Lost another fellow pilot friend yesterday.

[tawadc95]

Re: Lost another fellow pilot friend yesterday.

Bill.
Your line about not flying as fast as the plane is so right on.
My dad who was my instructor and still teaches me alot has drummed into my head that if you cannot compute and navigate at the same pace as the plane you are in over your head and cruising for a bruising or worse.

My personal gut instinct for some of the tradegies we see now are from a slow shift in our minds away from a healthy fear of things that are bigger than us. It is the American way to conquer what stands in our way.Ie we invent the automobile and a snow storm stops us so we invent 4 wheel drive.
Icing on wings so we invent deicing. Slowly we have decided we are somewhat invincible and are losing the ability to make sound judgements.

Hurricane Katrina is a good example of what I mean ..it is bigger than us and nothing we invent will change that fact. Or the 2 guys who decided to go back country skiing this weekend in the Tahoe area when a large cold storm was having it's way up there...what is sound about that thought process!!

Of course it does not help when our dumb ass govt. props people up every time they make a decision that is life changing and grossly negligent and preserves their gene pool for the next generation of lunacy.

I don't know if I communicated this well or not I hope it makes some sense and doesn't sound like a nimrod babbling.

In conclusion, we have so many people and things thinking for us and such a busy lifestyle that we are drifting away in a false sense of security in the cockpit and forgetting to tell the troubles or busy schedules of the day to be QUIET SO WE CAN CONCENTRATE ON THE JOB AT HAND which is being responsible for my own actions and thoughts in an arena that demands that of us, the wonderful world of flight which very few in the history of mankind have been fortunate enough to enjoy like us. Man are we lucky !!!

[dadam]

Re: Lost another fellow pilot friend yesterday.

I have been skeptical of the cirrus since the first one came to our area, and within a very short period of time, the brs was deployed to save the owner, an eighty year old man, and his granddaughter from his inability to recover from an unusual flight attitude in turbulence over the mountains. (the words "flat spin" hit the press, but I am also skeptical of this, I think he was in way over his head).
Please don't get me wrong, I am happy these people are still alive, my issue is really the same as most in the thread, training/approving pilots. The whole marketing of this line of a/c is based around the BRS. So right from the start, the potential owner, who may in some small way appreciate that he is under experienced, feels comforted with this "get out of jail free" card (BRS). If I were cirrus, I would do everything in my power through training,design,systems, etc, to make sure that that BRS was not required, nor used much, AND that the stats showed the overall aircraft, from design and operation, was safe. The market has decided that is not the case. It is one of the many new aircraft available on the market that has not held its value on resale. Why?
On a selfish note, I really believe that these high incident rates are causing insurance rates to go up. One year of premiums on insurance on a cirrus will not pay for all the damage (even without fatalities) in a crash, and the result, all the rest of us pay for those claims over 25 years of tcraft flying.(with ever increasing rates).

Does the lancair, an even more high performance a/c have the same high incident rates, or the columbia?

respectfully ranting
D

[Chet Peek]

Re: Lost another fellow pilot friend yesterday.

Sorry Mike, yes it is close to home. My neighbor has one here in Norman. Guess we should stick to safe airplanes, Jennys and Taylorcrafts.

Chet

[VictorBravo]

Re: Lost another fellow pilot friend yesterday.

Sorry Mike, yes it is close to home. My neighbor has one here in Norman. Guess we should stick to safe airplanes, Jennys and Taylorcrafts.

Chet

When can I send you my deposit on one of the Jenny's, Chet? I hear you're the only guy building them !

[whake]

Re: Lost another fellow pilot friend yesterday.

Greaty reading, I like this web page. I think they did a good job training in the navy during ww2. We went from a T-craft to a Stearman to a Vultee to an SNJ and then to the fleet SBDs over a period of eighteen months. Phase checkrides eliminated a lot of cadets whose apptitude was not quite there. On Handheld GPSs, we had a midair over the Everglades a couple of months ago at a resonably high altitude. The wreckage was spread over a large area. If the facts were known I would guess that two people had their head in the cockpit looking at the GPS.

[M Towsley]

Re: Lost another fellow pilot friend yesterday.

The NTSB preliminary report is now posted online regarding this incident. Sorry to hear about this Mike.

[Ragwing nut]

Re: Lost another fellow pilot friend yesterday.

The NTSB preliminary report is now posted online regarding this incident. Sorry to hear about this Mike.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...06X00142&key=1Doesn't tell much except that is went straight in. I have heard the chute opened right before impact. What is not in the report is that the Cirrus impacted inverted. Bonanzas will impact inverted with a ruddervator failure and go into a death spiral. My grandfather bought enough wrecks over the years to see a pattern. This is what I think people heard and thought it was engine trouble instead. The engine rotating in a uncontrollable spin and the noise coming and going. Preliminary report shows everything with the engine to be ok. It will be a long time before they release a final report I bet.

Mike