Aircraft

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.

The pilot of Aircraft Y did nothing to deconflict from a very near collision. Instead, he aggravated this dangerous situation with both erroneous CTAF calls and his incorrect entry into the airport environment.

For some reason, when I got to 4,500 feet, I leveled off thinking it was an appropriate altitude. I remained on this heading for about five to 10 minutes when my ForeFlight-equipped iPad alerted me that it was overheating.

I didn’t realize I had fat fingered the radio frequency for the local practice area.

The bizarrely dangerous attitude on display by turning inside the short final of another plane intentionally created a very unsettling situation for myself and my safety pilot/student.

The specific mistake happened during my preflight. I missed the fact that the fuel shutoff valve was closed. I believe this happened because I got complacent.

My passenger became sick in the air and was throwing up into a cup. I wanted to land ASAP to give them a chance to recover.

We believe the cause of this incident was human error by the inaction of the technician to retrieve the missing nut. Despite previously loosening the nut and installing a new cable with a new nut, the technician either forgot to find the missing nut or did not hear it fall in the trim components.

We both had right rudder in all the way. Power was all the way to idle, and we were holding down the brakes as well, but the airplane kept going to the left. Once we knew there was no way of getting it back to centerline we braced for impact.