we were coming in to land at JYO (Leesburg Municiple) on Rwy 35. The pattern was full. I touch down and am rolling out and I see Micky Mouse. It was a biz jet landing South using the ILS. No radio communcations whatsoeevr from the jet. My instructor took over and just got us turned into the first taxiway and the jet passed us.

Second: This was with my second instructor with whom I finished my PPL. We took off for the first dual x-country on a pretty cold and windy day. I had just lifted off and was about 50 feet above the runway and suddenly the plane rolled to the left about 45 degrees. All I could see was grass and trees. My instructor took over immediately and recovered. We filed a pirep reporting low level wind shear. It freaked me out.

Oh I forgot one. I was flying solo once and landing in York, PA. There is a displaced threshold and the winds were variable and gusting. I had about 8 hours solo under my belt. I totally misjudged the landing flare and bounced. Instead of going around, I tried to salvage it. I bounced about 10 times and started drifting to the left. I was wintin a couple of feet of going off the runway. taught me a good lesson!

Mahesh
 
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Lets see, off the top of my head: I had a student pull the mixture, instead of the throttle during a stall. I just entered the d/w after a touch n go, when another a/c (turning crosswind waaaaay too early) nearly scraped our gear. And finally, my fault, ATC advised traffiic, and suggested altitude, sure, I had traffic insight, i advised "insight will maintain visual" when out of nowhere a commuter caught my attention. Like forrest said, "thats all i have to say about that."
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I did something similar. I'd had a long day at work and we had just finished ground reference maneuvers which always made me more tired. So we enter the downwind and midfield, I say "seat belts on, fuel selector both, Mixture rich, Carb heat on -" and I pull the mixture knob to Idle-cutoff. This was at TPA of 1200 feet over the city. I have never seen anyone react so quickly. My instructor pushed that knob back in right as the engine was about to quit. Neither of us said anything till we landed.
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Mahesh
 
2 weekends ago, this wasn't an incredibly close call and actually the end was very amusing. Was coming into MKC to land, was just inside class D and obviously in contact with Tower. I get a "Cherokee 46F I'm showing an aircraft at your 3 o'clock, 2,500 and less than a mile, type unknown, I'm not talking to him." At the time I was descending through 2,700. I look off my right and see him immediately, report traffic in sight.

Couple seconds pass "Downtown Tower, this is Cessna 1234A, I think I'm the one you're talking about, I'm over Worlds of Fun at 2,500 inbound for touch and goes." Tower tells him of my position and he comes back with "negative contact". All the while he's creeping ever closer as I'm headed east/southeast and he's more south/southeast so we're on converging courses.

Then "Tower I've got that Cherokee traffic in sight."
"Cessna 34A roger, you are #2 to land Runway 21 behind the Cherokee, execute s-turns for spacing."

I'm cleared to land, he's s-turning away and FINALLY getting some distance behind me. Tower reports to him that "Cherokee traffic is on short final, you are cleared to land."

Then the kicker: "OH! Tower, I guess I had a visual on the wrong aircraft, I was looking at the blimp."

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DOH. Nice to know all that time he wasn't actually looking at ME.
 
Hey ready2fly!
Sorry, I meant Traffic Pattern Altitude when I typed TPA. I actually trained at Leesburg in the suburbs of DC.

Mahesh
 
Anyone that flies around central FL has had close calls on V159 between ORL and OCF. OCF is a haven for PPL doing solo x-countries, and I've lost count how many times I've had to dodge 172s.

I was under the hood with my instructor heading out to the practice area (Lake Apopka for those familiar) when I was suddenly thrown on my left side. Apparently a Duchess has decided to get up close and personal and race by us from behind. Not surprisingly, it was from a flight school (now closed but they ran off with a LOT of $$$) that we all hated.

A friend of mine who went to that flight school was flying his solo x-country for his PPL and on final for Inverness. His airspeed gauge read what it should, but he seemed fast, so he went around. Next time, same thing. So he decided, 'Maybe it's just me' and tries to put it down next time. Long story short (yeah, too late) he floats forever, clips a ditch, and winds up upside down off the side of the runway. Plane was totalled. Turns out the ASI had been written up numerous time, and each time maintenence 'fixed' it.

One more, this one from a friend of a friend so take it however you want. It might be true, it might be false, but it's still kinda humorous...

CFI was with his student on some touch-and-gos at an uncontrolled field away from their home field. CFI looks up and sees they are heading for the trees. He asks the student to correct, to which the student replies, 'If Allah wills it, we will land safely.' The CFI, being the take charge kinda guy he is yells, "• YOUR ALLAH!", knife chops the guy in the throat, lands the plane, and kicks his student out on the runway. He then flies back to the airport and tells management to send someone ELSE to pick the kid up.
 
SBE I may have seen you fly in that weekend. I was taking all the family cars to the simoniz car wash in NKC throughout the day. You can get some great views of planes from down in that area.
 
Other than being head to head with a Cherokee at about 150 yards on left and right base, respectively, for the same runway...

My exciting adventure happened in Winslow, AZ on an IFR training flight in a C172. My instructor and I had just shot the VOR 11 to circle-to-land minimums, and we flew the low pattern to runway 29, without incident, in gusty winds.

Just after turning final for runway 29, the nose started coming up, and I watched as the airspeed indicator began dropping very quickly. I added full power immediately to commence a go-around, but the aircraft continued a descent of 800-900 fpm, 55 KIAS. At this point, we were at roughly 300 AGL. I can honestly say that for 2 or 3 of the longest seconds, I did not know if we would recover or not.

At 150-200 AGL, still more than 1/8 mile short of the runway, the descent was arrested. We continued in level flight somewhere between 50-55 KIAS for another 5 seconds before finally getting a positive rate indication. My instructor and I were both wide-eyed and silent during the climb out.

Moral of the story: Windshear is a bad thing.
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Going down the coast to MYF (San Diego) I've gotten up close and personal with a few planes between LAX and SNA. Nothing too exciting though.

My closest call was at the very beginning of my PPL checkride--I had just performed a beautiful soft field takeoff--things were going great and made sure to SCAN like crazy. As we were climbing through about 2000 ft, I dipped the nose to look for traffic and had just looked across the entire horizon, left to right and then pointed out a visual checkpoint off to the right and showed it to the DPE on the chart. I looked up and there was a 172 at our altitude head on at 12 o'clock and I'd guess not more than 250 ft away!!! I just said "oh wow" and made a hard right as did the 172 at the same time. I think the DPE and I noticed the other plane at the same time and I really thought he would yank the controls from me, but he didn't. I made sure to really scan hard core the whole rest of the flight--it seemed like everyone and their grandma was out flying on that rare sunny SoCal day.
 
Dave, you REALLY need to start reading the entire thread before you respond, buddy. He explained that to me already.
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I've had some nerve wracking moments with other traffic, turbulence and other things, but none made me feel like I was about to buy the proverbial farm, except one:

I was flying in an Archer with a pilot who was nearly ready for his checkride. After doing steep turns and ground reference manuevers we started working on landings.

The wind was about 18 knots with a 5 knot gust factor. However, the wind was right down the runway we were using. We had done five landings and were on short final for the sixth. We were just over the runway numbers at about 40 to 50 feet AGL. I noticed that the airspeed had bleed down to about 73 MPH. Not such a problem on a light wind day, but too slow for those conditions. I told him to add power and in the next split second the wind direction sheared to a crosswind.

The plane rolled violently to around 45 degrees of bank. The vertical lift diminished and the picture I saw out the window was ground to my left and the world in front of the plane rising up to meet us. (Again this all started around 40 to 50 feet AGL) I instantly grabed the controls, while my student yells, "Your controls!" We simultaneously jammed the power full forward, I yanked the yoke to the right and the plane rolled back to a level attitude. (Much slower than I wanted it to.) The plane was now level, but our angle of attack was really steep/critical. I could see the stall light out of the corner of my eye and I was just waiting for the plane to slap down on the concrete.
Fortunately the plane leveled off with about 4000 feet of runway left. We were less than 10 feet off the pavement so I pulled the power and suprisingly had a very soft landing. Naturally we decided to taxi off the runway, get out of the plane, change our shorts and let the adrenaline work its way out of our bodies.

It was really an eye opener. Our situation changed from a very normal approach, to a "holy S#$*! situation in about 1/2 a second. During that moment a part of my mind realized that this could be the last thing I see and remember before the plane cartwheels down the runway after clipping a wing at a steep angle. Part of me was waiting for that sound of metal and pavement meeting, but we didnt hear or feel anything.

The best part is the next day we discovered a silver dollar sized skid mark on the very trailing edge of the left wing, with a corresponding skid mark on the runway at the point/location we had lost control. As the plane was rolling out of the bank it was sinking. The sink stopped just as the plane was rolling out, going nose up, and gently "kissing" the wing on the runway. Had our recovery been initiated a split second later we would have probably cartwheeled and at best been injured seriously.

I have flown on many windy days, when there is some gust and light wind shear. I always teach my students to come in faster and with less flaps in such situations. This time, however, we got a little slow and we nearly paid for it. A little extra speed sooner would have helped make our controls more effective and would have made the situation less of a close call. I also make more no go decisions when the wind is moderately strong and gusty. The chances of that occuring when it did were very remote, yet it happened!
 
Wow Lee D, entertaining story (I bet scary for you)! Proof that you always have to be alert and in complete control.
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Mannn, I train out of Santa Monica airport(SMO) and wind shear is nothing new over there(I've never experienced any as severe as yours though). If you are acquainted with that airport, you are probably familiar with that small cliff at the takeoff end of runway 21. It is very small, but still big enough to wreak havoc on your approach.
I've been knocked off centerline by as much as 70 feet.
 
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Dave, you REALLY need to start reading the entire thread before you respond, buddy. He explained that to me already.




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If I read to the end of these long threads, my short term memory kicks in and I forget to respond at all.
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