your most embarrassing flying moment?

Not exactly embarrassing, but sort of -

I think it was a student solo, might have been right after I got my PP, I can't remember.

I had been out to a local uncontrolled field for a little practice and was heading back to my class D. The air was very turbulent and I had a heckuva time pressing the right buttons on the 430 to change freqs. I accidentally bumped the volume knob and turned it way down. When I contacted the tower, I didn't get a response. I tried a few times, and kept getting closer to the Class D space. I was about to turn away and figure out how to get light gun signals when I tried the volume control. Tower was chattering away trying to get me and I 'fessed up that the volume was turned down.
 
First or second solo flight out to the practice area I was jazzed and singing to myself (Elton John's "I guess That's Why They Call it the Blues"). When I started back in I realized I'd had a stuck mic. I'd been serenading the entire frequency for 1/2 hour. Forced them to move to the alternate tower frequency. :oops: After I landed and received my taxi instructions from ground, the controller said "Thanks for the karaoke"

On my private check ride, I left the oil door open on top of the cowling. Started the plane, looked out and uh-oh. Shut down, got out and closed the door. DPE got a chuckle out of that.

A couple of weeks after my check ride, I was getting checked out in the club's C-172S. Called ground three times with no answer. Then the CFI said "That's the auto-pilot disconnect. PTT is here."

I took a friend from work on a $100 hamburger run. Flew from Orlando Executive (KORL) to Flagler County (X47). I flew the pattern, flared beautifully-2 feet off the ground- and wham! He did get in to fly back so I guess it wasn’t so bad.

One that actually rattled my confidence and almost made me not go fly: I was starting the C-172C. I'd get it to start (with some difficulty) by going full throttle and mixture off (flooded procedure) and then it would die when I pulled the throttle and pushed in the mixture. Happened 3 or 4 times. Then I realized I was reversing the controls: full rich mixture and closed throttle to start then pulling the mixture and opening the throttle which killed it every time (go figure!). Once I figured out what I was doing wrong, I stopped and sat in the cockpit for a few minutes to collect myself and see if I was really ready to go fly. The rest of the flight went without a hitch, thankfully.

John
 
On my second leg landing at a non-towered airport on my solo cross country, I noticed three airplanes lined up on the taxiway ready to go and waiting for me. I felt so proud as I greased the landing in front of my first audience. I rolled past the midfield taxiway because I was a bit fast and didn't want to jam on the brakes. As I taxied to the end of the runway thinking that (like any other airfield) there would be a taxiway at the end to exit. Then I heard a voice on CTAF from the FBO, "that Cherokee that just landed, there isn't a taxiway down at the other end. You just passed the taxiway to get off the runway." I sheepishly replied, "Making a one eighty….sorry fellas" as the first guy had already taken the runway still waiting for me to get off.

Second was more recent and with a member of this forum as passenger...who by the way has WAY more hours than me and flies real airplanes for a living...and is also a good sport.

I was taking off behind two other forum members after a fly-in breakfast in high density altitude and possibly a little wake turbulence from the plane I was following. I rotated waaay too soon and Broom Hilda decided that she would rather go back to the runway and to the left. I corrected, remained in the air and when I got her straightened out I said something like, "damn it...density altitude...sorry about that." My passenger said, "its okay, you know what you did." To add insult to injury, we got vectored into two hot bumpy 360's because we were too slow for the commercial airliners.

Lastly although I wasn't the PIC on this one but embarrassing none the less, I was passenger in a buddy's Arrow ( who happened to be my CFI) and we were taxiing from his parking spot to the fuel pump. Along the way, we kept hearing this metallic ringing sound. As we neared the fuel pump, some mechanics came running in our direction from a nearby hangar waving and shouting. We stopped in front of the fuel pump before they could get to us and when I got out, I saw the tow bar still attached to the front wheel. By the grace of God it hadn't hit a crack or something, bounced up and gave him a nice insurance claim.
 
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First dual cross country. Had my navlog filled out, thing of beauty. Take off, turn to 090 degrees and begin cruising right along. After about 10 minutes, my CFI asks, "Plan on turning left anytime soon?" look at my navlog and my heading should have been 009. He laughed and said that I probably would have figured it out when we reached the Atlantic but he had dinner plans.
 
I was on my second solo XC. My instructor was relatively new and inside the flight school bragging about how good I was doing. After I cleared the Delta of my home airfield I figured I would try to get flight following. I confidently keyed the mic and gave all the important information only to be told by the Delta tower that he would love to help me out but I needed to contact approach. The scanner was on in the flight school and my instructor really gave me a ribbing for it.
 
First solo flight. Parked at the tower to offload my CFI. I pulled the Archer’s parking break too hard and when the time came I couldn’t release it. I pulled as hard as I dared being afraid of breaking it off.

My CFI, now in the tower cab, came out on a little balcony and shouted down “what’s wrong?” I shouted back, “f***ing brake is stuck”

He called maintenance, and soon a really irritated mechanic showed, and with a gargantuan tug, released the brake. As the mech stomped away he was muttering something about the lineage of student pilots and me in particular!

After that the solo went fine thankyouverymuch. -Skip
 
My DPE was witness to what I think was my most embarrassing moment.

PP checkride in the Warrior: The ramp there had a slight slope to it, and if you removed the chocks too early, sometimes the airplane would start to roll. My habit was to prefight, and then remove the chocks at the last minute before climbing in. On my checkride day I was a nervous wreck. I did the preflight and climbed in, the DPE climbed in after me. We got buckled in and locked the doors and I remembered I hadn't removed the chocks. He had to unbuckle and get out, but he did tell me to relax and offered to pull the chocks for me.

He's still my favorite DPE.
 
I am always embarrassed for other people when i fly, because i can see the other 99% of the morons on the ground who cant fly.
 
jsstevens said:
First or second solo flight out to the practice area I was jazzed and singing to myself (Elton John's "I guess That's Why They Call it the Blues"). When I started back in I realized I'd had a stuck mic. I'd been serenading the entire frequency for 1/2 hour. Forced them to move to the alternate tower frequency. :oops: After I landed and received my taxi instructions from ground, the controller said "Thanks for the karaoke"
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This is the best one so far.
 
Timbeck2 said:
Lastly although I wasn't the PIC on this one but embarrassing none the less, I was passenger in a buddy's Arrow ( who happened to be my CFI) and we were taxiing from his parking spot to the fuel pump. Along the way, we kept hearing this metallic ringing sound. As we neared the fuel pump, some mechanics came running in our direction from a nearby hangar waving and shouting. We stopped in front of the fuel pump before they could get to us and when I got out, I saw the tow bar still attached to the front wheel. By the grace of God it hadn't hit a crack or something, bounced up and gave him a nice insurance claim.
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I was recently at an airport and saw a Grumman about to fire up. The pilot and passenger were both in the cockpit and I saw the strobes come on. He hadn't removed his cowl plugs and there was a rope between them. Not sure how much damage this would have done to the plane, but I'm assuming it could have. I ran toward him, raising my arms into and crossing them into an X and after a puzzled look, he started climbing out. He knew what he did before I told him. Better to be embarrassed before the damage happens than after!
 
I remember a green student pilot doing touch and goes in a 150, wind gusting to 15 or so, and on one iteration I ended up in the grass between the runway and taxiway. I was scared to death. Tower came on and old me to catch my breath then I could taxi back to the ramp and said I wasn't the first student pilot to do that. It's funny how something like brings so much peace to a person.

Just one of the 101 reasons I've always liked our controllers here.
 
EdFred said:
This is the best one so far.
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I heard a female flight instructor telling her female student about the night she'd had with one of the male instructors the night before. Let's say she wasn't much of a prize. We got a huge laugh when we saw the male instructor was running after them on the ramp, waving his arms frantically, trying to tell her that her mic was stuck!
 
#2. I was just a mere student pilot at the time, about to go on a solo flight to the practice area. I did a thorough pre-flight even though I was interrupted by the fuel truck as I checked the elevator and rudder. I got into the mighty C-152, set up my intercom so I could listen to some tunes, then dutifully grabbed the checklist going through every step. Finally I got the engine started. I listened to ATIS, then checked the area and started to add throttle to taxi to the run up area.

After the plane moved about 10 feet the plane stopped, then backed up about 5 feet.

I shut down, got out and looked around. Not seeing another person on the ramp, I quickly untied the tail and got back in.

I went to the practice area, had a good flight, came back and did one T&G then a full stop. Good flight, fun flight. I did the post flight inspection, wrote down the hobbs and tach times, then went inside.

The person acting as dispatcher asked me how my flight went and is anything wrong with the plane, the usual questions. I gave him the flight can and checked my schedule for the afternoon.

Before I turned to leave, the dispatcher said, "One more question.... did the plane taxi better after untying the tail.???'' :lol::lol::lol:
 
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kyleb said:
I pulled the mixture control on roll-out on 27 landing at Oshkosh about 3 weeks ago.

I had sufficient momentum to keep it rolling, and managed a restart while still at a good taxi pace, but...aargh...
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The real test was........




Did you land on the dot?o_O
 
As a newly minted instrument pilot I decided to go visit some friends a few states away. I departed and got cleared on course flying an Victor airway. Departure asks me if I’m having any problems, which I didn’t initially take as a hint. After telling me that I’m several miles off course, I reply that my needles are centered, so it must be on their end. They insist I’m off course less agreeably than at first, so I start scrambling to figure it out. I then realize that I had confused the V# with the outbound radial, which happened to be fairly close. There’s not an easy way to explain that one so I quietly fixed it and they let me be on my way.

Many years later on a combat mission in the ME, we had just completed our fence in checks and I tried to engage the autopilot. I noticed a clunk when I pressed the button that didn’t feel right. So I pressed it several more times trying to get it to engage with nothing but the clunking as a result. I reset everything, then out of frustration I clicked it about 5-10 times rapidly. About that time my wingman comes up on tactical freq and says, “ You do realize you’re kicking out all your expendables, right”?.........Oops, wrong button...disregard. Autopilot on.
 
jsstevens said:
To be clear, I WAS a voice major in college for a couple of years so I CAN sing. At least it wasn’t horrible karaoke.
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All karaoke is horrible karaoke.

I think it's actually Japanese for horrible singing. :D
 
EdFred said:
All karaoke is horrible karaoke.

I think it's actually Japanese for horrible singing. :D
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Having spent 5 years on Okinawa and in Japan...could be on Japan too but I digress...understandably, karaoke is big there. There was one bar we frequented with smoke machines, lighting, bubbles etc. but the only song they had on the computer in English was Yesterday by the Beatles. Any American that got up to sing sang Yesterday so it got old pretty quick. I got half in the bag one night and sang my own version.

Leprosy
all my skin is falling off of me
I'm not half the man I used to be
oh how did I get leprosy?

Syphilis
It all started with a simple kiss
Now it hurts to even take a p***
Oh how did I get syphilis?

Now back to your regularly scheduled topic
 
Cooter said:
As a newly minted instrument pilot I decided to go visit some friends a few states away. I departed and got cleared on course flying an Victor airway. Departure asks me if I’m having any problems, which I didn’t initially take as a hint. After telling me that I’m several miles off course, I reply that my needles are centered, so it must be on their end. They insist I’m off course less agreeably than at first, so I start scrambling to figure it out. I then realize that I had confused the V# with the outbound radial, which happened to be fairly close. There’s not an easy way to explain that one so I quietly fixed it and they let me be on my way.

Many years later on a combat mission in the ME, we had just completed our fence in checks and I tried to engage the autopilot. I noticed a clunk when I pressed the button that didn’t feel right. So I pressed it several more times trying to get it to engage with nothing but the clunking as a result. I reset everything, then out of frustration I clicked it about 5-10 times rapidly. About that time my wingman comes up on tactical freq and says, “ You do realize you’re kicking out all your expendables, right”?.........Oops, wrong button...disregard. Autopilot on.
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Oh I’ve done worse. I guess my most embarrassing moment flying was a combat mission as well. There was this one time in Afghanistan I dropped off my general at an outlying COP. Being a particularly dangerous area, I elected to arm our IRCM in the before takeoff checks. Bad mistake. As soon as we got off the WOW switch, the system caught sight of a heat signature that matched the software criteria and boom! I spewed tiny balls of sun right into my general and his entourage. I’ll never forget looking down to the left and seeing people scrambling for their lives with flares ricocheting everywhere. Some local Afghan worker was in a blue porta potty by the LZ and came running out with his pants down because he thought the COP was under attack! Thank God not a single injury in that chaos.

Couple months later I went on R&R with my general and his team. His security SGT showed me a charred burn hole on his ACUs. One of my flares caught him squarely in groin. A vivid example of the importance of sticking to a checklist.:(
 
Velocity173 said:
Oh I’ve done worse. I guess my most embarrassing moment flying was a combat mission as well. There was this one time in Afghanistan I dropped off my general at an outlying COP. Being a particularly dangerous area, I elected to arm our IRCM in the before takeoff checks. Bad mistake. As soon as we got off the WOW switch, the system caught sight of a heat signature that matched the software criteria and boom! I spewed tiny balls of sun right into my general and his entourage. I’ll never forget looking down to the left and seeing people scrambling for their lives with flares ricocheting everywhere. Some local Afghan worker was in a blue porta potty by the LZ and came running out with his pants down because he thought the COP was under attack! Thank God not a single injury in that chaos.

Couple months later I went on R&R with my general and his team. His security SGT showed me a charred burn hole on his ACUs. One of my flares caught him squarely in groin. A vivid example of the importance of sticking to a checklist.:(
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That had me laughing, that’s a good one.
 
Not only do I fly for a paycheck, but I’m also in management, so no way are you guys suckering me into talking............but, buy a few beers the day after I retire............:)
 
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Tantalum said:
These have been fairly tame responses. My most embarrassing was taxiing to the wrong end of the runway and telling the tower I was ready to depart.. had to make a u-turn and taxi all the way down to the other end, with a passenger on board. Granted this was maybe a week after I got my license, and in a plane without a GPS and well before the beautiful foreflight moving map taxi diagrams
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Ahh crud. I made the turn but didn’t make it to the end.

Me: “You said Runway 17 Left, didn’t you... 79M”
Tower: “We were taking bets on how far you’d go... if you can, U-turn on Alpha is approved. Taxi to Runway 17L via Alpha.”


Lowflynjack said:
I was recently at an airport and saw a Grumman about to fire up. The pilot and passenger were both in the cockpit and I saw the strobes come on. He hadn't removed his cowl plugs and there was a rope between them. Not sure how much damage this would have done to the plane, but I'm assuming it could have. I ran toward him, raising my arms into and crossing them into an X and after a puzzled look, he started climbing out. He knew what he did before I told him. Better to be embarrassed before the damage happens than after!
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If placed in the cowl correctly with the rope over the prop, done right, turning the prop will yank them out and send them flying. It’s entertaining when the prop sends them straight up.

A good friend of mine somehow balanced his iPhone on the prop of his 182 looking at something up front during ore-flight. He says his 182 can launch an iPhone about 25’ vertically. I don’t even know how he did that.
 
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jsstevens said:
To be clear, I WAS a voice major in college for a couple of years so I CAN sing. At least it wasn’t horrible karaoke.
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Stuck mike stuff is great. Mine was a diversion to ABQ when the weather in southern New Mexico turned ugly. After landing I was extolling the virtues of the FBO - with a stuck mic. I am sure the passengers on the departing United Flight listening in on Channel 10 we're thrilled to know Cutter is the place to go.
 
I’ve left passengers/landed at the wrong airport several times. When you’re doing 30 legs a day at 5-25 minutes a pop it’s pretty easy to do, but I always felt bad about it. One day in crappy weather I landed on an old closed runway because I’d never been there before and thats where the GPS took me. I don’t think the database had been updated in 10 years. I did think it was rather odd there were powerlines right at the runways edge. The new runway was about 5 miles outside of town, and the visibility was *ahem* less.
 
In training with my CFI, set parking brake, did my run up, taxied to the runway. I thought it felt weird. Pulling to the left. So we turned around and taxied to maintenance. On the way, I realized my mistake, so the instructor said “I’ll go in to the bathroom so we don’t look like idiots.”

I swore that would never happen again, but another plane, different airport, new, pretty ineffective brakes, I managed to taxi and take off with the brake set, and didn’t realize the problem until after I almost went off the runway when landing. I taxied up to the hangar to put it away, and when I reached for the brake, realized my error.

I’ve also gotten my directions/left vs right mixed up. I was already to the left of the extended centerline for the runway still a few miles out. A bigger twin was overtaking me, so I told him I would let him by and fly a left pattern, so he could make a straight in. Well, I got abeam the airport, turned right and overflew the field to set up for a 45* pattern entry. It was a few seconds before the twin called asking where I was that I realized I was setting up for a right pattern. I fessed up, flew back over the field and joined downwind midfield...
 
The east/west problem hasn't hit me for a little while, but the potential is always there.

Somewhere, out in the Youtubes, there's a video a guy recorded. He was doing his first glider solo and set up a GoPro in the cockpit. I was the towpilot. From his handheld you can hear me returning to land calling "2 west, correction 2 ea...no..2 west".
 
#3. In southwest Alaska a customer asked us to check his landing strip on his property to see if we would land there. The chief pilot went with me in a C-207 to show me how to properly check out a new landing area.

I flew us to the area and I saw what looked like a landing strip half underwater. The CP pointed to another area and said that is probably where we need to go. So I set up and land, then taxi up to what looked like a parking area. The people near the work site came running over....''What's wrong.??''

''Nothing wrong, John Smith asked us to check out his landing strip. It is a little rough right now.''

''Um.... Johns property is about a mile that way, and is partly under water right now.''

''Oh, sorry, whose strip is this..??''

''Uh, it isn't a landing strip, we are clearing this area to build a cabin....''

:oops::oops::blush:
 
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