Glad It Wasn't Me!!!

This was supposed to be a pretty busy week. I had scheduled myself to fly Tues, Thurs, Fri and Saturday. Well, you know what they say about best laid plans, right? So on Tuesday I had to cancel because of an appointment for the Air Force that went long. I could have perhaps made it, but I was tired, hot and just not feeling very well, so I think it was a wise idea to cancel. So, today rolls along and I am hyped up ready to fly. I took the day off, so I was well rested, well prepared and all in all, ready to rock and roll. I get to the airport and we review what we are going to cover...short field stuff. I have been looking forward to this since I know after this lesson, I will most likely be cut loose to go practice on my own (OK, within 25 nautical miles, but that's good enough for me!!!). So, after our pre-brief, I head out to preflight the airplane. All appears to be in good order. Fuel is good, windows are clean and winds are light and variable. Too good to be true, right? Yep, you guessed right. As I was waiting for my instructor to come out, I was watching a Cessna 152 come in on approach. As it turns out, this was his first solo...oh yes, I remember that. It seems so long ago!!! Anyway, there was another airplane on final (albeit a long straight-in) and the solo student essentially cut him off (not sure how to explain it real well...but he turned base and final too early and jumped in front of the airplane). Anyway, the "cut-off" airplane executed a go-around and flew to the right of the field. The instructor then radioed the solo student and told him what he did and to "go ahead and land and taxi back to the ramp." OK, so I know that there could be a lot of conjecture here, so I will let you decide if what the instructor did was in the best interest of his student. So the plane was coming in on a fairly stabilized approach, at first anyway. He drove it down a little fast and nose down and attempted to pull it out only to bounce the airplane...it wasn't a bad bounce, but he nosed it back down and it bounced again, this time pretty bad. Well, perhaps this would have been a good time to execute a go-around but instead he nosed it over and tried again, but this time, he hit the nose gear and it collapsed. Well as you can probably guess, collapsing any gear is a bad thing, but the nose is really bad. When you collapse the nose gear, the prop hits the ground bringing the engine to a rapid stop, usually with significant damage to the engine. I see plane come to rest and I start to run over towards the mishap. My instructor is just now coming out the door seeing me and the solo-guy's instructor running over to the scene. Well, I could really stretch out this story, but I told you the most interesting part. The student was fine, although a lot shaken up. To be honest, I think I would have shit my drawers if that had been me. The plane was banged up pretty good and there was a nice 100 foot ground scar from the prop and gear across the runway into the grass. We decided that we weren't going to move the airplane until the FAA got out there so my flight was canceled. The lesson was complete though...it is never a bad idea to execute a go-around whenever there is a doubt in your mind. I was going to post pictures, but my phone camera likes to add a nice green tint to pictures when it's nice and sunny out, so sorry, no pictures.

I am scheduled to fly Friday and Saturday, so hopefully that will go off without a hitch. Looking at the syllabus, I might be ready for my checkride by the end of June. Of course this is if EVERYTHING go just right, and well, I can almost guarantee that isn't going to happen. At this point, if I am done by mid-July, I will be pretty happy. If my no-good instructor wasn't going to be on vacation the last couple weeks of June, I'd have this thing wrapped up pretty quick. Hmmm...perhaps if we get all the cross country and night stuff done, then I can get with another instructor to get the practice stuff done...Well, I guess I will cross that bridge when I get to it!