One sunny afternoon in Irving, TX, I scheduled a crosscountry flight and reserved a plane.  I did everything the way you are supposed to do, not the way it was done at the Old Red Baron flying Club (See my first post.).  I called the Flight Service Station (FSS) and got the weather for my flight.  I was going to fly to Oak Grove Airport and then on to Waco and back to Greater Southwest Airport (GSW).  FSS indicated the weather was good, so I topped off the tanks and headed for Oak Grove which was south west of GSW.  As I flew along, I noticed it was getting a bit dark to the west of me.  The further I flew, the darker it got and the more concerned I became.  I landed at Oak Grove and had the FBO sign my logbook and then decided to call FSS again.  I asked the operator if the weather had changed since I filed my flight plan.  Indeed it had he said and further indicated there were thunder storms in the area.  I asked if I could bake it back.  He asked where I was returning and when I said GSW, he said you can make that but you couldn't make Meacham (An airport on the west side of Fort Worth.)  I amended my flight plan and headed back.  It got darker and darker and I saw flashes of lightning off to the west.  At this point, I was getting scared.  I began flying the needle. An aircraft has an instrument called a VOR receiver.  As it happened, there was a VOR transmitter at the end of the GSW runway so all I had to do was keep the needle centered and it would take me right to the end of the runway.

Well, it continued to get darker with more flashes of lightning and I had just about decided to set down at one of the many airstrips in the area and wait the storm.  I looked ahead just about then and saw the big Eiffel Tower structure at Six Flags Over Texas.  I knew this to be 3 miles from the end of the runway.  I immediately called the tower and received clearance for a straight-in approach.  I made one of my best landings ever and taxied to the school tiedown area.  I got the aircraft tied down and ran for the building.  It started raining before I got inside and I got drenched.  It rained for 3 days.  My instructor told me how proud he was that I had sense enough to recognize a potentially bad situation and return.  Sense indeed!  that was good old fashioned fear.

This didn't happen to me but it did happen to a good friend of mine.  He was beginning a training flight out of Addison Airport in Dallas.  He was cleared to takeoff by the tower and began his takeoff roll.  All of a sudden he hears this loud banging on the fuselage on the right side of the aircraft.  A quick glance indicated the engine was functioning well, but he decided discretion might be the better part of valor so he pulled off the runway at the next intersection.  He checked the fuel, shook the wing up and down..nothing jumped out at him.  He then did a walk-around of the aircraft and saw the problem.  When the right side door was closed, the seatbelt was left dangling and the door closed (They don't fit as tightly as does a car door.) leaving a portion of the belt outside and thus banging against the fuselage as speed increased.  Steve told me that he opened the door and slipped the belt inside and closed the door.  Rather than admit the problem to the tower, he called ground control and asked permission to taxi to the FBO.  He decided to forego his flying that day rather than suffer the embarrassment of admitting the problem.

What does this have to do with models you ask?  Well, nothing but it does have something to do with flying.