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Re: Plane down off Destin, FL- 2 aboard, search underway

Sat Jul 03, 2010 11:02 pm

If that's true, and I have no reason to doubt if from watching Twitter posts and more, then it's a real shame and needless tragedy. May God be merciful to the family, who must be devastated at this time.

Ryan

Re: Tim

Sun Jul 04, 2010 11:40 am

Hi Tim Savage. Please check your Private messages. Just sent you one.

Re: Plane down off Destin, FL- 2 aboard, search underway

Mon Jul 05, 2010 9:10 am

Since this happened, I have been quiet because I didn't know the facts, but since Tim Savage written his note on it I want to add something. In the 25 years I have run NATA the association has lost too many members to accidents of low altitude acro over land and water. I feel that these could have been prevented if the pilots had just flown higher. I know 20/20 hindsight is easy, but after 7 or 8 friends kill themselves, a normal person get a little p!$$ off that they do this.
Showing off is fun, but remember you can only tie the low altitude record.

Re: Plane down off Destin, FL- 2 aboard, search underway

Mon Jul 05, 2010 4:33 pm

Stoney wrote:Since this happened, I have been quiet because I didn't know the facts, but since Tim Savage written his note on it I want to add something. In the 25 years I have run NATA the association has lost too many members to accidents of low altitude acro over land and water. I feel that these could have been prevented if the pilots had just flown higher. I know 20/20 hindsight is easy, but after 7 or 8 friends kill themselves, a normal person get a little p!$$ off that they do this.
Showing off is fun, but remember you can only tie the low altitude record.


To Tim, I am sorry you had to witness that, it must have been incredibly difficult. I can empathize, as I have seen somebody die in a warbird in front of my own eyes. It is not something I want to ever see again. It grips you and affects you for weeks, even months. Even now, many years later, I still think about that nightmare from time to time. Thanks for your input Tim.

Stoney, why do you suppose that is? Do you think that is becoming a trend? I can understand it from a young person's perspective, as I too did stupid human tricks in an airplane at low level, but I was in my early 20's. Would I do that now - absolutely not! Sometimes I shudder to think about all the stupid things I did in my early aviation career. But this person was older - 57 years old. Usually when you get older you tend to make more mature and conservative flying decisions. It's the same rationale that insurance companies use for insuring their male motorists. The MOST expensive auto insurance is for males, under the age of 25. They figure that by that age, they have already "sewed their wild oats" with driving immaturely and also have more experience. The same parallel could be said here with flying.

I have done low-level aerobatics before, but as a passenger, with my pilot being a highly experienced crop duster pilot who knew what he was doing and was intimately aware of where the ground was. Even then, with all my confidence in him, looking straight down at the ground at 500' AGL with the nose 90 degrees nose low, is not exactly comforting. I guess I just don't understand. I've done aerobatics low, and high, and to me they are much more fun up at altitude. It just gives you so much more buffer in case something goes wrong.

Back to the original question. Stoney, do you think there is not enough institutional emphasis on NOT accomplishing low-level aerobatics in the T-6? Do you think that all the successful T-6 aerobatic demo acts in the past, have "lulled" T-6 operators into a false sense of security, making them think the T-6 is very well suited for the low-level environment, even in "inexperienced" hands?

This is not meant to be critical of the pilot, but I'm just trying to figure out what would motivate somebody to do something like this? Typically speaking, I would hazard a guess that your average T-6 pilot would NOT be a student pilot with low hours - quite the contrary. I can understand this accident if it happened to a 22 year old who was new to the flying experience, but not to a 58 year old experienced pilot. Hence, my inability to comprehend why this would happen.

Comments?

Re: Plane down off Destin, FL- 2 aboard, search underway

Mon Jul 05, 2010 9:33 pm

We had a very good freind out here who was part of our T-6 formation group.
He was a real wild child and you just knew it was a question of when not if with
him. I went up with him once and was truly uncomfortable the entire time. One
of our group found out I went up with him and said he'ds beat the snot outa me
if I ever flew with him again!! Needless to say he went in with a pax in his 6 doing a
impromto low level acro show at a private strip. Stoney should know whom I am talking about!

Re: Plane down off Destin, FL- 2 aboard, search underway

Mon Jul 05, 2010 11:11 pm

I talked to Tim Mc after Even crashed and thought him got the message from that. You just never know what's got in someones head when they F it up. Tim ever said that the FAA was all over the Destin T-6 guys and they were cooling it.
I too have done some really stupid things in my 43 years of flying and sometimes wonder why I'm still here, just dumb luck! When I was a kid, (may still be) I, like most think we're bullet proof.

We (NATA) alway have a safety talk at our formation clinics, but we don't do acro at them.

Yes, Jack I hangar with him for over a year and my insurance agent was in the back seat, nice guy, but didn't want to listen.

Maybe that's it, some folks listen, but don't hear. Sad, but true.

Re: Plane down off Destin, FL- 2 aboard, search underway

Tue Jul 06, 2010 7:38 am

Sorry to hear of another accident with lives lost. Tim, you have my sympathy, what a terrible situation. I appreciate your posting for our insight.

As Stoney's essentially said, please can everyone be careful out there. One year everyone's going to come back safe. We haven't had that year yet, let's keep trying.

Re: Plane down off Destin, FL- 2 aboard, search underway

Thu Jul 08, 2010 12:58 am

FYI: A news station in Florida posted a video of the underwater recovery efforts here:

http://www.wjhg.com/news/headlines/97994429.html?ref=429

Re: Plane down off Destin, FL- 2 aboard, search underway

Thu Jul 08, 2010 1:21 am

Preliminary NTSB report:

http://ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20 ... 5308&key=1

Re: Plane down off Destin, FL- 2 aboard, search underway

Sat Jul 10, 2010 10:54 pm

I once spent a few minutes chatting with a very nice young man about the Corsair he had flown in to the Shafter airshow. As we talked, he pointed to the plane that was performing for the show. The young man told me, "see how hard he is pulling? He is leaving no room for error. If he did 90% of his pull at 300 feet and eased down the other 10%, no one here would know the difference except a few of the pilots." The man was clearly distressed at what he considered taking a big risk for no reason. He told me it was just a matter of time before the risk caught up with this guy.

Well, he was right, but the irony is that the young man was taken from us long before the performer we were watching. The young man was Rick Brickert and we were watching Jimmy Franklin perform a very daring, albeit certainly exciting, airshow act.

The moral of the story is that low level acro is risky, and so is flying in general. So far this year, we have seen a totally avoidable Mustang wreck, at least two avoidable T-6 wrecks and one that is just unexplainable. How many of us have attended NWOC how many times and listened to Doug Rozendahl's sobering lectures, and a year later some of the guys sitting with us are no longer here? The simple answer is, we have a habit of thinking, "it can't happen to me." People don't like that answer, but that is the truth. Well folks, it can. And it does.

Re: Plane down off Destin, FL- 2 aboard, search underway

Sun Jul 11, 2010 6:49 am

RobC wrote:The simple answer is, we have a habit of thinking, "it can't happen to me." People don't like that answer, but that is the truth. Well folks, it can. And it does.


This is pretty much the long and the short of it.

It's the *reason* why there are safety programs out there -- to reinforce this point, and to make it spur pilots into changing what they do when in the cockpit.

Unfortunately, as we've discussed many times here on WIX (and Doug's safety briefs cover it, too) the makeup of the community of warbird owners/operators makes actual internalization of such a safety culture very difficult.
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