I had very little control of the plane. I felt like I was in a dust devil or some other type of turbulence.
Would this airport be safer without a control tower?
I’m very disappointed in how the Tower was not helpful in my situation. Even on a normal day, that controller seems overwhelmed and stressed out, spacing airplanes on 5+ mile finals, yelling at planes to widen the base leg to abnormal sizes, then when I experienced my problem, gives me instructions contrary to what I felt was the safest course of action and unhelpful overall.
Airplanes vs. helicopters
The improvement I am hoping this report will bring is more vigilance on behalf of the tower controllers at KFCM, as well as all the flight instructors and students. Even in a tower-controlled environment, operational errors are present with the saturation of flight training that occurs at this airport.
A gap in pattern protocol
Tower angrily informs me that I have cut in front of the above Cessna, who is also on downwind departure. I apologize and said that I was unaware of their position and presumed that I was far behind them.
A nearly deadly situation
While on final out of my peripheral a green orb entered. I couldn’t believe my eyes: A multi-engine plane was nearly right on top of me descending down.
Instructional flight ends when door flies off plane
When I turned to look the door latch was perpendicular to the door (open position) and the safety latch was engaged. I attempted to push the door latch to parallel to lock the door closed. Upon closing the latch the door disengaged and became removed from the airplane all within a second of closing the latch.
Skylane and helicopter have near miss in pattern
I’m not saying that I am a perfect pilot by any means but this type of complacency is what causes these type of issues.
Pilot flies even with known problem with alternator
When returning to the airport to drop off my passenger, the electrical system failed due to what seemed like low voltage.
Rejected takeoff practice ends in the grass
The airport was quiet in the early morning, so after the first rejected takeoff practice, with lots of runway remaining, we performed a second rejected takeoff without getting back to the beginning of the runway. Seeing that there’s still lots of runway remaining after the second rejected takeoff, we performed a third rejected takeoff, which was a big mistake.