This is an excerpt from a report made to the Aviation Safety Reporting System. The narrative is written by the pilot, rather than FAA or NTSB officials. To maintain anonymity, many details, such as aircraft model or airport, are often scrubbed from the reports.
I placed my small overnight bag and backpack on the rear seat in my aircraft and secured it with the seat belt. I then placed my helmet bag (with my flight helmet in it) on my backpack with the intention of securing it with the seat belt as well.
I must have gotten distracted and I forgot to secure the helmet bag prior to departing.
I taxied to and departed Runway XX at ZZZ. During my takeoff roll, about the time the tail came up, I felt or heard something and as soon as I broke ground I could feel a resistance when I tried to move the stick to the right.
I realized that my helmet bag had fallen to the floor in the rear cockpit and was either blocking the controls or binding in the exposed aileron cable/pulley.
After a couple tries I was able to free the bag and then held it on my lap for the remainder of the flight.
During my attempts to free the bag I drifted left of the runway by several hundred feet and was over the hangars at approximately 100 feet AGL when I corrected back to the right.
Due to the other traffic in the left pattern for Runway XX I opted to just continue to depart to the west and then northwest in the direction of my destination.
The rest of the flight went smoothly.
After some reflection I realize that there were probably some contributing factors to my failure to secure the bag. I had not slept well the two previous nights — some noise at the hotel kept waking me up, had spent two days in the sun at the air show, and had not eaten much the day this happened.
I was also in a hurry to get back to ZZZ1 in the daylight as I prefer not to fly my Aircraft X at night.
Primary Problem: Human Factors
ACN: 2030512
And maybe a small dose of “Get Homeitus”
lots of good reasons to not fly, glad it turned out ok…we always preflight the airplane, include the pilot as well
Consider yourself very lucky it wasn’t much worse. Fatigue in particular can cause us to make a series of bad decisions, hence the holes lining up in the Swiss Cheese Model. One of those bad decisions can take place PRIOR to even getting into the cockpit. The decision to fly in the first place.
Folks, chronic fatigue can be equivalent to drunkenness, without the more obvious signs, and can be a silent killer. Just keep that in mind and let’s all get plenty of rest no matter any unpleasant consequences.