PlasticPilot.net

Flying is fun - parts of it can be stressing. This post is about the top three stressing moments on my personal stress-o-meter. Feel free to comment about yours.

Line-up and wait…

When operating on airports with airline traffic, it’s frequent to be instructed by ATC to line-up and wait. The more stressing combination is having to wait for three minutes when already lined-up, until the wake turbulence of the previous take-off are dissipated, while another airliner is already on short final.

Light aircraft have no mirrors (with the exception of glider towing planes), so there is no possibility to see that approaching traffic. You just know that a 40 tons aircraft if coming to land on the same runway, and you wait for a take-off clearance… Wait and don’t see…

Hot, heavy and high ground
I won’t make a climb performance lesson here, but shortly said for non-pilots, plane performance decrease with temperature and load, a.k.a. passengers. Under adverse conditions, the climb performance can easily be reduced by 50%.

Any serious pilot makes performance calculations before take-off and incudes a safety margin, so as to ensure a safe climb. Even when one knows that performance will increase with speed increase, and that the expected rate of climb will be achieved, the seconds spent waiting for that can look impressive and be stressing.

And she floooooooooooooats
I did not found a photo for that one, but all pilots already understood it. Any approach flown a bit quickly will result in a long flare and landing - necessary to loose the extra speed.

As runway length is usually limited, there can be long seconds during which the plane seems to endlessly float a couple of feet about ground. It’s anyway better to do so than land with excessive speed, but looking at the quickly approaching runway end can also generate some pilot stress.

Nothing unsafe
These three cases are all but unsafe. Good radio watch, good controller work and possible go-around for the approaching aircraft ensure that the first case is safe. Good preparation and flying skills ensure that any climb that is started is achievable, and going-around is the safe way out of a too long flare.

What make these situations stressing is the short time available for decision making. If anything goes wrong, the pilot must take the right decision within a couple of seconds. That might seem obvious, but “Safety First” is the motto in such moments.

In a recent post, I mentioned the exceptional descent performance of the Pilatus Porter. One could say a lot on the Porter’s performances, but it’s not the sole aircraft with outstanding characteristics.

I had the chance to fly a couple of times as passenger in a PA18 SuperCub. This improved version of the Cub is not flying exactly fast, but its take-off and climb performance are… well… unusual.

This video has been taken while taking-off from Geneva runway 05 grass. The displaced threshold (marked with inverted V and a bar across the runway) is 180 meters from runway begin.

Using the same runway with a Cessna 172 or a Saratoga make the trees look impressively close on initial climb. But with the SuperCub one harly notices trees in the axis ! The rest of the climb is also rather impressive. This plane is also able to make rapid descents in side-slips, and is fitted with skis for glacier landings.It time and money allows for, a tail-wheel training could be the next on my list…

UPDATE (24-05-08): This is now an higher resolution of the same video, hosted by revver.com.