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  #61  
Old 11-17-2016, 09:21 PM
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DanH DanH is offline
 
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Touchy subject...

I don't think it reasonable to demand a redesign from Vans. The current door is satisfactory, given due care by the PIC. However, few things are so good that they cannot be improved.

Humor an example. My RV-8 has a one-piece tip-over canopy. I think it is superior to the stock slider. That doesn't mean the slider is wrong. Nor does it make the designer a heretic. It is just another way to meet a design requirement.

There is no reason to think a door design is any different. Should someone develop an alternative door, let's judge that actual design on merit when we see it.
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  #62  
Old 11-18-2016, 04:42 AM
vic syracuse vic syracuse is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain Avgas View Post
Avi8tor857 suggested that there could be good grounds for a redesign of the RV10 door. You strongly disagree and believe that adherence to a proper checklist would be sufficient. I think that both parties are surely entitled to their opinion.

However you are intimating in the post above that if Avi8tor857 and others continue to disagree with you then you will exercise your privilege as a moderator to close the thread. Some on VansAirforce may consider that to be an inappropriate intimidation of posters with an opposing view to your own.
Sorry you read it that way. I think there are lots of lessons that pilots can learn from accidents. And there's lots of experience on this forum from pilots who in a similar situation (reacting to an inflight emergency) and they survived. Getting them to share, as is happening, is very fruitful and productive. I don't think I even weighed in until the thread drifted to somewhat demanding an design change. I asked that the thread get back on track. Perhaps I should have said lets take the design change discusion to another thread?



Vic
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  #63  
Old 11-18-2016, 06:00 AM
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I'm curious about why this particular accident would have people thinking about a door redesign. I understand the impulse to look first to the equipment and design. Considering the hierarchy of safety engineering, which I may discuss in a separate post, it is not unreasonable to consider a design change or engineering control to minimize a risk.

However, I have seen very little discussion on a particular part of the preliminary accident report. The prelim report notes that the door that departed the accident airplane was found not to have the factory safety latch installed. Now, I do not wish to get involved in speculation before the final report is out, but if the factory design was not followed in construction, arguments that the design must change to improve safety must be scrutinized carefully.

Now, saying that the factory designed safety latch was not installed is not the same as saying that there was *NO* safety latch installed or that some other design of safety latch was not installed, and we should wait until the final report is issued to address those possibilities.
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  #64  
Old 11-18-2016, 07:20 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vic syracuse View Post
Perhaps I should have said lets take the design change discusion to another thread?



Vic
Yes.

Too many times we have had a thread get off the original topic and get locked down even though genuinely useful points were being discussed. Splitting topics is much preferable to simply locking it down, because participants are unlikely to continue a conversation in which they've already had their hand slapped.
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  #65  
Old 11-18-2016, 08:09 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Avi8tor857 View Post
Trying to design warning systems and adding extra latches is approaching the the problem from the wrong direction. You don't fix an safety problem by making it more complicated you fix it by making it simpler. The simplest solution would be one that made the door opening below maneuvering speed an non-event.
This is exactly what I have been thinking ever since the first report of a door departing, and it was only reinforced by the first time I saw the doors and the locking mechanism in person.
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  #66  
Old 11-18-2016, 09:01 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vic syracuse View Post
We will never know for sure, as the pilots are not with us anymore. But I would submit that "saving the plane" may not be what is actually going through their mind. As GA pilots most of us don't get the chance to go through rigorous training that instills in you how to react in a sudden emergency. Unless you do it multiple times so that it becomes habit to ignore the massive noisy interruption, most people's first instinct is to deal with the problem. It can be so overwhelming that the potential consequences don't even enter into the thought process until it is too late. It's a lot like sneaking up on someone and hollering at them when they least expect it. Only the coolest can look back at you without jumping and reacting.
How many of us have been driving with something sitting on the passenger seat or the dash or in the cupholder, and then as we sense it go sliding in a turn or hard braking we reached out to grab it without really thinking about it? All of us sitting here right now would agree that's a dumb thing to do, but we still do it. I did it one morning on the way to work, trying to catch the lunchbox flying off the seat while I went around a sharp curve. I saved the food but hit the curb and ripped open a tire . Fortunately I'd purchased a spare for my car and wasn't stranded in the dark, but that instinctive reach cost me $200 for a new tire--and a lot of embarassment. I can easily see how something like that can happen in an airplane, but with much worse consequences.

It's like reaching to catch that hot or very sharp item that just fell off the table, or the heavy metal plate that's falling over--you instinctively go to do it even though objectively it's a bad idea. You have to condition yourself not do it.

It's very easy to say "this is how you should respond in an emergency". It's much more difficult to actually do it when you're the one in the hot seat, if you haven't trained and practiced to overcome the instinctive reaction.
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  #67  
Old 11-18-2016, 11:03 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by David Paule View Post
Someone pointed out to me once that in this situation, there's a possibility that the first time, the pilot will latch the canopy. The second time, he'll unlatch it. The third time, he'll swear a bit and latch it.

The reason he'll unlatch it the second time is that he'll interpret that checklist item as "operate latch."

If he misses the third reading the canopy remains unlatched.

Perhaps for subsequent checklist items, it might be better to have the list read "Visually check canopy."

Dave
I'm assuming the pilot is flying HIS plane and HIS checklist and will know that "lock canopy" means check the canopy.

All words aside, the point is I have it in three different places on *my* checklist.

Selling it next week at 350 hours and was never confused by what my checklist meant.
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  #68  
Old 11-18-2016, 11:08 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BobTurner View Post
Yes. The "Save the Plane" mentality. It's very hard to accept bending metal on something you just spent 5 years of your life building. There have been at least 2 fatal RV-10 accidents where the airplane was stalled at low altitude, following a power loss. The pilots just could not bring themselves to accept the circumstances.
Whenever I read stories of successful emergency landings, the one sentence or phrase you almost always hear are "my training took over."

That seems to confirm the obvious solution to any worry about what will happen in an emergency: training. If only we put as much focus on it as we do some other aspects of building RVs.

In addition to flying the plane, there's another thought process that you must imprint on your mind BEFORE the emergency, to help you respond properly to it.

You must learn to tell yourself the moment an emergency occurs (but AFTEr "fly the plane" ) that the insurance company now owns your plane.

That will help you focus on the task at hand which is getting the plane on the ground and staying alive.
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  #69  
Old 11-18-2016, 01:09 PM
Avi8tor857 Avi8tor857 is offline
 
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Vic Syracuse I understood where you were coming from, I figured I would wait a while and post a new thread about the door design unrelated to a specific event since it wasn't the direction you wanted this thread to go. I really want to build a 10 but the door design is a risk I can't accept so I haven't ordered the kit yet. There are things you can't change and you protect yourself with a check list, there are things you can redesign to make your check list shorter reducing your workload.

I'm not saying any changes to the door would of changed the outcome of this accident, I took great care to avoid the specific accident and intended not to conjecture about the actual cause. Any accident is caused by a chain of events, any safety discussion should identify the links and remove as many as possible.

Quote:
Originally Posted by 1001001 View Post
I'm curious about why this particular accident would have people thinking about a door redesign. I understand the impulse to look first to the equipment and design. Considering the hierarchy of safety engineering, which I may discuss in a separate post, it is not unreasonable to consider a design change or engineering control to minimize a risk.

For me -- everyone that owns a 10 is weary of the door, so much so you get the "I don't even let my passengers close the door" statements. Given this weariness of the door you are that much more likely to try to protect the door if it did open. I just can't imagine that wasn't a factor in the decisions made. The Door separating if opened has been discussed often and if you google RV10 issues it is usually one of the top hits. If nothing else this weariness has to effect your enjoyment of the plane.
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  #70  
Old 11-18-2016, 01:40 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Avi8tor857 View Post
The Door separating if opened has been discussed often and if you google RV10 issues it is usually one of the top hits. If nothing else this weariness has to effect your enjoyment of the plane.

The door issue has not affected my enjoyment of my airplane one bit. I agree, and will tell anyone that asks, that the door design is one of the very, very, few design weaknesses on the airplane. I go back to Carl Froelichs post #4 at the beginning of this thread. Have the discipline to follow his 5 item door checklist every time you operate the airplane, and your risk of having a door emergency is very low. Of course, the discipline to do everything "right" every time is what we are all supposed to be striving for. We all get away with a bit of complacency at one time or another, but the risk goes up, and sometimes it bites us. I used to fly for a living and saw this and experienced it first hand, more than once. Running through a checklist dozens of times, or hundreds of times, or thousands of times and being disciplined enough to really "check" each item, every time, is the hard part of flying. I believe that is true whether it is the simplest memorized checklist on a light airplane or a long and complex written/electronic checklist on a modern jet.
This is the same discipline we strive for in our pre-flight planning, our pre-flight inspection, our Condition Inspections, our in-flight decision making, etc. It's not easy and there is no such thing as a perfect flight.

Now hopping off my soapbox.
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