Fail-safe

Despite not being in the mood to fly this morning, I went over to aviation bright and early and got a plane all ready to go to New Mexico. The duty pilot checked over my planning and gave me the okay to fly, so I got in my plane and started it up. I noticed that my fuel pressure gauge was bobbing back and forth, but I figured it was just the plane getting itself awake and situated. I took off, turned to my heading, and began my climb up to 9,500 feet. One thousand feet above the ground, I switched off my electric fuel pump, per procedure, since the engine-driven pump would be operating just fine on its own by them. When I finally got up to 9,500 feet, I noticed that my fuel pressure was on the low end of the green arc, which isn't too terribly rare in the Cherokees, so I switched my electric pump back on to boost me back up to a wide margin of safety. Things were good for a few more minutes, until I noticed that my fuel pressure had bled back down to where it had been before I turned on my electric fuel pump. Before this morning, that was something I'd never seen before. Usually, turning the electric pump back on solves the problem and everything is ducky. I flipped the pump switch off, then flipped it back on again, and my pressure spiked back up to normal... and then bled back down again. It was at that point that I did a 180 and headed back home. After the plane is started and running, the electric fuel pump is more or less just a backup for the engine-driven pump. I probably could have made it to Silver City and Deming and back without any difficulty. But my fuel pressure with the engine-driven pump was already lower than I really like it to be, and it was looking very possible that I wouldn't have any options if the pressure dropped below the green arc. No fuel pressure equals no fuel to the engine. When my engine is starved of fuel, my airplane is magically transformed into a glider. Now, it's true that a glider can make a perfectly safe landing just like an airplane, but that's assuming the glider has someplace to land. Since I happened to be flying over the southern slopes of the Chiricahua Mountains when my fuel pressure dropped, it would have been quite a feat to find a safe spot upon which to set down my glider. I took a little flak from an instructor who happened to be in his office when I got back to the school, about my decision to abort the flight. Then I called my instructor and explained my situation, and she praised my decision and assured me it was the right thing to do, which boosted my confidence quite a bit. I guess the lesson here is that being a good pilot is more a matter of decision-making than actually handling the controls of a plane.