I hope that old man got the tractor beam out of commission, or...

[cjsmith]

...this is gonna be a real short flight.

I hadn't flown in a couple months, so I was a bit nervous to begin with. I followed the preflight and startup checklists meticulously. Times like this are exactly what the checklists are for; they make sure we catch things when we otherwise might not. Out in the runup area I paused for a few moments to do one last evaluation of my emotional state. Was I truly prepared to be pilot in command of an airplane or should I bring it back in? I decided that I was still making sane decisions and that I wasn't too nervous to do the runup.

I flicked the key off BOTH to L -- on my way to R, but I never got there -- and the engine instantly started coughing and sputtering so badly I thought it would quit altogether. Back to BOTH it went! I have never seen a plane fail a mag check so spectacularly. It wasn't an RPM drop just a bit outside tolerances; the plane was shuddering with the roughness of it.

I tried all the tricks. Lean it out and run it at high RPM for a while. Try again. Run it lean for a loooong while and try one more time. Same result. I felt rather fortunate that during these trials I always moved quickly enough back to BOTH that I didn't have to restart the engine.

I made the right decision -- the only decision. That plane was going nowhere.

So there I was, hanging from the prop first in line at the 13 runup area (upper right corner), with five airplanes lined up behind me, in a non-airworthy aircraft. Tee-riffic. I had to use the runway ("no delay") to taxi my sorry self back outta there.

0.4 hours in the logbook. Better luck next weekend!

Comments

[sunnydale47.livejournal.com]

What an incredibly beautiful place to fly out of! (Other than the fact that it's built on filled-in wetlands ... but if they were going to fill them to build something, at least it was for a GA airport!)

Well, look at it this way, CJ -- if that engine was going to get flaky, better on the ground than after you took off!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I adore nearby Half Moon Bay airport - the views up the rugged coastline are just spectacular. I sat on the departure end of that runway once and just soaked up the view, until my instructor asked "Are you going to do anything with this airplane?" :-)

Absolutely, better on the ground than later. That poor thing doesn't fly enough.