Flight Training - June 2013 - 23

FLIGHT LESSON

By Greg Marino
FLIGHT LESSON offers the
opportunity for pilots to learn
from the experiences of others.

SCARY FIRST SOLO

NARROWLY AVERTING A RUNWAY INCURSION

W

e had scheduled our training flight for early morning as
opposed to our usual afternoon session, because it was
Mother’s Day and my instructor wanted to have brunch
with his wife and sons.
Turning final as before, I called 19R
touch and go. Almost immediately my
call was followed by a Super Cub declaring his intention to taxi for a mid-field
departure from 19R. With my airplane’s
wheels almost down I noticed the Super
Cub stopped at the mid-field hold short,
but my full attention was on the landing.
With the wheels down, I pushed in the
carb heat to cold and raised the flaps, and
as I firewalled the throttle for full power,
the Super Cub pulled out onto the runway in front of me while declaring that he
was “taking the active.”
I was moving too fast to stop and too
slow to fly, and now things seemed to
be happening in slow motion. Holy
[expletive], where the [expletive] did you
come from?!? suddenly screamed over
my headset.
The Super Cub thankfully was a little
right of the center line and I was a little
left, and I applied left rudder pedal pressure enough to barely swerve a bit more

PLUS Even on the ground, accidents can happen. Take the Air Safety
Institute’s Runway Safety interactive course.

JUNE 2013 FLIGHT TRAINING

/ 23

SARAH HANSON

After practicing power-on and poweroff stalls, we headed for home where I
called touch and go for Runway 19R, as
was our usual routine at the end of each
training day. Scott Williams, my instructor,
immediately corrected that to full stop,
and as we taxied to the tiedowns, Scott
told me he was hopping out and I would
fly on my own for my solo. I had 13 hours
and felt comfortable enough with my
progress to have thought I would solo later
in the week, but today would be the day.
Taxiing back to 19R, I heard a clear,
calm professional voice from a yellow
Piper Cub, intent on pattern work, taxiing
onto 19L, the parallel gravel runway. As he
called each turn in the pattern, his voice
was soothing and encouraging as I followed two turns behind.
My first landing was an uneventful confidence builder. Staying in a closed pattern,
the Cub called full stop for 19L and then
back-taxi, but also said he would delay the
back-taxi so as to not distract me.

left. In a flash of his red and white and
my blue and white, my right wing tip
somehow avoided his left wing, perhaps
because his tundra tires had him standing higher than my 150. I was safely by,
and all I could think of was aviate, aviate,
aviate. My headset was reverberating
with a constant barrage of expletives, and
I changed my mantra to aviate, aviate,
concentrate. The vitriol ceased when I
reminded my tormentor that I had called
final, touch and go for Runway 19R.
Safely back at the tiedowns, the pilot
of the yellow Cub—who had witnessed
the entire thing—came over to see if I
was OK. I was trembling so badly I could
barely tie the ropes.
A few minutes later the Super Cub
landed, and the pilot of the yellow Cub
went over to talk with that pilot. Later I
would find out, the pilot of the Super Cub
had been distracted in the cockpit. He
was taking a boy for a birthday sightseeing ride, and was running late. He did
not think anyone was in the pattern, and
for some reason he had failed to see me
approach and land. And when I reminded
him of my radio call announcing being on
final, he had suddenly remembered that
call, but again it did not register—most
likely because he was terribly pressured
and distracted at that critical time.
Scott and my other pilot friends drove
into my head the importance of checklists; of being methodical and deliberate;
and at the hold short before takeoff to
look, listen, look, and look again. And
that not all light aircraft have radios. The
feelings of pressure and distractions are
signals to slow down and return to the
basics of safety.
My new friend in the yellow Cub, upon
finding that I was a student on my first
solo flight, was concerned that this near
miss would discourage me from finishing
my training, but I went right back to it the
next day, and two months later I passed
the checkride and earned my certificate.
That certificate is a mandate to study,
train, and constantly renew the commitment to safety.
http://flash.aopa.org/asf/runway_safety/swf/flash.cfm?
Flight Training - June 2013

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