Your "oh sh*t" moments

[fable2omg]

I want to dedicate this thread to storytelling, so feel free to write your own, real or simulated. I got two stories of mine I'd like to tell you, one that just recently happened and pushed me into making this thread.

 

It's been years since I had a real "oh sh*t!" moment, in simulators I started flying spaceplanes years ago back as a teenager, so I had all those adventures back then when I'd re-enter the atmosphere and suddenly my hull would jump from 800°C to 2000°C because I'd have 1° of angle too steep :lol:

And in real life, my only true "oh sh*t" moment was back in flight school when I was in short final and some old man supposedly experienced jumped on the runway opposite to me making only a single radio communication, saying he was taking-off (instead of saying he's on taxiway, positioned, etc, since there's no tower)

So of course, the young student I was with 20 hours in the logbook, still struggling to keep a steady RPM on landing, who has made all his radio comms therefore thinking nothing could go wrong, just got his bubble burst. I was about 5 seconds from landing so I didn't even look at the end of the runway, I just applied full power and buzzed my flight school calling on the radio that I was going around on the opposite side.

Everything went well afterwards, the old man never apologized and my flight instructor apparently filed a report against him for recklessness.

 

So of course after so many complicated situations I'd never think my new toy, DCS MiG-21 would give me these chills again, boy was I wrong.

I just came back from a flight with less than 1km of visibility.

Now, I usually set the weather to my local one just so that if it's a sunny day outside it'll be sunny inside, and it's not usually foggy where I live, so I have 20 hours logged in the MiG-21bis without any true IFR experience.

In my personalized checklist I usually set my R-ALT warning to 200m with the SAU activated, my mission was to try to push my limits by intercepting an enemy at 350km which I successfully completed, then I came back with enough fuel for a go-around just in case, on approach I followed a 1km-alt-10km-distance rule from idon'tknowwhere, and about ~15km from the runway I glanced at my altimeter thinking I was looking at 2,500m, so I kept going down, and down, ~10km pushed the nose down because I thought I was too high, the ILS still wasn't kicking in and I wanted to be at a steady 1000mAGL to focus on heading, then suddenly I heard a loud

BEEEEEEEEEEEP

I thought, pfft there's no way I'm that low, I don't see the ground outside why would it be beeping? It's probably malfunctioning.

Then, it kicked in.

:fear: :fear: :fear:

I'M ABOUT TO HIT THE GROUND, SAU kicks on and pulls up, trim, check distance, still good, ILS kicks in, flaps down, on track, speed too high, throttling down, gears down, outer beacon, too far right, too slow, throttle 90%, gears neutral, turns, inner beacon with a 30° bank right, still blinded by the fog, ILS says too high, finally sees runway, speed too high, comes for the landing, bleeds speed, touchdown, SPS off, nose up, chute out, then cut, flaps up, exiting on the taxiway,

then finally calming down.

Holy moley, it's been a while since I've felt that rush!

 

So that was my story. I almost crashed but the SAU saved me, so whoever in the Mikoyan-Gurevich bureau that thought to add this, thank you.

I know it's a long text but hey, I mean even I enjoy reading stories if I can relate to them and we're all flying in the MiG-21 here right?

Well, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed.

[JaNk0]

Hey Fable

Enjoyable reading this evening!

[Watari]

oh sh*t moment ...

 

nr.1:

i made myself a "training" mission where i was hunted from 3 SU-27 ´s in the mountains north of kobuleti on a nice november morning.

every second i dont had my nose down in 1 feet over the dirt i had a lock warning :-O

For sure i had a lot of "oh sh*t" moments, but anyway its always a lot of fun to out-manouver modern birds. :-)))

 

nr.2

the last seconds of your gun run when you realize that you will be dust in a moment

:D

[F l a n k e r]

LOL, thanks, you made me wanna to try an IFR landing on the MiG-21bis (I have not tried it yet ... too much busy trying the new Su-27).

[outlawal2]

Real life OH SH*T moment:

 

About 10 hours into helicopter training and performing pick-ups and set-downs.. My instructor was on the cyclic and I had the collective and the pedals.. The idea being that I could get the feel of the torque turning the helicopter and could focus on just the anti-torque pedals and the relation between pulling pitch and compensating with the pedals. Sounds like a good idea right?

 

Sooo, you focus on the horizon and slowly pull the collective while watching your manifold pressure and as the helicopter gets light on it's skids it will start to rotate due to the torque.. So you put in a little pedal to counteract the torque and continue pulling the collective and eventually the helicopter will lift itself off the ground and you can experiment with the pedals noting how pushing the pedals one way or the other will affect the helicopter by causing it to lift or drop a few feet depending on which pedals you are pressing..

 

So we do this 4 or 5 times no issues and I am quite comfortable.. The next time, I focus on the horizon, slowly pull pitch... The helicopter starts to turn and I put in some pedal... Pull more pitch and as the helicopter lifts off the ground... And veers hard-left and slaps the left-hand skid on the ground and rolls over on it's side.. As the main body of the helicopter rolls left I can feel the rotor hit the ground repeatedly until the blades split apart and embed a large piece of rotor in the back of the cabin just to the right of my head.. Bang, Bang, Bang, BANG. The force of the rotors hitting the ground smashes the front canopy. Amazingly, I have a nasty cut to my face but no other injuries at all.. My instructor was less lucky and since I was resting on top of him he had a broken collarbone.. He manages to get unbuckled and picks his way out of the helicopter through the broken front canopy... I am stuck in my belts and cannot get free.. (About this time I notice fuel spilling everywhere and reach over and turn the fuel petcock off.. A futile attempt as the fuel is actually spilling out of the tank filler cap due to the fact that it is laying on it's side..)

 

My instructor finally pulled out a knife and cut my seatbelts and I am able to carefully climb thru the broken windshiled and walk away..

 

To this day I faithfully carry a Gerber folding knife ALWAYS..

 

And we never really did determine what exactly happened to cause the dynamic rollover...

 

NOT recommended..

[Flagrum]

...

and I am able to carefully climb thru the broken windshiled and walk away.

...

According to some, it was a good landing! :megalol:

 

Heh, nasty, but glad both of you made it out okay...ish!

 

Hrm, but if you never really figgured out what exactly went wrong ... that would disturb me ...

[outlawal2]

Yeah we had them check out the equipment and they found nothing out of the ordinary and I went on training for another 20 hours or so but had an illness in the family and at the same time they increased training costs by $100 Per flight HOUR... Since I was already paying stupid, ridiculous money at $325 a flight hour, I couldn't justify $425 an hour so I had to walk away...

 

My instructor went on to fly for PHI in the gulf and has flown some pretty kick-ass machines.. Several of the Bell models and the S72 as well. He has since transferred back and is running a medflight in Wisconsin flying a Eurocopter I believe...

 

We talk periodically (well TEXT actually) and neither one of us really knows what happened that day..

[Grim_Smiles]

Really only have moments from two real life experiences, most of my "oh sh*t" moments in DCS pretty much ended in a fireball.

 

Only one DCS moment really stands out right now, was the time I setup a head-to-head with my P-51 and the AI 190. Had zoomed in too far on the mission editor and didn't realize that what I thought was 100 ft away was actually about 5-10 ft head-on. I hit the fly button to start the sim and was greeted instantly by a loud BANG through my headset that made me jolt as the 190 struck me with his wing. I managed to land without engine and gear (though not without shearing a few pieces off, but walked away) but the 190 was not so lucky. Recorded it but never got around to uploading it.

 

My two real life moments weren't anything as serious as what happened to outlaw (glad you and your instructor walked away from that).

 

I was a student pilot in high school and flew a Cessna 152. I imagine I looked rather comical in it since even in HS I was a tall guy (my instructor would joke that at least I had an armrest for the throttle as my legs were shoved up against the instrument panel). My instructor had some quirks that was for sure, such as yanking the throttle to idle at bad times to teach me to quit taking my hand off the throttle. During one flight he had me land at a grass field. I was used to a runway that DC-10s took off from so this really tiny strip felt like asking me to land on a carrier at night. At the very start of the runway was woods and at the very end was more woods and power lines marked with large orange balls.

 

I didn't much care for getting close to the trees, so I would stay high and then do a dive bomber approach to land once I passed them. My instructor said he could see I was "tree shy" and that he was going to show me just how close I could come to them without hitting them. We take off and as he comes in for a landing I look down through the trees and start getting a bit worried. I immediately hear WAPWAPWAPWAP against the landing gear and scraping that continues down the belly of the plane all the way to the tail. Without a word I turn and stare at my instructor. He doesn't look at me, just laughs and says "Well that was a bit too close but you get the point". We checked the plane to be sure there wasn't any damage before taking off again. Needless to say he did not cure my "tree shyness" that day.

 

The second incident I didn't find out about until I landed and we were filling out my logbook for the day (think this was a month or two after the tree incident). Two guys who had just landed (think some Piper model) had walked into the break room and said "Hey you guys flew the Cessna that landed a little while ago?" As we had been the only Cessna in the air at the time we said "Yeah that was probably us".

They respond with "Sorry about flying over top of you that close, we didn't see you until we were right on top of you". Both my instructor and I give clueless glances at each other and my instructor says "Well... we didn't see you either. You sure it was us?"

Them: "Aren't you the Cessna with the tail number blah blah?"

Me: "Yeah that's us"

Them: "Well that would be you we flew over"

Instructor: "We had no idea"

So basically we had someone accidentally buzz over top of us and never even saw them, glad they at least saw us eventually.

Edited November 25, 2014 by TooTall

[Home Fries]

I have a few of those moments from operational flying, but the coolest moment wasn't an emergency. It was flying the instrument approach to Old Hong Kong International (Kai Tak) before Hong Kong was turned over to the PRC.

 

You can see that you hold over a VOR until cleared for approach, then you fly 270 for 7 DME and make a fairly tight right turn to Sha Lo Wan NDB. Then you turn to a "final" of 088. This all had to be done timely and precisely, because to the north, west and south of this image was PRC airspace, and you would constantly hear British controllers advising planes to change heading now to avoid said airspace.

 

Once you're established on glideslope on 088, the fun just begins. :) You'll notice that despite being on a 088 heading, the runway is not 09, but rather 13, so a heading of 135. This means that once we made decision height, we would have to turn 47 degrees to the right in order to land! The reason for the 088 heading is to keep us from running into the tall buildings on either side of the approach corridor; this would be a hairy approach in IMC conditions. It was hairy enough in VMC as it was; I remember looking out the right side and seeing a lady on her balcony hanging her clothes out to dry. I was looking level, not down!

 

So anyway, once you make the perfect ILS approach when you reach decision height you should see "Checkerboard Hill", otherwise known as the "turn, dummy" cue!

 

You still make a 47 degree turn while low, slow and dirty, then touch down. While everything went according to plan, it was still one of those moments!

Edited November 25, 2014 by Home Fries

[WildBillKelsoe]

My oh shit moment is when I use gun on ground columns and try pulling below 4 G's to recover very low, only to eat dirt and die. Reason: stations have loads on them that break off.

[Fri13]

One of the first Mig-21Bis flights and I wanted just to fly around on my first ever training missions easiest variants (second mission ever done) that has only the Vulcans as most dangerous AA units.

 

I spent about 10 minutes flying around at 800-1000m altitude just with max speed I could pull to see how she handles.

 

After consuming all the fuel and landing hard (blowing other tire, my first landing) I hit escape and went to playback the track.

 

While I watched the track in 2x speed I started to wonder how there were so many units, as I didn't remember I had added so many of those.

Then I started to see missiles fly at me, noticed that the full area was full (dozen) of SAM's from Chaparral to Hawks and I was just flying around dodging all the missiles without any kind idea that I had mistakenly loaded the level 3 variant of the training map.

 

In that I felt how important it would be to not have RWR turned Off from the start and I got lots of trust to high speed low-level flight for dodging all kind missiles by just doing nice slight S-curves horizontally only.

Now I believe myself to do even simple rocket attacks toward almost any AA units just by using speed as my advantage and simply hit'n'run tactics.

[Lennoxonnell]

my "oh shit" moment

 

http://www.twitch.tv/lennoxonnell/c/6780763

[Eihort]

"Okay, rolling for take off.... hey, where'd my canopy go?"

 

Forgot to lock it.

[Udat]

Real life OH SH*T moment:

 

About 10 hours into helicopter training and performing pick-ups and set-downs.. My instructor was on the cyclic and I had the collective and the pedals.. The idea being that I could get the feel of the torque turning the helicopter and could focus on just the anti-torque pedals and the relation between pulling pitch and compensating with the pedals. Sounds like a good idea right?

 

Sooo, you focus on the horizon and slowly pull the collective while watching your manifold pressure and as the helicopter gets light on it's skids it will start to rotate due to the torque.. So you put in a little pedal to counteract the torque and continue pulling the collective and eventually the helicopter will lift itself off the ground and you can experiment with the pedals noting how pushing the pedals one way or the other will affect the helicopter by causing it to lift or drop a few feet depending on which pedals you are pressing..

 

So we do this 4 or 5 times no issues and I am quite comfortable.. The next time, I focus on the horizon, slowly pull pitch... The helicopter starts to turn and I put in some pedal... Pull more pitch and as the helicopter lifts off the ground... And veers hard-left and slaps the left-hand skid on the ground and rolls over on it's side.. As the main body of the helicopter rolls left I can feel the rotor hit the ground repeatedly until the blades split apart and embed a large piece of rotor in the back of the cabin just to the right of my head.. Bang, Bang, Bang, BANG. The force of the rotors hitting the ground smashes the front canopy. Amazingly, I have a nasty cut to my face but no other injuries at all.. My instructor was less lucky and since I was resting on top of him he had a broken collarbone.. He manages to get unbuckled and picks his way out of the helicopter through the broken front canopy... I am stuck in my belts and cannot get free.. (About this time I notice fuel spilling everywhere and reach over and turn the fuel petcock off.. A futile attempt as the fuel is actually spilling out of the tank filler cap due to the fact that it is laying on it's side..)

 

My instructor finally pulled out a knife and cut my seatbelts and I am able to carefully climb thru the broken windshiled and walk away..

 

To this day I faithfully carry a Gerber folding knife ALWAYS..

 

And we never really did determine what exactly happened to cause the dynamic rollover...

 

NOT recommended..

 

Holy crap!

 

I am a helicopter student myself, and that sounds terrifying!

 

Sorry to hear you had to discontinue your training. Can I ask what helicopter you trained on?

 

I'm glad to say that I haven't had any real life oh shit moments to do with flying yet.. In lockon there have been a couple; like killing 3 enemy fighters and sinking an FFG in my Su-33 only to realize on final for the Kuznetzow that I never even tried landing on a carrier before, and susequently crashing into its...behind.

[TickJackson]

Hi Everyone,

 

I like these stories, and will add my "pucker up moments" both real and simulated.

 

My first pucker moment happened surprisingly after I landed on the nicest day I have ever flown.

It was September 11, 2001. I was 20 miles away from NYC doing BAI maneuvers for my instrument rating. All of a sudden I hear on the tower frequency at FRG that everything is getting shut down. My instructor and I head back in oblivious to what was going on. And didn't find out what exactly happened until we got back inside. We were one of the last flights back into FRG and were shut down for three months.

 

In DCS, I was in multiplayer trying to learn the systems on the A-10C. An F15 come hotdogging in and tries a staffing run, I ask him if he wants some practice, I hit the deck and he goes after me. Since I am just learning the A10, I was unable to pickle off an AIM-9 which I had locked on him. Shortly there after I became frustrated and lawn darted.

 

-TickJackson

Edited June 5, 2015 by TickJackson

[Nevyn]

I have a quick oh shit story, I bought dcs spend a bit of time on it and when I looked around, oh shit, my wife had divorced me, 4 years earlier, hehe

[Pikey]

Only "oh sh1t" moments airborne involve holding patterns over Heathrow, but in game I found one on my drive. A bit pantomime...

Pilot to friend: Let's test lethal range on the Sidewinders now...

Missile: And if you take a look through the rear of your canopy I can show you my Rmax1

[outlawal2]

Holy crap!

 

I am a helicopter student myself, and that sounds terrifying!

 

Sorry to hear you had to discontinue your training. Can I ask what helicopter you trained on?

 

I'm glad to say that I haven't had any real life oh shit moments to do with flying yet.. In lockon there have been a couple; like killing 3 enemy fighters and sinking an FFG in my Su-33 only to realize on final for the Kuznetzow that I never even tried landing on a carrier before, and susequently crashing into its...behind.

 

My training was in an R22 for the Lion's share (and the subsequent rollover as well) and I have a few hours in an R44 which interestingly enough is a much easier bird to fly..

[Catastrophy]

Get module

 

Do training missions

 

Feel all awesome

 

Start plane

 

Taxi to runway

 

Full throttle

 

Break gear

 

Manage to take off

 

Experience extreme drag

 

Play with canopy handle

 

Canopy flies off

 

It's raining

[Dudikoff]

My moment happens every time I visit the LN forums and see that the other two planes are yet to be made known ;) (Sorry for being OT)

[wingnut]

Back in the late 80's i was working on my Commercial multi IFR and me and another student where practicing IFR approaches. He was flying with a hood on ( basically a ball cap with a extra long lid so you can't see outside) I was the lookout.

 

We were beacon outbound at 3000 AGL for an ILS (clear sunny day) I see this pin point of light straight ahead:huh:. Talking tip of a needle size light. Takes me 1-2 seconds to process. My partner is flying along :music_whistling:, when I grab the controls and roll full deflection right to what seems to 90 degrees of bank and pull. Buddy says what the FU...... and looks up out the left window and not more that 20' away you see the belly of a twin Beech Travelaire, panel lines, rivets oil stains and hear the roar of his engines.:shocking:

 

I roll wings level and give him back control, he's not wearing the hood anymore. We fly along straight and level for what seems to be forever, not more than 10 minutes. Both of us not talking and have an awful sick feeling to our stomach. Finally I ask "you all done" he says "yup" "so go back and land then" "oh ya"

 

That was my OH FUDGE moment! :drink:

[Sierra99]

LOL Just today a friend and I were hoping into fly for a short bit before I went to work...I now know exactly why in real life we do flight control checks prior to takeoff...

 

We started engines in our trusty F-15s and taxied to the runway. As we taxied I seemed like it was taking way too much rudder to turn even using the Nosewheel steering button on the Stick...AND my track IR wasnt centering. (That should have been a clue)

 

Get lined up on the runway...again complaining about the lack of Nosewheel steering authority and push it into burners for takeoff.

 

Lead: "Rotate"

Me: ??? (Why isnt nose coming up and the ground getting smaller?)

Me: Pull back on stick HARDER!... Nuttin...

Me: Oh *&^% I realize I have Zero Flight controls and I am now bombing down the runway at 250 KIAS and cant rotate...

 

Time for some Bold Face...

 

Me: "Two is aborting"

 

Throttles - Idle

Speedbrakes - Full

Brakes - Apply

 

(Oh look there is the end of the runway...)

 

Eject, Eject, Eject!