Asking for trouble.

Practicing Emergency procedures always amuses me slightly. Although I suspect this is not the frame of mind you are meant to approach them in! The slightly bizarre thing about them is in effect we have to ask ATC for permission to have a practice emergency.  We are in very busy airspace so we need a certain degree of cooperation from both them and the other traffic around in order to slot in.  Sometimes we have a lesson where we brief for the emergencies we are going to cover but the traffic doesn’t allow for us to actually do it.

One lesson (where ATC nearly smashed me into something, ok that only narrows it down slightly ;) ) the poor controller sounded perilously close to losing it completely , we just didn’t have the heart to ask him for anything extra!

Comms failures amuse me the most because it calls for ATC to dust off the old signal lamp in order to sear my retinas with it. I seriously have this mental image of them muttering under their breath “where the hell did we put that thing, I know it’s here somewhere” before running a sleeve over the cobweb encrusted facia. I really don’t think that thing sees the light of day much, not in Class C airspace.

Engine failures used to be slightly surreal as well. It didn’t exactly come as a surprise when Bob pulled back the power because a minute earlier he’d requested a “practice Echo” from the tower. However I have noticed that last time he pulled the power back first then asked the tower.

Easier to ask for forgiveness than permission I guess!