Warbird Information Exchange

The fast taxi is not a good idea. We did one in the C-123 years ago, and the thing got a wind gust, and started flying. Not a big deal, only the rudder was on a work bench in the hangar.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

While a fast taxi can be useful in trouble shooting, you should never do it in a aircraft that is not able to fly if there is a problem. To do a fast taxi in a aircraft that had a flight control surface removed was beyond stupid.

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Matt Gunsch, A&P, IA, Warbird maint and restorations
Jack, You have Debauched my sloth !!!!!!
We tried voting with the Ballot box, When do we start voting from the Ammo box, and am I allowed only one vote ?
Check out the Ercoupe Discussion Group on facebook

There was never any intent on going airborne. The pilot's seat slid out of position at the same time a wind gust hit, and we were flying.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

Not a lot of interest in the US, sure, but in the UK over 78,000 hits in 10 days combining Flypast and PPrune forums.

...and not a word in the UK's national daily press that I am aware of.

PeterA

" sorry but my ASI was off and I felt it was safer to lift it off for a few seconds to bleed off speed rather than risk running out of runway...thats my story and im sticking to it!"

If you were going fast enough to generate lift, you were going too fast, and I will say it again, that was beyond stupid. Anytime you take a plane onto a runway to do a fast taxi, you should always be ready to fly, if not, you have no business being out there. When you are doing a fast taxi, you are not going fast enough to fly, but too fast to stop quickly.

When I was doing the taxi testing on my homebuilt, everytime I took the runway I was ready to fly if needed, there are times it is better to fly it off and sort it out in the air than try to keep it on the runway and hope that you can get it stopped in one piece.

I was testing a Cessna 172RG for a nose wheel shimmy and while doing a high speed taxi, the nose gear came unglued and started to shimmy so bad that I could not see the planel, I applied backpressure and lifted the nose off the ground and flew the plane to about 10 ft ,landed and kept the nose off the ground untill I was below the speed at which it shimmied.

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Matt Gunsch, A&P, IA, Warbird maint and restorations
Jack, You have Debauched my sloth !!!!!!
We tried voting with the Ballot box, When do we start voting from the Ammo box, and am I allowed only one vote ?
Check out the Ercoupe Discussion Group on facebook

I agree I was in the back, I believe Mr. Tallichet was at the controls.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

I agree with Matt.

A friend built an aerobatic biplane similar to a Pitts (Starduster, I think). He flew spam cans but had not been trained in anything this agile. He did a high speed taxi test for me and his family. A gust of wind caught him and lifted the plane just after he cut the throttle. He elected to fly it (the plane was fully airworthy) rather than risk running off the end of the runway.

As he was not trained in the type, he overcontrolled it, stalled and went straight in from about 125 feet near the end of the runway. Pulling him out of the plane was not fun. He did not survive.

Regards,

Art S.

Sobering account...

Early after I bought my 140 I was doing fast taxi to practice handling the tailwheel on two and one wheel. I did that on a 3800 ft runway not too far from my home field and really enjoyed it.

Then, I did it again once back on my home field (3000 ft). To my surprise, I had to brake hard to avoid overrunning the end of the runway ! Had not thought much about the 800 less feet before proceeding... Boy, did they made a BIG difference ! I sure learned a valuable lesson that day...

But of course, if I had to, simply taking off would not have been a problem in my case.

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Michel C
Thousands of a/c pics at Passion-Aviation

I can only imagine the surprise and/or fright of the crew ( specifically the pilot in command ) when they saw the ground abruptly depart.

Looking at the attitude of the bird in the pic ( and knowing how much runway is left ahead ) , the landing must have been pretty hard

Any vid(s) lying around of the incident ?

IF you look at the set of photos on Flickr the Victor flight looks quite scary. It looks like they they had trouble maintaining wings level...one pic shows drop to the right and the other shows it going to the left...rather dramatic. They are fortunate that it all ended well...

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Zane Adams
There I was at 20,000 ft, upside down and out of ammunition.
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Dave has flown with more missing parts than a rudder.I have very memorable flights with Dave back in the day.God surely watched over that guy.A charmed life indeed.

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Hang The Expense

Kind of reminds me of this old joke:

When I die, I wanna die like my grandpa who died peacefully in his sleep not screaming like all the passengers in the plane he was flying.

Regards,

Art S.

Oh heck yeah!!! And one of the greatest memorial services of all time too!!! That first flight in B-26 1464 on 18 April, 1992 surely was another memorable Tallichet flight- where things weren't quite working the way they should have been, but they still made it down anyway.

John