I almost landed gear up.

[PaulS]

and slow dancing.

Stealing this.

 

[Rgbeard]

Thanks for being brave enough to post up your experience.

Brain-fog is real and you came close!

Reading this was a good reminder to always pay close attention to my readiness for my trip.

 

[sarangan]

Posting anonymously because it's difficult to admit when you made a mistake and especially to other pilots as they are the only ones that would really understand. Approximately 400+hr pilot with over 100hrs in retracts.

A few days ago I needed to make a business trip, 5hrs driving versus 1:45 flying. I decided to fly as is my custom. For a day or so leading up to the flight I was fighting a head cold that got progressively worse the morning of the flight when I was feverish, congested, and had a headache. Not wanting to drive I pushed on.

The morning flight was ok, but everything seemed a bit off even including my preflight. Had to redo a couple of things to make sure I did it. Flight altitude didn't help my congestion and headache.

Quick flip and I'm headed back. Destination is a Class D airport. As I get close and get transferred over to tower it all gets a bit sideways. There are parallel runways with copious amount of student traffic and I get the short runway. After reading the accident reports lately with parallel runways I'm even more on guard. Turn short to not overshoot my base leg, find parallel traffic (no factor) and set up for final, but I'm high and fast. Too much going on, I'm #2 to land, have a plane behind me, my brain is kinda foggy.

I'm focused on trying to get the plane slowed down and dropping altitude for the shorter parallel runway. Flaps, airspeed, fence, flare, STALL HORN!!! Look over and I've got no green lights. It takes what seems like 5 seconds (probably 1-2) for my brain to shove the throttle firewall forward. Plane goes mushy, doesn't climb, barely levels off. (to my credit I didn't yank the yoke into my lap) I missed the prop strike by inches. I missed landing gear up by inches and seconds.

I should have just stayed home. I didn't use my landing checklist.

Learn from my almost mistake. I welcome your comments both good and bad as well as your criticism.

Foggy brain can happen due to a variety of reasons, not only due to a head cold. If there is a distracting situation, I try to think in terms of priority items rather than comprehensive checklists. If there is one thing I must do, what would that be? During landing, that would be landing gear. I can land fine without flaps, or without switching to the fullest tank, or without verifying the magneto position etc.. . Having had a real gear failure many years ago, I can still remember the sound of the prop hitting the pavement. It was a planned belly landing, but it was still a traumatizing event. Now I check the gear three or four times, even during flare just to make sure that some gremlin didn't flip the gear switch up while I wasn't looking.

 

[steingar]

So you are slogging along with full flaps before getting to the pattern?

Depends on the winds and runway. At a place like 6Y9 its full flaps. At my home drove the runway is long, and if the winds are bad I'll do half flaps or no flaps. But yeah, if I"m using flaps I try and have them in before I hit the downwind. Takes an extra minute or two. The Mooney is fast enough that I can afford it. I'm so going to miss that airplane.