The Oh-NO! Second...

[Kyle Boatright]

It occurs when you're driving down the road pulling a trailer loaded with airplane parts and realize that you didn't insert the pin that locks the trailer tongue to the hitch. Instead, you remember you got distracted, set the pin on the truck bumper and...

 

[Wanttaja]

Brand-new leather jacket for Christmas, zipper worked a bit rough. Grabbed a tube of what I thought was graphite....it was LockTite. Fortunately, stopped at the first blue bubble.

Ron Wanttaja

 

[lr27]

Not exactly an Oh No! moment, but I once got out of the car and discovered I had driven 10 miles or so with a heavy hand powered bench grinder sitting on the trunk lid.
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Once I was fixing a toilet valve. I had disconnected the inlet line and pushed the soft copper tubing to the side a couple of inches. This required very little force. Nevertheless, the 3/4 inch (I think) brass pipe that lead to it broke off. UPSTREAM OF THE SHUT OFF VALVE. Instant 3 foot fountain! I can laugh about it now...

 

[Pops]

I needed a bi-annual, went to a friends flight school for the bi-annual and he told me that go with him on a job of dropping ping-bong-balls over the main street in a small town for the merchants in the town. There were numbers on the balls for discounts and free prizes. After the drop we would do the bi-annual. On the first pass, we tried shoving balls thru the little side vent window of the Cherokee 140 and getting 500 balls dropped would take many passes down the street. So I told him to open the door and just dump the box of 500 balls out the door on the next pass. I knew about the placard on the door that says "DO NOT OPEN IN FLIGHT", but what does Piper know ? He opened the door and started to dump the balls out of the box and ALL HELL broke loose. First- about 100 balls went out the door and 400 were going up and down in the cabin like the lotto balls in the cage. Second- They had just done the 100 hr on the Cherokee-140 and didn't screw in the rear bulkhead cover behind the rear seats. It came forward and hit us in the back of the head. Then the instructor turned around to shove it off our heads and had his headset cord rapped around his arm and control yoke and jerked the control wheel back and the nose of the airplane went up. Then I slammed the control wheel forward and he hit the panel, while all of this was happening we was covered in 400 balls going up and down. While this was happening I learned why Piper had the placard. The door puts turbulence air over the fin shaking the airplane and blanks out part of the right stab and this requires full up elevator to keep the nose level below 90 mph. He tried shutting the door, can't do it, the air holds the door open about 1/3 of the way. So I flew the Cherokee to an airport about 5 miles away with full up elevator and the airplane shaking using the power to make the approach and land. I felt like one of the 3 stooges. We picked up all the balls in the cabin and put them back in the box and dropped them out the little side vent window and all was well.

Added -- Latter I found a ball in the cabin that we missed and keep it on my desk in the office to remind me to try not to do anything stupid.

 

[Rockiedog2]

There have been so many...I dunno where to start

 

[Jerry Lytle]

There have been so many...I dunno where to start

Me too, and so far I have survvied them.

 

[TFF]

All I can say is I was not at work that night!

 

[BobbyZ]

There have been so many...I dunno where to start

I wasnt quite sure where to start either but when I was younger there was almost always a Monday morning mishap as we called them.

Usually it was just something stupid like realizing that we forgot to put the plug in about halfway through a mile long No Wake zone.It wasnt the end of the world since most boats will siphon out the water if you can get them up to speed .But they throw a hell of a nasty wake with all that extra water on board.Sometimes we'd try and get back to the hoist without pissing everybody off.But most times we'd have to flog it wide open to keep from sinking someones boat and needless to say folks were never too pleased about 2 idiots blasting their docks with 4ft rollers from a wake.One of the neighbors was retired and used to bring us coffee's around 10-11 to BS about fishing etc eventually started to bring them early on Monday's to remind us not to forget any plugs because he got tired of his neighbors complaining lol.

Another time I was launching a 52 ft motor yacht and we were short handed so I launched it with the bow out for a change. Normally on something that big I'd drop it with the stern pointing out so the props where in deeper water and you could back it off the slings.But that day we were shorthanded and the tide was up so instead of hoisting it,blocking it and then resetting the slings I decided set her in bow first and then use the sling to push it out from the stern.At first everything was going as planned up until I started to lower the bow.I eased the lever to lower some and all hell broke loose and it essentially freewheeled away and there was nothing to do but watch.The boat fell bow first about 20 ft down and did a big nosedive. The only thing that kept it from becoming a total disaster was I had hooked the rear sling around the back corner of the keel because I had planned on sliding it forwards in the water. So when the front let loose it sort of flung the boat forwards and made her nose dive in pretty good.I had to check my shorts and after I made sure I still had all fingers and toes still attached did we realize what had happened.
All in all though we got really lucky and luckily it was a boat that was on consignment that already needed work.Other then a bent rudder post and a muddy water all over everything she was ok.

 

[Riggerrob]

A friend used to work for a funeral home. One customer asked them to spread his ashes in the sky, so they rented a Cherokee Six. Bone chips blasted all the paint off the left stabilator!

 

[don january]

One that sticks in my mind is, Was loading the Cessna Agwagon it was at idle I filled the hopper from the top and stepped down to replace hose and with out paying attention I stepped back up on the plane from the front from the main left gear(fuel truck was ahead), Grabbed the strut and commenced to add fuel. As i came off the bird I did it backward's from going up and stopped about 2 to 3 inches away from the prop. Only did it once but man never forgot:hammer:

 

[Victor Bravo]

I may have already related this story, forgive the repetition if appropriate:

One of my "oh-no!" moments was when one of the six spinner cone attach screws on my RV-3 started to slip and re-engage (in the old mostly stripped nut plate on the spinner backplate). I just found the spot where I could re-tighten it until it got snug (a few degrees before it went clunk and got loose again). Figured it would last long enough to make one flight.

The "oh-no moment" when I realized I might have made a mistake came 3 minutes after takeoff, when I saw a blue flash (spinner cone departing for points unknown). Just in case I did not get the message quite strongly enough, there was also a very loud bang (spinner impacting propeller blade, removing 25% of one blade).

With the little airplane shaking up and down rather violently, I'm proud to say that a very important strategic decision was reached in record time. The mags got shut off, and an otherwise uneventful off-field landing was made.

I keep that spinner backplate on the wall of my hangar as a reminder about haste, arrogance and stupidity in aviation. The propeller is mounted on the mantle above the fireplace in the living room, both as a conversation starter and as another reminder about arrogance... for any slow-learners in the room.

 

[Richard6]

Well not aviation related, but here goes anyway.

I owned and race a Formula car in SCCA. The procedure for getting onto the race track was to form up on what was called a "false grid". It's just an area where the car group together to get ready to go on the track.

As I pulled into the false grid area, I realized that I had forgotten to secure my helmet chin strap. Race helmets are expensive and in the formula car, there is some negative pressure in the cockpit. At high speed, the helmet could just be pulled of of my head. Luckily I noticed it in time and was able to secure it without delaying the cars behind me.

As similar story happened but with a little more excitement. Formula car steering wheels have a disconnect feature that is used to get in and out of the car, similar to what you may have seen on NASCAR. The steering will go on the shaft and allow you to steer without it being locked in. I was not aware that I had not locked the wheel in place and as I started to go out onto the track, as I pulled on the wheel some to get better positioned in my seat, the wheel came off the shaft. Well at this point I was only going down the pit lane so I slowed and put the wheel back on and made sure it was locked in.

Never happened again !

Richard

 

[Mad MAC]

The best one that comes to mind is a pilot I worked with, who demonstrated the emergency system to extend the landing gear on an F27 while instructing a new pilot. Forgot to switch back to the normal system (so gear locks didn't engage, am a bit hazy on the exact details), so time after they all went home, system pressure leaked down and gear slowly retracted, once the gear most of the way back up, emergency system then kicked in extending the gear. This happened several more times before it was found. Aircraft was a write off.

 

[Dana]

A friend used to work for a funeral home. One customer asked them to spread his ashes in the sky, so they rented a Cherokee Six. Bone chips blasted all the paint off the left stabilator!

There are so many stories of scattering ashes from planes, and I don't think any I've heard of ended well...

About a year ago it was a nice day but windy. My Fisher stalls at about 30mph so naturally I avoid windy days, but it was forecast to drop down to almost nothing in the afternoon. Figured I'd go up to the airport after lunch, see how it looked, and do a few minor things to the plane while seeing how the winds were going. By the time I finished puttering around and preflighting, the winds were a lot calmer with only the occasional sharp gust coming through, AWOS was calling something like 9 knots with peak gust 14, so I went ahead and took off. Got thrashed as soon as I was airborne, but I headed south to the shoreline where the air was smooth as silk in the sea breeze, and had a delightful cruise along the beach at 500' for an hour and a half or so hoping it would settle down as forecast before heading back to the airport, which on a hilltop about 10 miles inland.

When I was a few miles out, I switched to the AWOS and it was reporting 17 knots, peak gust 24 variable between straight down the runway and dead cross (that's the Oh s*** moment). Figured a wheel landing on the grass was my best bet, came down final with occasional full aileron deflection to keep the greasy side down, and just as I rounded out, a gust slammed me and I hit hard, hard enough that the plane wasn't sitting level on the taxi back to the hangar.

Only took a few weeks to get the repaired landing gear and lower wings back on the plane... I have a much healthier appreciation for my plane's wind limits now... :emb:

Dana

 

[Manticore]

When you start to drive home from the airport & the car accelerates towards the hangar wall & doesn't turn. Then you realise your brain is still in flight mode & you're trying to steer with your feet.

 

[AdrianS]

When you start to drive home from the airport & the car accelerates towards the hangar wall & doesn't turn. Then you realise your brain is still in flight mode & you're trying to steer with your feet.

Does step 2 involve pulling back on the steering wheel to try and jump the hangar?

 

[Manticore]

Does step 2 involve pulling back on the steering wheel to try and jump the hangar?

I heard of a spray pilot who did exactly that except it was at the airport gate. Trashed a brand new car. (Classed as 'airside' - insurance company wouldn't pay a penny.)

 

[Wanttaja]

Does step 2 involve pulling back on the steering wheel to try and jump the hangar?

Reminds me of the Bob Stevens cartoon. A soldier is guarding a road when a bunch of drunk pilots come by in a jeep and drive off a cliff.

The investigating board asks the guard if the guys in the jeep had said anything. "Sir," the private replies, "The last thing the driver said was, 'gear up'...."

Ron Wanttaja

 

[Floydr92]

I put 2 spoons of salt in my coffee yesterday thinking it was sugar. The look on my face when i took a gulp must have been priceless. Would make a good practical joke.

 

[PW_Plack]

This isn't mine personally, but too good not to share. I work for the US after-sales service branch of a major European prosthetics manufacturer.

We have an advanced, microprocessor-controlled prosthetic arm which retails just into six-figures. A patient recently got one provided by his insurance company, walked out to his car and - because he had only one arm - set the box on the roof while he opened the door and got in to drive home.

He didn't get far after starting to drive away before he heard the bump of the robotic arm, in its foam-padded cardboard carrying case, hitting the trunklid on its way to the pavement in the parking lot. That packaging normally would have spared the arm from suffering any damage.

That is, it would have saved it from damage had he not put the car in reverse and backed over it.

I wasn't there to hear any expletives, but I think the odds are good!