This month I wanted to report on a couple of good stories showing pilots' use of decision making to turn potentially dangerous situations into safe ones.

In the first case a private pilot was taking a 172 up for a flight. During their take-off roll they felt the engine was running a little rough, so they aborted and asked to taxi back to see if they could clear what appeared to be a bad plug. They taxied back, ran through a leaning procedure, and tried again. The same thing happened again: on take-off roll the engine seemed to be running rough. They aborted again, and this time taxied back to the tie-down and aborted the whole flight plan.

Too often we are pressed into thinking that a flight needs to be completed. Maybe we haven't flown in a while, and need the flight for currency. Maybe we really had a great destination, or an appointment that we needed to attend. This can cause us to look the other way when all the signs are not equaling out to a solid flight. Every time we spool up the engine on the runway, despite a thorough run-up, we need good pressure (oil and fuel), good power, and airspeed alive on the take-off roll.

This pilot showed that in spite of two run-ups that looked good, all things still did not equal out, and the flight was aborted. As it turns out the mags were fine. Instead the plane had a cylinder problem not detectable on the run-up. Great job on the pilot's part.

The second situation has to do with doing the right things when you get lost. It has been highlighted in the "Good Safety Practices" article in this newsletter, written by Dave Fry.

Remember, the conservative approach will always lead to the potential for safer outcomes. Try to never let the goal of the flight overrule the process that we use to make good decisions when faced with tough situations.

Stay current, stay safe.

Last time: The basics of a positive flying attitude are:

• A realistic appraisal of our skills
• An unbiased assessment of our flight practices
• A realtime assessment of the wisdom of an act that is different from what we've assessed as proper, and which we've practiced
• An analysis of good practices and actions we hear about. An example will be included in each of the next several newsletters.

On 2 July 2002, West Valley student Chip Miller planned a cross-country from Palo Alto to Oakdale. This flight was to fulfill the remaining cross-country hours needed for his private pilot's license.

An error in his calculations resulted in choosing the incorrect heading and VOR radial from ECA. As a result, Chip ended up over a private airfield (Peterson) instead of over Oakdale at the time planned for that leg of the flight.

Recognizing that it wasn't the correct field (a major attaboy is in order for that alone!) and knowing that he could reverse course and return to ECA easily, he continued along the radial for a bit, but soon reasoned that something was wrong. He then realized that a decision was in order. His words follow:

"I knew that it took me at least 5.3 gallons to get there and it would take me another 5.3 to get back to Palo Alto, plus I had to include my time searching and not finding my airport. I also need to add my personal parameter of 7 gallons upon final destination (more than 1 hour of fuel in worst case in a C152). I decided to head back and refuel at Livermore. I chose Livermore instead of Palo Alto because Palo Alto might have been pushing it. It is always better to be over cautious than to be barely safe, especially since my flight plan had already been incorrect. Given this, I was also concerned that my fuel consumption might be wrong."

As with virtually any set of circumstances like this, there are loads of ways in which one might second-guess Chip's decisions. Did he really need to refuel? Couldn't he have rechecked his flight plan in the cockpit? Et cetera.

Two things no-one can fault are the maturity of judgement and the result. Both he and the plane were safe. In fact, there are many things the young man did correctly. First, he had set limits for himself, and knew not to exceed them. Second, he recognized that he had a problem, and knew a way out of it. Third, he wasn't so obsessed with getting to his destination that he let time or fuel become a problem. Finally, he admitted to himself that he could have made other mistakes and safely decided to refuel.

None of these things may seem remarkable after the fact, but when you consider that not finding your destination airport can be unnerving, and many folks go into denial and won't admit to themselves that there really is a problem, this is mature and safe thinking. May we all do as well.

RECAP: In the first installment, the topic was how to learn a new airplane, with the emphasis on a systematic approach to the POH. Last month we talked about what happens in simulator training, and the types of emergencies and normal procedures that are covered.

This month, what you don't learn in Sim School. Now, I have to put a caveat on this article, because my training to date has not included full motion simulators, and it's entirely possible that some of the holes in the training I received could be covered well in a more advanced simulator.

First, though there is a substantial amount of material on most of the aircraft systems, one that receives little classroom discussion is the avionics. Part of this is because there are several possible avionics suites in the production aircraft, and they only simulate one of them. Since it makes little sense to spend loads of valuable time learning a system not relevant to the plane you wish to fly, this area gets short shrift. Fortunately, many of our West Valley planes have the types of avionics found in first upgrade planes like Malibus and Pilatuses (Pilati?). Some of our planes have Dual Garmins, a Multi Function Display (MFD), Stormscope or Strikefinder, TCAS, and an Electronic HSI.

In addition to spending little classroom time on these systems, some of them aren't simulated at all. For example, there was no attempt to display any kind of traffic, weather radar data, any other type of weather information, radar altimeter or Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System.

Recently I was flying with an owner in his Pilatus on a trip to the East Coast, including a couple of legs through the Southeast. Those of you who have been there know that there is a perpetual thunderstorm over Cross City near the Florida Panhandle. This caused some really interesting weather radar indications, and loads of lightning strikes to show on the Garmins and on the MFD. The owner had not seen these things on the instruments, though he'd gone through sim school. A bit of real world experience taught him much more than any amount of classroom discussion.

Another area of simulator weakness was "touch maneuvers" such as landings, in which the actual airplane feel is important. The simulators I've seen don't allow one to judge altitude with any degree of precision, so the training doesn't translate into a beautiful flare and touchdown. This is particularly true of short and soft field takeoffs and landings. Also, simulators are notorious for their poor fidelity in ground handling: just a slight touch of the rudder and it looks like the plane is skidding sideways on an icy surface.

The feel of pressurization system problems isn't captured well in a simulator either -- the problems are just numbers on a dial, not a distinct "thud" when the pressurization comes on or builds rapidly. No "woosh" as air escapes through an opened dump valve. No condensation cloud right there in the cockpit when the pressure drops suddenly. Each of these sensations in the real world has its own poignant urgency that has a way of interfering with simple tasks like flying the plane. Amazing what a quart or two of adrenaline will do to focus your attention on only one thing.

Non-motion simulators can't even begin to suggest the feeling of an emergency descent in a Pilatus. When you pull the Power Control Lever (it's really a throttle, but since it's in a turbo-prop, folks seem to think it needs a fancier name) into flight idle, drop the gear, then shove the nose down to 236 Kts, the deck angle is amazing! The only thing holding you in your seat is the seatbelt. This is something that really needs to be done in the airplane.

In addition, best glide descents are easier to learn in the actual aircraft because of the limited visual fidelity of most simulators.

There is definitely a place for simulator training, since one can do things in a simulator that would be distinctly unsafe in an airplane. However, since there are things better learned in the airplane, training in both the sim and the plane is necessary in order to master the plane.

After all the exciting stories about soloes, checkrides and IFR flying that have appeared here, I'm a bit reluctant to waste your time with a mere phase check story, so I'm not going to tell you about my lousy landings or about a couple of important things that I should have done but forgot.

I'll get directly to the more exciting part. After the usual airwork, we were at Rio Vista doing short/soft field takeoffs and landings. For the final landing the phase check pilot, Benjamin Mendelsohn, requested a no-flaps landing and, while on (very) short final, at about 30 feet above the runway, he gave me the mother of all distractions: he pushed the right rudder all the way to the floor! I don't think it took me more than one second to understand what was going on and start the go-around, but as he said, one second could be too long...

After that excitement, we were on our way back to PAO. It was getting late because we took off later than planned due to an extremely thorough oral, and we were just having a friendly talk about various emergencies. I was somewhat surprised that we didn't actually do a simulated engine-out, but attributed it to the late hour. However, while descending through 2000' or so above Leslie Salt, I pushed the PTT button and managed to say only "Palo Alto tower..." when Benjamin pulled my throttle! I had never started the simulated engine-out so low before!

Finally I climbed a little bit, told PAO tower that I was coming and they recommended right traffic. There was no further communication between our plane and the tower until I turned from the 45 to downwind, but at that point I heard the tower saying, "Cessna 738LF, number one, clear to land, SHORT APPROACH APPROVED!!!" At the very same moment, out came my throttle! He must have arranged that before we took off, that X%!!!@?##beep! Under all that pressure and surprise, though, that engine-out landing was my very best of the whole day!

All in all, I was extremely impressed with the thoroughness of the phase check. It was way, way deeper than I expect the actual checkride to be, which makes me feel very well prepared for it. (Andrei is scheduled to take his checkride later this month. Ed.)

(Adam got his private earlier this summer and is now doing a course in Emergency Maneuvers Training at Attitude Aviation in Livermore, www.attitudeaviation.com. Members can also do aerobatic training right here at West Valley in the club's Decathlon. Ed.)

It was finally time for extreme unusual attitudes in my EMT class. Step 1 was the parachute brief. My instructor, Rich, took me through the briefing nice and slow, and it all made great sense. I'm still not convinced it would be particuarly easy to jump out of an airplane that was totally out of control... but I digress. This class is about keeping the airplane under control.

I was a bit nervous, since it had been just over a month since I flew the Grob, but things went amazingly well in that respect. My takeoff even earned me a compliment from Rich... the same Rich who on my last flight said, calm as can be, "Well that was completely awful."

We departed right crosswind towards the Mt. Diablo aerobatic practice area. During the climb I worked on some coordination drills and they went OK. After we arrived at the practice area Rich briefed and demonstrated an aileron roll. I would need to be able to perform rolls under control before worrying about doing them as part of an unusual attitude recovery.

In a Grob the procedure is to dive at about 20 degrees nose down to 130 knots, keeping the throttle back off of redline, then pitch up at about 2g to 30 degrees nose up. Stop the pitch change and put the ailerons hard over, making sure to use plenty of rudder to remain coordinated. Rolling through inverted the airspeed is starting to get pretty low so more rudder is required. The maneuver finishes pointing at the same point you started at and about 30 degrees nose down. Fun stuff!

I got to practice 3 passable aileron rolls, which he pronounced good enough to progress to the real goal of the flight: crazy unusual attitudes. We started out with the same kind of unusual attitudes you would expect during private training, beginning with nose low. Each one was progressively worse until the last one was completely vertical, maybe even slightly inverted.

At some point I did a wingover or two to turn around, which was quite useful when it came time to do nose high attitudes. With an extreme nose high situation it turns out you can't just push the nose down... you just don't have enough flying airspeed left. What I learned to do is yaw the plane back over towards the ground using rudder, and then recover from the dive.

Some time around the last nose low unusual attitude I finally started feeling a little bit of motion sickness. The plane was due in anyway, but even if it hadn't been it would have been time for me to go back. Something about looking for the horizon and finding it out the TOP of your canopy, and then rolling even with it, was just really disorienting to me. Hopefully this will get better over time.

One more wingover to head back to Livermore and I managed to fly right back through my own wake. It's surprising just how much wake a small plane can make. It didn't upset the plane at all, but we got quite a jolt.

This was one of the funnest flights I've had in a small plane so far. I can't wait for spins next time around, and hope to be checked out to fly these maneuvers solo (or with brave passengers) soon. Talk about fun stuff!

* Wed. August 14, 7-8:30 PM, PAO
Moving on Up. Moving up into bigger faster and more complex aircraft. Dave Fry.

* Wed. August 21, 7-8:30PM, SQL
Passing the checkride. Learn helpful hints, pitfalls, and expectations on your FAA checkride from an FAA DE. Gary Twitty.

Private Pilot Ground Schools
* Thursday evenings at PAO, 6:30-9:00, taught by Linton Kypta. New session starts August 8.
* Tuesday evenings at SQL, 6:30-9:00, taught by Chuck Bubniak. August topics include Navigation, Cross Country Flying, and Weather.

Instrument Ground School
* Sunday afternoons at PAO, 10:00-2:00, taught by Sanjay Singh. New session just started July 28.