Cape Town Flying Club Enews 15 May

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From the front desk
Safety Meeting 31 May
Club Social Pics
ATC/Met flipping day

Aircarft Accidents and Incidents
From a new contract pilot
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Dates to diarise

Date	Event/Course
31 May	Safety Meeting: CRM
11 May	Aviators Evening at FAYP
10 June	ATC/Met Flipping Day

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From the front desk

A simulator DVD which was to be used to update the 2nd simulator was donated to the club, this has gone missing from reception. If it has been taken by mistake we would appreciate it if it could be returned immediately.

Due to some problems with the computers over the last 3 weeks the administration is behind schedule. As a result the accounts for end April have not yet been emailed, this will be done by next week. However, if you know you owe money please feel free to pay.

We are sure you have noticed that Hilda is at the club on a Saturday. She is desperately trying to keep on top of things and was hoping that if she gave up a day of her weekend to do this it would help. Unfortunately / fortunately everyone loves Hilda and likes to say hi to her. PLEASE she will not be offended if you IGNORE HER on a Saturday in fact she would appreciate it. So if you have any queries talk to the duty pilot that is what they are there for.
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Safety Meeting 31 May 18:00

(Members are reminded that you need to attend a minimum of 2 safety briefings per year.)

There will be a safety meeting at CTFC on Thursday 31 May at 18:00 for 18:30.
The guest speaker will be SAA training captain Gavin Mckellar, who will talk to us about CRM.

Gavin has over 10 000 accident free flying hours. After 10 years flying jets in the South African Air Force, Gavin joined South African Airways and is presently a Captain on the Boeing 737-800.
He has held aviation safety positions in the SAAF and SAA such as Squadron Safety Officer and Short-Range Accident Prevention Advisor for SAA. He was the chairman of ALPA-SA Accident Analysis Committee and has worked in Aviation Safety, Accident Prevention, Crew Resource Management Training, Checking and Auditing, Flight Safety Programme Management and Incident and Accident Investigation for the last 18 years.

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Club Social pics

Frank Moody has uploaded pictures from the past few years onto his webiste. These pictures came from his camera which normally floated around tino as many hads as possible.

Check out the pics on: http://www.mosfear.co.za/ctfcsocial.html

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ATC Flip Day 10 June --> G Pinnock

A while back, a number of Cape Town clubs met at CTFC to take our local ATC's for a flip (for many, their first time in a "little" plane).

This year, we would like to invite them into the skies again, and we will be extending the invitation to the Met office and ATNS (thereby ensuring good weather and no orbits!)

If you would like to volunteer to donate and fly some flying time, or be involved in any way, please email me on garethpinnock@gmail.com .

We aim to take off at 10am, and after a short flip, come back to a braai and bar. We will be joined in this event by planes and aviators from the airfields around Cape Town. So even if you aren't able to get a aircraft (so far, the club 4 seaters are unbooked....) come join for a social!

If rain stops play, the social will still happen...the wonders of an indoor braai!

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Incidents and Accidents 14 of 20: Fun with pictures --> Danny Buitendag

“Uh Oh! Let me have another look at that Weight and Balance Sheet.”

















(The Korean Air MD11 suffered an unloading incident at the freight terminal at Sydney Airport. A 4x4 vehicle was being unloaded from a forward section of the aircraft, leaving a very aft CG and causing the plane to settle gently onto its tail - leaving the nosewheel about 5 meters off the ground and trapping some freight workers in the aircraft.)

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Musings of a new contract pilot --> Bradley Gargan

(Brad trained at Good Hope and CTFC, and completed his com last year. He is now flying in the 208 in Namibia).

Just wanted to add a personal experience that I had and have witnessed with regard to the "preflight walkaround" thing that was in the CTFC newsletter last week.

I ALWAYS do a preflight walkaround even if im just taxying without pax by myself to the fuel bay. I'm kind of paranoid when it comes to fuel and oil caps not being properly tightend and once I've loaded my pax I run around checking that doors and hatches are closed and locked, Oil caps and fuel caps properly secured, Tow bars off and nothing obstructing the prop....

But on this particular day for some unknown reason I didn't check. Well, I checked before I taxied to the fuel bay but not after I had pulled the airy away for start up (they dont like us to start up right next to the fuel bay).
It was one of those days when you're a in a rush (error chain coming into effect here) and everyone's hyped up to go fly (like 7 C210s doing the same route).

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I started up and began taxying when a few colleagues started signalling me to shut down..... I couldnt believe my eyes when I got out....I was so disapointed with myself...yes, I forgot the stupid towbar on the nose wheel. Now I'm thinking what would have happend if the prop didn't clear the tow bar...

A few weeks prior to that I had to tell someone else to shutdown for the same reason so I didn't feel so bad. However it is SO EASY for something "small" to slip your mind - and lucky for me it didn't turn out as bad as it could have been.

It is SO EASY to become complacent. Pilots here have told me that its common for guys to forget to lower their gear for landing.

Another potentially dangerous situation is when you're flying with a whole group of other aircraft,becuase that is when you decide to go on chat frequency and you are yapping away to your mates. Besides the fact that you may be monitoring other frequencies it is amazing to find that you didn't change fuel tanks when you planned to. Maybe I speak for myself here (although I've confirmed this with other pilots) but when you are waffeling away on the radio all of a sudden you're not maintaining track, you start flying like a kook, forgetting to report at reporting points and the list goes on and on.

Something I feel I should maybe inform anyone looking to land at heavy gravel strips is the fact that your brakes all of a sudden are literally NON EXISTANT!!! The vibration somehow causes your brakes to become really spongy! When we fly into strips here we pump our brakes nice and hard on downwind and on touchdown and after selecting flaps up we start pumping the brakes the whole way down the runway. Literally every 3 - 5 seconds between pumps your brakes are gone. We had one incident here where a pilot did not know that and couldn't stop at the end of the runway and swerved to narrowly miss other aircraft and went into a tree....and yes they blamed the pilot....nice hey "pilot negligence"

Which is another thing I've learned here, no matter what your decision, whether right or wrong or if you saved yourself and pax from something life threatening, in the eyes of your passengers and employer you've always made a bad call....ALWAYS...."you should have done this!! why didn't you do that?"...this is normally because you have inconvenienced them in some way!