steingar
Taxi to Parking
There is some good wisdom in this thread. I should have never questioned the OP’s preflight. It takes as long as it takes. I beg forgiveness.
.Only 1 person (#10) offered to pay for fuel. I never asked or expected it, just find it interesting it was only 10%.
No worries! It would be so nice to arrive and be able to start the plane 10min later. Right now from arrival to enginr startup is 30min. If we owned a decent, secure hangar, faster door, smooth transition from floor to apron, etc. And if I felt comfortable leaving everything in there but the tablet I'm pretty sure I could be at 20min. A bathroom in the hangar vs that walk and maybe we're at 15min After that I think I'd be cutting corners.There is some good wisdom in this thread. I should have never questioned the OP’s preflight. It takes as long as it takes. I beg forgiveness.
165 Wow! I'm guessing some instructors don't even ride with that many. And now I wish I would have logged who flew with me. I definitely logged the wife and daughter. The others I didn't really put in the log entry.Heh, seeing this thread I had to count how many different people I've flown in the 500 hours I have in my logbook.
165 different people.
I love passengers. All good tips. Especially about down low. Never let them touch anything down low. The only time I ever had a pucker moment was down low near KOAK. We were doing the Oakland transition (now to be called the Bay View Flyway...gonna be hard to get used to), past the 30 numbers at 1400' over the water. Or, we were supposed to be. In yammering at my three other non-pilot passengers, I drifted up 100' to 1500'. Local controller gave me a hint that I may need to descend, forget what exactly, but it was gentle. On realizing my mistake, since we're under a 1500' Charlie shelf, I immediately blurted out a surprised "Oops!" and punched the yoke down to quickly lose the 100'.
Yeah, some of you know where this is going. Smooth. Always be smooth with passengers. The guy in the right seat, his eyes got big as saucers and his hands shot out and took the yoke, ready to crank us back up into the sky. Now it was my turn for the saucer eyes, as I saw my life passing before me as I'm envisioning us stalling straight into the bay. He was a bigger guy than me, but fortunately, reason returned quickly and I was able to get him to let go verbally. It was quiet in that plane for the rest of the short time remaining on our way to KPAO. Learned a big lesson that day.
As I said I wasn't expecting any of them to pay nor wood I have taken their money since I invited them (as you pointed out).If you were inviting them, seems right. If I invited you over for dinner, you wouldn't offer to pitch in on the steaks. You might bring a gift or send thank you card after. Did you get any of those?
I told a coworker that the plane runs on gasoline... but whiskey can be substituted.
I use MyFlightBook and it has a property for Passenger Names. I use it extensively, which is why I was able to get that number. If you haven't converted to an electronic logbook, I strongly recommend it, even if you keep filling in the physical one. (I keep filling my paper one in...not sure why, but there's something about writing on the paper.) But, yeah, the electronic logbook makes totaling and searching stuff a breeze.165 Wow! I'm guessing some instructors don't even ride with that many. And now I wish I would have logged who flew with me. I definitely logged the wife and daughter. The others I didn't really put in the log entry.
So holy crap! Your rather abrupt dive resulted in a passenger yanking it back up. When passengers get freaked it seems they are more likely to pull the yoke back.
One reason I spend some extra time checking the plastic end caps of the sides of the elevator and top of the rudder is a story I heard from an older pilot at our airport.
I was wondering if you were going to share about that preflight item! Are you just ensuring there are no deformities there? I’ve never flown a 182 but the club I’m just joining is committed to adding one to their small fleet. Any tidbit of knowledge is nice to know.
Being pretty novice yet on the 182, I will defer to Nates much more detailed list.I was wondering if you were going to share about that preflight item! Are you just ensuring there are no deformities there? I’ve never flown a 182 but the club I’m just joining is committed to adding one to their small fleet. Any tidbit of knowledge is nice to know.
+1 on the base of the vertical fin on either side. I think there is like 6 or 7 screws on the top and about the same on the bottom. They are easy to remove. So far I have found one missing during a pre-flight (right after an annual).The thing to look for in the elevator ends under the plastic caps are the counter weights in the horn. If they’re missing, no es bueno.
Other things to watch out for on rental 182s are ...
The flap tracks and rollers (people bend and break them extending flaps above flap speed)...
Cowl flaps that can be wiggled left and right (the hinges wear out, usually right side first because it is in the pulses and vibration of the exhaust, and if they break and the cowl flap departs the aircraft in flight they are EXTREMELY expensive to replace)...
Bends or wrinkles in the firewall when peeking inside the cowl (landed it on and drove the nosegear into the pavement)...
Missing aileron safety wires on older models with safety wire instead of pins...
Missing aileron counterweights...
Cotter pin missing from the trim actuator arm attach point.
... and other usual Cessna stuff (tie down ring ground flat by landing on the tail, wrinkles anywhere, brake pads, flat spotted tires the last guy wants to stick you with paying for (always roll the aircraft far enough to look at the tread all the way around all three tires), etc.
The other thing you’ll see a lot on older rental Cessnas is missing screws in the tail plastic covers at the base of the vertical fin on either side. Make them fix those properly so they don’t fall out. Once the airplane has been though a million inspections the screw holes get oversized and the first flight out of the shop, they just fall out.
Also found a rental once where someone had managed to lose the transponder antenna on the tail. I have no freaking clue how they managed that one other than off-roading over a taxiway light, but they managed to just get the antenna and not the skin. Amazing.
No fair.
So what is your total pre-flight time then Mr. low wing, private hangar, plane owning dude
And here some of the many lessons learned (not in any particular order):
...probably many more and they'll come to me later on.
- If this will be a trip, people need to be on time. This ain't no car ride. Be on time!
- Evening flights have been awesome with a few low puffy clouds to look, a full moon, sunset and nice and smooth.
- I will no longer allow anyone to take any controls during takeoff or landing. First experience was not good. I was not trying to teach, just thought he might like it and I had lots of runway. Nope, that's for you CFI's!!!
- Try as hard as I can, a good careful pre-flight plus pulling the plane out is 30min. It will never be less. Often it is more.
- Every minute you are late on taking off, unlike the big airlines...you will not make it during the flight.
- Only 1 person (#10) offered to pay for fuel. I never asked or expected it, just find it interesting it was only 10%.
- When flying people on a trip (especially kids) shield them from the pre/post flight. Have mom or someone else bring them at the designated departure time - minus 10min. Bathrooms and go.
- Lots of different landing experiences with tail being heavier, overall takeoff weight being more, etc.
- I think my non-greaser landings (as in all landings lately) are worse than the my passengers do (thank goodness).
- During this high dew point summer weather its just plain hot until you can get up to altitude.
- I still don't think this is enough experience for something like Young Eagles. I will assist my wife on the ground to learn more first.
- Being on FF for safety and emergency purposes is awesome! But its also not nice with passengers when you want to chat.
- Only one passenger (#10) fully realized just how task loaded being a pilot can be. He commented on it as he could tell the low over the city stuff had a lot going on.
- So far there have been "flyers" and "lookers". I need to get better at determining in advance who is who so I can tailor the flight to them.
- Make as many of this passenger rides into valid cross country's if possible. I'm flying, might as well earn some time towards IR - within reason of course.
- A lot of them (5/10) actually seemed to enjoy the pre-flight and really didn't slow it down too much.
- Have a bathroom nearby. Maybe only 1/10 didn't need to use the bathroom that: "One more time before we go okay."
- #9 was so quiet during the flight. I noticed well into the flight that his mic was too far away. But even after adjustment, he was quiet (probably nervous). I need to get those types talking a bit more...I think?
- Prepare them for where to actually park at the airport (its not intuitive!)
- Prepare them for what to bring (cool clothing, hat, sunglasses, etc)
- Teach them up front how to control volume on the headsets, kids especially freak if its too loud.
- If you are going to deliver passengers to another location where they will meet others, you really need to think contingency plans. If the wx, plane or passenger leads to aborting the flight - how will they get there? What will it cost them to not make it? Are you willing to drive them as a backup?
- The only flight where I sensed a bit of "Get There It is" was the trip to deliver passengers (a longer cross country). Its way easier to scrub a local 1hr flight. However, I had 3 abort points picked out before I allowed myself to takeoff. My wife knew them as well.
I'm still working on my PPL, but I did read some advice from a pilot in a book. He used to just ask passengers "you ok?" But noticed after some of them were queasy or not feeling well. After that he started asking before takeoff "on a scale of 1-10 how are you feeling?" And then up in the air, and after a while. He felt most passengers have a tendency to "tough it out" or just be positive, but putting a number on it gave him a more honest response and helped the passenger be up front on how they were doing.
I thought to myself: "Hey, I'm getting better at this ride thing, I've got 7500x150 of runway so I will let him keep his hands on the yoke and have him rotate us off." DID NOT GO WELL! When I said rotate he pulled back. And he pulled back more. And more. So I put enough pressure to stop the pull. But the deck angle got pretty steep. So I started overriding him and pushed harder and final gave out a confident (but not panicked) "My plane". And I just pushed us right back to level to get some airspeed back. I could just feel his instinct, he was nervous and thought pulling back would equal safety and security. Lessons learned on this flight!!!!
I will not share the details of my experience with this same sort of thing. Let's just say that, no matter how well you think things are going or how much you may think your passenger might be able to do something like handle the rotation or something, you're not a CFI and they're not a student pilot and neither one of you really wants to discover just how true that is.The guy pulling until you had to stop him is common unless you brief it correctly to students. They’ll try to kill you.
...
Welcome to every flight as a CFI! LOL. And yes, even high time pilots will try eventually to kill you.
The engineer in me going crazy not seeing #8My wife’s button. Nurses. They’re smart. LOL.
I am hoping @champ driver answers this as he's based out of STP (Holman or also called Downtown St.Paul).Cool thread. I love giving rides and can't wait to be de-rusted enough to get back to it. Got me wondering/counting - I had 110-ish hours before my layoff 11 years ago. In that time I took 13 humans, one dog and one cat. I always refused offers to pay for gas, but some of my family is very persistent/stubborn. Only 2 real 'Oh crap,' moments. First, my brother in law FREAKED OUT in the back seat when I let my dad have the yoke for a few minutes (plenty of altitude and I'd advised him to pretty much hold steady). Big bad firefighter was yelling like a little girl. Coincidentally, secondly, his son didn't do well on a ride and after one pass around my folks lake house (about 5 nm from the airport), he wanted to go back. I looked back at him and he looked about to barf. Got him some air and was extra smooth on the way back. Landed without incident.
BTW, @Sinistar my folks are up near UBE/RPD - sort of up your way. End of Sept, I may be doing a checkout for a rental up there and heading your way. Curious if you had any thoughts/tips about flying into STP. I trained under the ORD shelf, so I'm not TOO intimidated, but it does look a little snug under/next to the Bravo.
Cheers!
When landing west or Northwest you will land over the water and they have the arrestor beds (??) for the big 3m jets (saw a 3 engine Falcon there) so don't land short...or you'll really land short!
Don't land short on the EMAS mats at each end of 32-14, that's considered very bad form, and it'll ruin your day too.
Sounds like you've had a great summer! And for what it's worth, I always ignore the TL;DR crowd. They're not my audience. If they get especially obnoxious I just respond with DILIGAF.
Some thoughts on your thoughts:
- CAP used to have a rule that cadets getting rides can't handle the controls below 1000' AGL. (I think it's gone up to 2500'.) It's a pretty good rule, and one I follow with my non-pilot passengers.
- From arrival at the airport to getting airborne, it typically takes me at least 30 minutes and often more like 60, depending on who I'm with and what the flight is. I fly a club plane, so my situation is similar to yours. The walk around is the least part of that time. I've started to train my fiancee how to do some of the cockpit tasks (setting up the ipad and headsets) to help save on that time, but gave her lots of training about never touching the master switch or magnetos.
- I use an old-fashioned log book and make sure to write a little note about who came with and what happened. I'm a big believer that physical artifacts are important for posterity, even if they don't offer the convenience of digital tools. My father died 14 years ago, and one of my prized possessions are his logbooks, along with his father's and brother's logbooks. Someday mine will be added to that collection and passed down to my son.
- We can't always achieve perfection, but it's good to keep trying. Don't let your less-than perfect landings bother you at all. Airline landings are rarely greasers, and anything less than a hard arrival or bounce will be fine for your passengers.
Nice stories. Have any of y'all taken a spouse up with CFI during PPL training? My CFI mentioned if he was in the plane we could have a passenger. I may see if she wants to join us for cross country training.