Flight Training - June 2019 - 8

UNUSUAL ATTITUDE BY DAVE HIRSCHMAN

Katie Pribyl's decision to leave AOPA and
manage her family's ranch in Montana had
nothing to do with Editor at Large DAVE
HIRSCHMAN'S poor decision making.
dave.hirschman@aopa.org

TWO HEADS

Two heads in the cockpit are better than one-unless, of course,
both pilots are busy inventing ways to kill each other.
No, this isn't a reference to The War of the Roses. I'm thinking about a late-summer transcontinental trip with former AOPA colleague Katie Pribyl in her classic
Cessna 180. She tried to kill me in the Rocky Mountains with a navigational error, and
I returned the favor with my own version of attempted murder by under-fueling her
airplane in Kansas.
Fortunately, we ended up bailing each other out, and forgiving-if not exactly
forgetting-our mutual transgressions.
The wrong turn in the Colorado mountains was easy to make, even in the age of
GPS, since our destination was a grass strip not listed on any aeronautical chart or aviation database. Katie had been there once before and thought she knew the way, but
she zigged when she should have zagged. Then the warning signs started popping up
to let us know things were going downhill-because the terrain ahead was all uphill.
First, radio transmissions from other airplanes near our destination airport got
weaker, not stronger, as they would have if we were getting closer to them. Then,
when the airport didn't appear at a bend in the river where we expected to see it, an
escape maneuver was our best option. Having practiced hugging a hillside, dropping
lift flaps, adding full power, and turning toward lower terrain, the maneuver itself was
a nonevent. Even at 10,000 feet msl, a Cessna 180 requires precious little real estate to
perform an actual one-eighty. But this was the first and only time I'd seen that maneuver as other than a hypothetical "what-if" exercise.
My own under-fueling folly in Kansas is much harder to explain away.
8 FLIGHT TRAINING JUNE 2019

I was perched on a shaky stepladder
at a self-serve pump, and the sensor on
the fuel nozzle clicked the pump off about
when I thought it should. Fuel consumption on the previous leg had been less
than usual, I reasoned, because we started
high in the Rockies. I stuck a finger down
into the tank and felt the cool presence
of blue fuel about an inch below the rim.
(I'd previously spilled avgas at another
fuel stop and didn't want to repeat that
odoriferous episode.) But that inch or
more of air at the top of the tank should
have been occupied by avgas, and failing
to take on every available drop for what I
knew would be a long leg was stupid.
Fortunately, Katie knows her airplane
and its idiosyncrasies. When its notoriously jumpy fuel gauges started settling
earlier than they usually do, she made a
wise call to divert to a rural airstrip in
southern Indiana. There, we landed with
only 30 minutes of fuel remaining when,
by my calculations, we should have had
a full hour. It was only then that I fully
appreciated how my lazy fueling error
had put us in peril.
So why didn't our blunders result in
bent metal? A willingness to question our
own actions, accept our fallibility, and back
each other up was our best defense.
Am I really dumb enough to pump less
than full fuel into a tank I intend to top
off? Why, yes I am. Admitting that unflattering truth, embarrassing as it is, sure
beats clinging to a false self-image of pilot
perfection and running the tanks dry.
Is Katie fallible enough to fly up the
wrong canyon while returning to an airfield she's visited before? She sure is. But
she's also courageous enough to recognize a deteriorating situation and reverse
course without letting pride get in the way.
Weeks after we'd returned to our homes
in Maryland, I sent Katie a work-related
email that contained an oblique reference
to my regrettable Kansas mistake.
Her reply: "I don't know what you're
talking about."
OK, then, let me spell it out for you:
"I'm referring to the time I didn't fully fill
the tanks in your 180 and we had to land
short in Indiana."
"I know!" she wrote back. "I was trying
to show you I had forgotten all about it."
Am I really so dense as to completely
miss it when a fellow pilot graciously tries
to let me off the hook?
Why, yes I am! FT

Flight Training - June 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Flight Training - June 2019