Pilot Short Story | Ident the Detent 

I was riding backseat in a T-34 in a formation of T-6 Texans and an L-29. My pilot needed to switch tanks. He did so and a few seconds later, the engine stumbled. He left the formation to diagnose the issue. Turns out, he missed the detent. It happens to the best of us.

The most important lesson is; dont adapt to bad designs. Fix that crap switch asap. The last thing anyone needs is a “you have to have special knowledge to operate this simple device that should be self explanatory.”.

"Undo what you have just done" is so fantastic.

I have "in the detent" in my callout and checklist because I am prone to this as well. Nice job Cayla.

Thanks for the video. Glad you and your fellow pilot figured it out. Permit me to share what I teach my students: Before you touch the fuel selector, wait until you are in position to land at a suitable airport in case the process fails. Can't find the detent, handle breaks off in your hand, valve gets stuck part way through (this happened to me in a Piper Apache some years back, VERY scary), etc. To be even more thorough, put yourself in position glide to a power off landing at a suitable airport, know the weather at the airport (ATIS, ASOS, whatever), have the appropriate frequency already dialed in (CTAF, Tower, etc), and make sure that if the engine quits it will be a no-brainer to aviate, navigate, communicate, and glide it down safely. Then and only then, begin the tank switching process. When done, wait at least 30-60 seconds before you actually trust it since a bubble of water may be close behind the initial fuel flow. Thanks again for the video!

These fuel switches are designed to be felt not looked at. That may work for someone with 5000 hours in that particular aircraft, but the design is so terrible it should be illegal in my opinion.

So a young girl gets her PPL, her bf is also a pilot, on top of that the whole family is flying airplanes, and they fly together to Oshkosh with three old warbirds in a formation. As a European I'm always amazed by how mainstream the general aviation is in the US. Here being a pilot is something exotic and few people have their own planes, we usually rent from the club.

Thanks for sharing your story Kayla! Blue skies!

Undo the last thing you did is an important lesson to teach to all beginner pilots.

This always kinda spooked me for reasons l never could quite verbalize. This video demonstrated the exact situation that always rattled around in the back of my subconscious.

I was taking a flight lesson from my dad (He was a CFI) in a J-3 Cub. I was 15 or 16 at the time. This lesson was going to be engine failure procedures. The pre-flight lesson involved going over the things you needed to do if the engine quit, this included checking the position of the throttle (Leading cause of engine "failure" is inadvertent throttle retardation) Se we were flying along and the throttle was mounted such it was in my field of vision when I was looking out the window. I saw the throttle pull back and my dad said, "Your engine has failed. Deal with it." Trying to me a smart ass I pushed the nose down to establish best glide, then reached up and advanced the throttle bank to the correct power setting. My dad was delighted because that was exactly what he intended for me. He said most of his student pilots never did that. I did eventually (years and years later) admit I didn't know he wanted me to do that. I was being a smart ass. He said he deliberately pointed out the leading cause of engine failure for a reason. Most of his students didn't make that connection. After that he said we were going to simulate engine failures so I should consider the throttle to be set at the correct setting, not pulled to idle. Several times we simulated an engine failure. I'd find a road or a farmers field to line up on then make an approach, add climb power and climb away before actually landing. Once I chose a field that had high tension power cables right where I'd be making my landing. He told me how to spot those (you can't see the wires, only the towers). We finally (after too short a flight as usual) headed back to Nut Tree. I entered the pattern then rolled out on final right where I should have been, but I was a bit high. Dad stated to point this out but before he suggested I perform a slip to get down a bit quicker the engine went quiet. this was not a simulated engine failure, he'd shut the engine off. This seemed insane to me, and way out of character for my dad. I said "Your controls" but he said, "No, just land. You have enough altitude we'll make the runway. We did and I performed my first dead stick. I had just enough energy to pull off the runway, but now we were stuck. The plane had no radio and no starter. Dad would have to get out and hand start the engine. He didn't. He hadn't shut the engine off deliberately. It turned out some gunk had blocked the fuel filter. It had been a real engine failure! We had to push the plane back to it's parking spot to tie it down by hand.

Great lesson, thank you for sharing!

The best lessons learned are the hard ones. Good job correcting what you did.

Current and Qualified. Had you flown in the front seat before this flight? If not make sure you also know the emergency gear extension process, the back seater can't help with that either. By the way I presume the plane was modified because normally there is a fuel selector in the rear cockpit. Good Lesson Learned. I did the same thing at Oshkosh......Right Larry?

So, bad fuel selector design or just badly maintained/worn out? Either way sounds unairworthy to me in that configuration. The lesson here should be "do not fly until the problem is rectified". What's next, a mag switch where the label is off by one position? Feels like something should be done about it, at least fabricate a label that lines up the text with the detents.

This is what I think will happen every time I switch tanks in a PA-28, especially because the detents are more of an undefined mush than an actual click. But hey, good fuel pressure, good to go.

I dont get it. What happened actually? What detent means? Im not native speaker, Can some1 explain it to me?

It’s like an indention or notch or something?

What is the " detent"

Always undu the last thing you changed

I realize that mistaken rudder input was theorized but it occurs to me after watching this that such a “detent” issue may have been a contributing factor to the accident that took the life of John Denver. Either missing an existing detent or the lack of expected detent during a critical time could have serious consequences.

It's a good lesson, but let's not over dramatize it. A new, inexperienced pilot in High Performance military aircraft makes a mistake at the controls that was easily rectified. The same sort of thing that happens to new drivers who accidentally shift to reverse and instantly correct their mistake. Both learned something important- Pay Attention!

Oshkosh Kadosh

If the event happened in a T-34, why does the video show a T-6?

lucky husband

dumb fuel selector design

why are there so many people that don't know what a detent is or how to google what it is? 🤷‍♂