Page 24 - Dear aviator...

Errors and mistakes

During one of my last navigation flights before my CPL flight test I was going from
my home base to a non-towered aerodrome about 60 miles to the west. As I was
approaching the field’s airspace I keyed in the frequency in order to let everyone in
the area know where I was and what I wanted to do. I made all my appropriate calls
and didn’t hear any replies or any other communications. I joined the circuit on
downwind (parallel and in the opposite direction to the runway) and by the time I
was turning on to final and lining myself up with the runway to land my
assumption was that there was no one else in the circuit at the aerodrome and I
could make my approach and landing at my leisure. However, all of a sudden I saw
an aircraft pull in from the taxiway and prepare to take off right in front of me. I
should have heard that aircraft announce its intention to taxi and to enter the
runway. I didn’t. A quick check of my frequency settings explained the mystery… I
had mistaken the frequency code by one digit and was not receiving the radio calls
made by the aircraft taxiing out nor by the other 2 aircraft in the circuit. I quickly
corrected the mistake and made a last-minute call saying that I was on short final
as soon as the other aircraft took off. I felt quite bad after that. It was a serious
mistake that could have caused some potential harm, one which I had not made on
other occasions. I spent some time thinking about why it had happened and it
came down to the fact that I had not done a proper pre-landing check. Lesson
learnt and now I double check my frequencies anytime I drop my eyes inside the
cockpit.
Does this mean I’m never going to make another mistake on my radio settings? Of
course not. As a student it is expected - and completely normal - that throughout
your training you will make some mistakes. Mistakes are the foundation upon
which we improve ourselves so they are not to be ashamed of. Teachers and
instructors will likely pick up on any mistakes made under their supervision.
Based on the type of mistake and the exercise that was being performed they will
either draw your attention to it or not and you can address it appropriately.
However, as learning pilots - but also as experienced pilots - we will make mistakes
under no one’s supervision, when we are flying on our own. What then? Well first of
all we have to be aware that a mistake was made: a missed non-towered aerodrome
call; letting our aircraft’s speed or altitude drop; forgetting to change a transponder
code… but after that comes the hard part, perhaps the hardest part of all: being
honest with yourself. You have to acknowledge the mistake, accept it as having
been your responsibility and take active steps towards resolving it. It takes a lot of
self-criticism to accept an error when we are on our own and no one has witnessed
it, but I find that these, precisely because of their somewhat personal nature, are
the errors that you can “cure” more effectively.

Resources and vintage books

Never be afraid to want to know more. During training I found that the books that
we were given to study theory had only one purpose… to get candidates to pass an
exam. And the books themselves did not pretend to be anything else: the foreword

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