Landing
on San Marcos Blvd.
I took my mom up for a flight on her birthday and we went to over fly the area where I was planning to lead a flight of aircraft for a memorial pass the following day. I was entering a user waypoint in my hand held GPS. The GPS has a touch screen and the keypad input (for the user waypoint name) is rather small. I was steadying my hand on the panel and my hand accidentally bumped the 'cold start' switch. That switch doubles the injector duration and is used for starting in extremely cold temperatures. But it was too much fuel for the engine to keep me aloft (just an occasional sputter). I was only at about 1100 AGL (because of cloud cover higher up) at the time so my emergency procedures only got as far as: turn toward airport, switch fuel tank, aux fuel pump, verify fuel pressure, primary switches turned on... shit, time to find a place to land this thing... call mayday, choose best spot, fly under traffic signal and onto road.
Mom was cool and collected the whole time. We were very lucky to find a gap in traffic. I found a place where the cars were waiting for a traffic light. Also, I was really glad to have a plane as nimble as an RV. I don't think I could have done it in a Bonanza. (of course, a Bonanza doesn't have a 'cold start switch' either)
It was not until after all the commotion, on my drive back to OKB, that I finally had a few minutes to think about what could have been the cause... then I really felt stupid. If only my emergency procedures went one more step and I would have tried tweaking the mixture I could have saved myself a lot of embarrassment. If I were to have flipped the switch back off, the engine would have run perfectly. But when it is time to fly/land the plane, that is what you have to do.
Sure enough, upon return to the plane I discovered the cold start switch flipped. I checked out everything else, ran fine. Later in the afternoon I flew it home to Oceanside from Palomar. I am so very grateful that extreme embarrassment is all I suffer. Thanks for all the support from the GA community.
