Sport Pilot Talk

Tim's right. We have retired airline captains on this board. They're just as welcome as the obviously more qualified Sport Pilots.

Scooper wrote:My first CFI told me that the two most useless things to a pilot are runway behind you and altitude above you. Trim for best glide speed, and if you're too high when approaching for landing, you can always slip to lose altitude (even if you don't have flaps) once you know you're going to make it to the runway or off-airport landing area.

We all know ( or at least should know ) these basic principles and required actions ... I think , in emergency, it really all comes down to personal factors that make certain people respond with calmness aduring high stress situations and others not - coupled with a lot of training ( muscle memory) of course, but ultimately, just like with military , special forces training or whatever - there is no guarantees and you won’t know how you gonna react until it happens - sure lots of training makes difference statistically but it is not everything.
I hope it never happens for me but if it does. I really hope I will not panic ...

Back when I was skydiving, I had a streamer. I pulled the reserve and it did not open. Just as I was about to cut-away the main chute, it opened. It was like everything was in slow motion and I could hear myself telling me what to do.

Well, so you got the answer - you perform well...

Never had that kind of moment yet, hopefully never will ..

In an emergency or other threatening situation, I almost always say, 'Oh S--t' or 'Well S--t' That even got into a transcript of an investigation one time

Listen to the CVR tapes of Cactus 1549 (the Hudson River landing). That's exactly what Jeff said, immediately after Sully said "birds!"

In the movie version, Eastwood had the actor say "oh damn!" To preserve the PG rating.