Sean D Tucker and exiting an airplane...
I met Sean back in 1990, and in those days he was not well known on the airshow circuit. He was touring with his black Pitts S2A and his scant ground crew of one. This was at Front Range airport near Denver (Now "Spaceport".....
) and, I don't remember the circumstances, but he needed volunteers to be pole-holders for his ribbon cut. He did this triple cut at the time that was a little more complicated than his subsequent sequences. I was at ribbon #2 and got a grand view of his amazing talents as an airshow performer. After, he gave me an
IPU certificate (International Poleholders Union) "member and still standing"
signed by him and his crew of one, Tom Dygert, who he met giving rides years before. We got to talking after about his flying and his airplane. You can talk to people like that when they are a "nobody". No, he said: this was his third airplane. Back in 1979 he said he "pulled the wings off" of his Pitts S2 A and had to bail out. If you Google that, not much comes up except that he had to exit the airplane. There was another "mechanical incident" in 1984 and he lost another airplane. He thought it would end his aerobatic career with two crashes in 5 years, so took up competition aerobatics and, in 1988, won the U.S. National Advanced Aerobatic Champion. To overcome his fear of parachuting, he did over 150 jumps in a Skydiving School.
OK: That said, if you watch the video of his 2006 jump, he had
ALL KINDS OF TIME to figure out what to do to get out of his crippled airplane. He is an airshow performer and wears a parachute with the slim but
expected possibility that he is going to have to use it. Otherwise, he doesn't need to wear one. SO: he expects that eventually he may be getting out of the airplane. That is his mind set.
With all the time he had to think, he was still hit in the head by the single-piece canopy as it ejected. (And people wonder why I wear a helmet!) He still got tangled in his shoulder harness and still got jammed up in the flying wire on the tail. And survived.
Thoughts: If you don't have the experience of Sean D Tucker with getting out of airplanes and EXPECT that you are going to have to, wearing a parachute may be good for your piece of mind, but may not be a practical thing to have. And decreases your useful load.... And that's not considering a BRS.....
If you have a passenger wearing one, they need to be briefed that if they hear you say
EJECT! EJECT! EJECT! you are parting company with the airplane and here is what they can expect. Here is your ripcord. Once you have cleared the airplane, pull hard and long.
Seems like it is much better option to maintain your airplane to a high standard and practice.....
PRACTICE.....(more than once every two years!) engine out procedures and off-airport approaches to landing..... And to maybe review the recent turn-back articles about departure power failures.
We fly well-designed, excellent-performing aircraft. Maintaining piloting skills to match our airplanes seems like an excellent idea.....