Dumbest thing you've ever seen...

A friend did a couple of barrel rolls in a C172 right after he got his license..... took video of it which was rather amusing.

 

I have seen a few. The most memorable was a short landing contest at the old grass strip from which I soloed. The guy that won put his beautiful Stinson SR 9 down right on the the fence line bordering the field. He impaled the belly of the fuselage on a big fence post and dragged the post and all the barbed wire connected to it a short distance down the strip where the tail end departed the airplane. He won by a tail slide.
The other one was at Hondo Airbase in 1944 when a line of AT-7's was taxiing down the ramp for take off . Other airplanes were pulling out to get in line. The pilot revved up no.2 and whipped out to pull in behind the last airplane which, by the way, had stopped. He chewed the tail off the last airplane in line, missing the navigation student in the last seat by about 18 inches.
The best was when two guys flew an ERcoupe from West Palm Beach to Sarasota while they consumed a fifth of Vodka. It took them three tries to wobble the airplane down to the runway where they finally impacted rather heavily and then TOOK OFF AGAIN ! Then it was the same senario all over again but much worse. We were worried that he was going to hit the hangar on his third or fourth try but he finally made it. The airport manager in the meantime had us get the fire truck out and we had orders to ram the airplane to disable it, which we did. The guys were so drunk we had to pull them out of the airplane and lay them on the runway until the ambulance came to take them to jail. The airplane was wrecked from flying through a hail storm so the fire engine finished it.When we asked the pilot why he took off again he said that he just wanted to show his friend that he could do it again.
Iv'e got more but this is enough.

 

Maybe not the dumbest but probably the craziest. That Champ got thrashed hard during those performances. It was unbelievable what Charlie could make that plane do.
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Where in the world did you find that picture of me at the top of my game ?
That's when I was Chief of Flight Taste for Untied Airlines.
Switches

 

Hey, that's my latest crosswind landing attempt.....Instructor said I had it made
till I lost the bolts on the aileron. Mebbe I should have done a little better preflight....?
in retribution I'm sending all donated flowers, to the old CFI's home in NJ.

Charlie
AKA "the mummy"
Bed #3, I.C.U.
Aviators Hosp
Newark NJ

PS..... Doctors say I, "may never think straight again"....

 

Charlie, you're a kick. Where'd you larn writn' ?

 

Golly Gee Bob, !! Ya thinks I kin write? ? ?
Well, I could tell ya, but then I'd have to...... CENSORED

Hey! Just realized, I've got a fan!! Yee Ha! My first!
Almostes as better'n soloin......

Well, that's one down, and
twohundredfiftyseventhousand,sixhundredseventynine
...andahalf to go


"Chief of Flight Taste for Untied Airlines" was an inspiration!

Charlie

 

Man that pic is awesome. I once saw someone get completely blown off the runway about 20 feet above the deck on a crosswind landing. Everything turned out ok, the pilot just gave it full power and went around. I really havent seen too much crazy stuff while flying, in a car is a totally different story though.

Mark

 

I had the same kind of ride with my brother in a Cessna Cardinal except we were still a ways off the end of the runway and he managed to slip it in on the numbers.

We were shadowed by a hill to the right that was less than 1/8 mile away and the wind was whipping over the top of it perpendicular to the flight pattern. To compound the "challenge" the runway was down hill making it imparative that we stick the numbers or end up toucing down half way to the other end.

Needless to say there was some "pucker factor" involved.

 

I don't know if you realize that the picture was taken during the first show that we did at Abottsford in 1967. The pilot, Chuck Driskell, was going through the first part of the " One Aileron Clown Act" that we did. From his simulated " out of control" ground routine he proceeded to climb to 900 feet where he did a full aerobatic routine with one aileron missing from the airplane...........snap rolls, loops, square loops, barrel rolls, and sideways flight (of which I have pictures). It was a fun time.
Switches

 

If you wouldn't mind, can you send me some of those pics via email. If you can't don't worry about it, thanks for the info about the show anyway...that must really have been something to watch.

[email protected]

Mark

 

Just about everyone during their initial training is told about a couple of things to watch out for but you think that you'll never see such things in your lifetime.

I can claim three such items.

First is the famous student (no slam intended) maneuver called "turns around a tiedown" or just forgetting to untie a wing. What made what I saw incredulous is that this was not a low-wing Piper or Beech, but a Cessna 172.
I was in my car at the time with my avionics tech and we saw this 172 running up his aircraft and the chain on the left (pilots side) wing was attached. I thought he was just running his airplane up. How could he possibly miss this chain just over his left shoulder?

Well, he did. He started taxiing, giving it so much power that the airplane pivoted to the left so much so that the right wheel raised itself about a foot and a half off the ground!

Well, he shut down got out and tried to un-do the chain which is now tight as a bow string, and then was then seen pushing and shoving the aircraft to get the right tire back on the ground. By then I was gone.


Next up is the too frequent "taking off with the seatbelt outside the closed door". I was killing some time on a bench in front of the tiedown line one afternoon when a gentleman got into his 152 and promptly left the seatbelt dangling outside after he entered and closed the door. Yes, it was the side with the heavy buckle! He was in there for quite some time so I thought he was just catching up on his paperwork... and then he started the engine. Still I waited and watched. After idling for about 10 minutes he began to give it some power to taxi which was when I ran out waving my hands and making motions of buckling a seatbelt and then pointing to the offending area. He promptly opened the door and pulled in the belt after which he taxied out and took off. I'm certain I saved someone an insurance claim.

What really kills me is that when he returned about a half hour later I was still sitting on the same bench. He walked right by me without so much as a thank you or acknowledgement that I saved him some embarassment and potentially some expense.

Now for the piece de resistance...

We've all been warned about operations at uncontrolled airports about watching for traffic in the opposite direction from which we intend to use the runway for either takeoff or landing. I never thought I'd see this happen but I did.

The FBO was at one end of the runway. The wind was calm. Folks were landing at the far end, and taxiing down to the FBO, while at the same time departing aircraft would just taxi out and take off at the near end. This was not a busy airport.

This happened during a Civil Air Patrol excercise which I was participating in and BOTH aircraft were crewed by CAP personnel.

I am number 2 waiting at the near end of the runway on a small spur of a taxiway waiting for the aircraft in the pattern to land on the opposite end and taxi past. The landing aircraft is doing everything correct. Calling his pattern position and intentions at the right times and at the right places. He lands and is rolling out when the aircraft in front of me taxies onto the runway and begins his takeoff roll. I can't believe what I'm seeing. Before I can even pick up the microphone the aircraft is barreling down the runway for takeoff and becomes airborne maybe a couple of hundred feet in front of the rolling out aircraft (who must have left a lot of brown residue inside his plane). Only a matter of seconds prevented a head on collision. If the landing aircraft was a few seconds earlier or the departing aircraft a few seconds later there would have been a lot of scrap aluminum on the runway.

Remember that in no case was anybody wrong in the runway they intended to use.

After the accident potential was gone, the landing aircraft continued to taxi in on the runway. (there was no parallel taxiway on this runway) I however was blocking the exit taxiway. I radioed to him that I was going to move onto the active and over to the left hand side so he could pass and not to get nervous that history was about to repeat to which he thanked me in a VERY crackely voice.

As they say, just when you think you've seen it all............

planeflyr

 

Back in the 70's so it's a little hazy,
I was riding shotgun with a UPS contractor hopping through the San Juan Islands (WA) picking up packages in a Cessna 307(?). Our route ended at an airport on the mainland (Bayview).

As we are off loading into the truck I glance up to see a twin engine commuter on final leg, maybe 1500 feet from the end of the runway, lights on, gear down, flaps down, throttle back, no big deal until I see an Ultralight popup over the top of a line of trees parallel to the runway. His flight path was 90 degrees to the runway and he was at mid-field when he flew across it (towards the tiedown area on the other side) at an altitude of maybe 100 feet. He approached the field from the side, from behind a row of trees so he couldn't see low altitude pattern to his left or right, so he pops up over the trees and drops back down to land on a taxi way turn out leading to the tiedown area.

I looked back at the twin and he was just crossing the threshhold at about 100 feet altitude, throttles firewalled and gear half way up. By the time he passed us he was clean and climbing out for another go around. The guy had to be SMOKING PISSED!!.

I looked over to the guy in the Ultralight and it was obvious he did not have a CLUE of what had just transpired.

.

 

Good thing the pilot in the twin was on his game..Maybe someone should have gone over and had a little discussion with the ultralight rider and enlighten the obviously uneducated person on the proper procedures to approach an airport.

 

I'm thinking the pilot in the twin could see the Ultralight when he was coming around on his final leg. I can just imagine what he was saying to himself when the guy popped up over the trees, incredulous!!

The pilot I was with witnessed the incident and made the comment about the pilot in the twin, "Nice abort". A real compliment coming from this guy.

 

I've only got about 20 hours of flight time right now, but I've seen a couple unusual things during my training.

One was when I was on a discovery flight checking out one of the schools. We were next in line for takeoff, waiting for landing traffic to clear, and heard the tower telling the 172 on final that they were clear to land, and the traffic following them was a Mig. The 172 landed in front of us and then proceeded to stop and turn around on the runway, presumably to backtaxi to one of the high-speed runway exits which wasn't even going the right direction. Note that there are about 5 or 6 total exits from the runway to the full-length taxiway that they could have chosen KBJC. This wouldn't have been a big deal except for the fact that #2 to land was a Mig-17. The tower said "Don't do that, don't turn around on my runway; I had to send the Mig around!" Wonder what the cost was for that extra trip around the airport for the Mig. The wake turbulence from a Mig-17 doing a go-around was pretty "exciting" to take off in, with my whole 3 hours of flight experience, as well.

The best thing (luckily nobody was hurt) I saw was a couple weeks ago when I was about to taxi to the run-up area for 29R and the ground controller (I think the same guy as the Mig incident) said "Change of plans, taxi to 29L via E, we just had a jet lose a canopy on takeoff and it is all over the runway in front of the tower." Sure enough we could see very expensive looking shards of debris as we crossed 29R.

We went over to the runup area and heard another pilot who had just landed ask "Did that guy in the jet bailout or what" the tower said "no looks like is still in the plane" just as we saw the jet (I believe it was a MK5 Jet Provost) landing sans canopy... in the rain (bet he was happy he had a helmet). Other pilot over the radio: "Geez, that must have been really embarrasing for that guy" then half a second later, after obviously hearing that, with lots of jet sound in the background the pilot of the jet called for taxi back to his hangar. Bad day to turn your jet in to a convertible.

 

North Conway, NH - another tail chewing incident - In a rental at the time, # 3 for take off and in front of me was a beautiful black and orange Waco bi-plane. He was S turning and chewed the tail off of a C-172 who was # 1. Taxied around them and took off. BTW the airport is gone now, replaced by condos.