The taxi of shame
Had to abort my takeoff today when I got no airspeed indication.
Called “aborting” exited the runway and taxied back to the holding point. Tower asks if I need assistance as I’m clearing the runway - I say no all good (because I know why I had no airspeed indication).
Taxied to the runup point, shut down, removed the pitot cover, started up again, taxied to the holding point, report ready and tower asks “IBM, what was the reason for the abort and confirm ops normal”
I was hoping I got away with it but no… “Twr, ops normal reason for the abort was a pitot cover not removed”. Awkward.
Funny thing is I have one of those covers designed to blow off at a certain speed but it had been rotated so it wasn’t effective.
Remember your last “sanity check” walk round folks. Will save you red faces….
Edit to add: on further consideration it seems prudent to NOT use the current pitot cover for the exact reason that it may well become FOD for the next pilot. In my mind I had it that if it came off you’d suddenly see airspeed and then notify the tower - but this may not happen like this - I will no longer use this particular cover. This is the one btw