Flight of the Cursed!

In my last post, I indicated that I planned to fly on to Galveston or Houston on Sunday, but Sunday evening was spent watching football, so that just didn't work out. I decided to fly tonight though and decided to go to Houston. In hindsight, I should have just gone to bed (read on).

The flight started OK with an evening departure from Lake Charles:

My flight plan was pretty simple, just head west to a VOR station about 80 miles to the east, and then turn SSW to a VOR station within a half mile of Ellington Field, a very old (WWI era) airport that serves military, commercial and general aviation traffic. It's located at 29 36'26.00"N, 95 09'32.00"W in Google Earth.

En route, it got darker and I started looking for constellations. It may be hard to see in this dark image, but I believe that's supposed to be the Milky Way coming up from the horizon below me (and extending above, but very hard to see):
Other than the takeoff and stargazing, everything else about this flight went wrong. First of all, I never could get a signal on the second VOR. I double checked the frequency and everything and even checked on-line later. I think it may be an FSX bug, but I'm not 100% sure of that. Needless to say, that complicated my navigation, which needed to be pretty accurate on a night flight into an airport that's very close to another airport (Houston Hobby) and with a similar runway layout.

As I got closer I spotted an airport about where Ellington should be, could not see another airport nearby, and so I requested clearance to land, got it, and started my approach. On final, I decided that the runways didn't look right, paused the sim, went to an exterior view, and realized I was about to land at Hobby. Oops, that's not going to look good:

The above image is me on final into Hobby (in error). As soon as I sorted things out I gunned the engine, aborted the landing, climbed up a few hundred feet and headed east. The correct airport is just a few miles south-east of Hobby.

Shaken by all of the problems, I got lined up and began my final into Ellington. Even it didn't look right, but I called the tower and got directions to the airport and confirmed that I was heading for the right one. With my confidence level falling, I gradually added full flaps and decided to make a really slow and careful landing. That didn't work out so well either as I got too slow right over the runway threshold, stalled the wings and dropped a good twenty feet onto the tarmac, breaking the nose gear and ending an already problematic flight with a bang:
Ugh! Sometimes everything that can go wrong does. I suppose I'll learn something from this, but right now I think I'll have a beer!

UPDATE - After a nice cold beer and a good night's sleep to reflect on this disaster, I came to the following conclusions: Error number one was trying to "squeeze in a quick flight", when I really didn't have time for it. That led to error two, inadequate planning. I should have had a better backup plan to find the airport in the event of navigational problems. I should have drawn a diagram of the two airports and major roads, rivers, etc. nearby to help identify the correct airport when I got to Houston. A related mistake which I failed to mention in last night's post was that when I loaded the simulator, I neglected to check my controls and therefore failed to notice that the throttle was full forward. Either I had left it that way or my youngest son had been playing with the controls again. As a result, when the simulator finished loading, and while I was up turning off lights, the plane immediately started to taxi and actually drove off into a field near the airport before I could stop it. I also forgot to close the cowl flaps which help cool the engine during takeoff and climb-out, leaving them open for a good thirty minutes after they should have been closed. Both of those mistakes would have been avoided if I had and used a checklist for each phase of flight.

When I got to Houston, error number three was just assuming that the first airport I saw was the correct airport. Sure, it appeared to be in the right position and from a distance, seemed to have the right layout, but I knew there were two airports close together so I should have made sure, even if that meant circling the area until I spotted both airports before requesting clearance to land.

Finally, error number four was allowing the series of mistakes already made to alter my landing procedures and attempting to land in an unfamiliar configuration, somehow thinking that would be safer. Flying with full flaps is like flying with a parachute hanging off your tail. It's hard to maintain your minimum stall speed without a little throttle to pull you through the air. I was used to landing with less flap and with the throttle on idle, so the combination of full flaps and idle throttle and not watching my airspeed close enough led to the stall and crash.

Before my next flight I'm going to obtain and/or make a set of checklists for pre-flight, cruising, pre-landing, etc. and actually use them. I'm going to spend as much time as I need to plan my flights, even if I run out of time to fly and have to put that off to the next day, I'm not going to be in such a rush to land that I don't take the time to verify the airport and runway and I'm not going to change my procedures or my plan mid-flight without completely thinking it through, even if that means circling the airport a few times before committing to the landing.

Lessons learned. January 27, 2010.