This blog's author, fifteen years ago on a solo flight from Daytona Beach to Marathon Key (not the one mentioned in the article). No clue what the deal with the clothing was back then. The aircraft is a Piper Cadet which no longer carries that N-number. (Photo taken by Alvin Nepomuceno)

As I write the posts you read on a daily not so regular basis, I end up examining my own flight experiences.  This is especially true when I write the accident posts which now dominate in Velozia Air.  Other than informing on what happened and the factors involved in each particular incident or accident, the posts have a second purpose: to somehow improve air safety by making pilots (and New York area controllers) think about what happens in these situations and if anything can be changed in the way they operate to improve air safety.  Inevitably, I reminisce about times in my flying past when events happened that looked just like the beginning of some of these incidents and accidents.  Heck, I even simulated my own death and it came at me pretty fast.

When writing about a Piper PA-28 that ran out of fuel because both the instructor and student pilot failed to verify if they had switched fuel tanks, I was reminded of a time when I was flying a Piper PA-28 Cadet from some far from home destination in Florida and I was annoyed by this strange right turning tendency in my plane.  Somehow I had forgotten to switch tanks and had a ¾ full right tank and an almost empty left tank.  Good thing I noticed on time.  Then there was the time I was flying an Aerospatiale/Socata TB-9 Tampico on a solo flight and was returning from Marathon Key in the Florida Keys to Daytona Beach, FL (via Sarasota).  I was flying on the Miami VFR flyway, smack over the Everglades, and I was climbing to a higher altitude just to make sure I could reach a road if something happened to the engine (the Everglades has next to zero places to put a plane down and let’s just say the fact that it is one of the few places in the world were alligators and crocodiles live together wasn’t very comforting).  As I leveled off at an altitude I can no longer remember I started leaning the mixture and seemed to forget the importance of that red lever as I pulled it back as if it had nothing to do with the flight at all.  As the engine was starved for fuel, it pretty much gave up and for what seemed like an eternity and probably lasted a mere three seconds, I was sure of three things: that there wasn’t any way to get the engine going, that I was going to get an up close and personal experience with the Everglades few people experience, and that I was an idiot.  After those three seconds were up, I quickly restarted the engine and didn’t even lose 100 feet (I was still an idiot, though).  The flight continued on uneventfully, although I had a new appreciation for the engine’s deafening sound.

Although I haven’t written a post about how dangerous in-cockpit distractions can be, I was recently remembering another TB-9 solo flight (to Savannah, Georgia this time).  Some of the planes in my flight school’s fleet had recently been equipped with Global Positioning Systems (GPS).  Mind you, these were the subscription card-based GPS units that looked like a car stereo and had no map whatsoever (just a bunch of letters, numbers, and symbols which were supposed to mean something to the trained eye).  As I was flying over Jacksonville, I found myself on a rather unoccupied stretch of airspace and decided it was a great time to familiarize myself with the GPS unit, in which I had received no flight training whatsoever.  After what seemed to me like five seconds, I managed to set the unit on the flight path I was on.  As I looked up and out the front of the aircraft, I got the best view of Jacksonville I have ever seen to this day.  I was in a diving left turn and losing altitude fast.  The Jacksonville Center controller’s voice asked me if I was having trouble maintaining altitude to which all I could think of as a reply was “yes”.  So my little GPS-toying-around experience left me about 800 feet below my expected cruising altitude, pointing left of course, and with a GPS unit that kept flashing to point out that I was off course.

Back when I was writing a post about airsickness (yes, there are posts about airsickness on this website’s archives), I remembered another TB-9 solo flight in which I was returning to Daytona Beach, FL from the northeast just before afternoon thunderstorms developed, but as the cumulus stage was already in full swing.  The cumulus clouds’ bottoms were around 1,300 feet and I was flying at about 800 feet and in very bumpy air.  It seemed like I was flying through mid-air potholes.  As I was approaching Daytona (and had been in turbulence for about 30 minutes), I developed a strong case of airsickness.  To this day I don’t know if I made the right decision completing a landing while having full-blown nausea, but I hate to think what would have happened if I was throwing up in turbulent air and only 800 feet above the ground.  As I pulled out of the runway, I had to wait for a Delta MD-88 that was to pass on the taxiway in front of me.  Not one second had passed that the controller had said to hold short when the vomit came (I had the airsickness bag ready).  Every time I heaved, I lost the strength to hold on to the brake (rudder) pedals and my plane inched towards the taxiway I was supposed to hold short of.  Every time I would try to set the parking brake, I would heave and lose strength in my foot.  I finally managed to set the damn brake, but I wonder if the Delta pilot was worried about that Tampico inching its way forwards towards his or her taxiway.

Those were some of the memories that I remembered while writing some of the other posts here in the website.  I thought I’d share them with you so that you get a little glimpse of the flight experiences of this website’s author.  I’ll make this a two-part story… so for that story about me simulating my own death… you’ll just have to wait a few days.

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