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Moral of the Story is...
Maybe the moral of Rick Bell's story is "if it might stress the aircraft unnecessarily, is there another way of doing it?" I know, I know, we need occassionally to push the envelope a bit to make sure our skills remain sharp, but maybe there's a different way of doing it. In Rick's case, perhaps he could have set some aggressive PILOT goals, such as "touch down on the numbers at under 85 mph", knowing that such skill would yield a very short landing.
The matter was brought to light vividly in an incident exactly a week ago.
My family had gone to the Bahamas on the Friday after Thanksgiving with a friend's family in his twin AeroCommander. On Monday at 3 PM we boarded for the return trip to Miami, but a weak battery prevented the engines from starting. We got two car batteries and his external power cable and were succesful in starting with just barely enough time to make the 5 PM closing of Customs at TMB.
All seemed well in flight and we entered the special Customs identification squawk we got over the radio to penetrate the US ADIZ. En route, however, my friend decides to test the condition of the battery (which he doesn't need for landing because the gear is entirely hydraulic) by turning on an unneeded piece of equipment. Big mistake! We lost all electrical power, including GPS, radios, etc. We then do a reset and bring needed eqpt up without problems.
Within sight of the US, however, the TMB tower CALLS US wondering if we're on their frequency. When we say yes, they tell us we entered the ADIZ without the squawk, because our transponder is off. Sure enough, we look and it's turned to ALT but we see no interrogating flashes. So we recycle the transponder and get it back on.
You know how the story ends. On arrival at TMB, my friend was ordered to call the FAA and he's now in the midst of an investigation. All because he wanted to see the condition of the batteries.
Like light bulbs at home, which don't fail after they're on for a while, on airplanes I like to leave well enough alone.
Ernie
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