|
-
POSTING RULES

-
Donate yearly (please).
-
Advertise in here!
-
Today's Posts
|
Insert Pics
|

04-06-2011, 10:34 AM
|
 |
been here awhile
|
|
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: North Alabama
Posts: 4,301
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tonard Bales
I read a write up somewhere recently about a VFR only Private Pilot flying a newly purchased RV coast to coast solo. He describes the loss of a flight instrument, scud running, barely missing an antenna farm as well as flying "on top" for the first time. Do we really have to wonder how some accidents happen?
|
You have raised valid points and I don't know why your post was deleted from the other thread. Your observation is one that many of us can identify with because we have put ourselves in dangerous (stupid) situations....and gotten away with it. Fortunately most of us have learned from those experiences, matured as aviators, and are much less likely to repeat those lapses of knowledge and judgment.
I know in the early days of my RV traveling I made some decisions during xcounty flights that put me within an engine problem, moment of disorientation, or weather entrapment of becoming a statistic and fodder for one of those articles in the magazines. Fortunately, I managed through either skill or blind luck avoiding that flight being my last.
Your point was well made, I hope all of us can learn from it, especially the pilots who are just now beginning their exploration of the wonderful capabilities of our planes.
Last edited by Sam Buchanan : 04-06-2011 at 10:36 AM.
|

04-06-2011, 11:24 AM
|
 |
VAF Moderator / Line Boy
|
|
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Dayton, NV
Posts: 12,256
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sam Buchanan
I know in the early days of my RV traveling I made some decisions during xcounty flights that put me within an engine problem, moment of disorientation, or weather entrapment of becoming a statistic and fodder for one of those articles in the magazines. Fortunately, I managed through either skill or blind luck avoiding that flight being my last..
|
What's that old statement..."Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes form making bad judgments..."? Unfortunately, I have never found a way for people to push the edges of their judgment envelope without putting them right on the edge, and occasionally having them operate in the gray area where they might or might not fall over. You can tell a person "don't scud run in low visibility or you might run in to an uncharted tower", but until they experience the fear that comes from seeing a tower loom up when they weren't paying attention, it is hard to make that lesson stick.
I have spent decades being trained in all sorts of emergencies in simulations, and that works - it works very well. But most private aviators don't have that advantage, and learn out "in the real world". Lectures don't work, reading books doesn't work ("buy 'em books, send them to school, and they eat the covers...") - experience has to be gained somehow. Pushing the envelope with caution and an understanding of your retreat capabilities seems to be a good way to build experience.
Yup - I have been there on a long cross-country as an inexperienced VFR pilot (decades ago), learning the lessons that come wit getting out in the real world. Some of those experiences I would rather not repeat, but I sure am glad that I have the experience that came from being in those situation - because they keep me from wanting to go there again.
Bottom line - I don't berate a person for learning a few lessons the hard way. I don't write a letter to the editor of Flying every month because someone honestly admitted their trepidation, mistakes, and foibles in "I Learned about Flying From That". I applaud those who share the experiences that might make others take pause. Fundamentally, it is bad judgment that kills more people in aviation than anything else. Let's do a better job learning to make good judgments!
Paul
__________________
Paul F. Dye
Editor at Large - KITPLANES Magazine
RV-8 - N188PD - "Valkyrie"
RV-6 (By Marriage) - N164MS - "Mikey"
RV-3B - N13PL - "Tsamsiyu"
A&P, EAA Tech Counselor/Flight Advisor
Dayton Valley Airpark (A34)
http://Ironflight.com
|

04-06-2011, 12:48 PM
|
 |
|
|
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Oklahoma
Posts: 672
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironflight
What's that old statement..."Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes form making bad judgments..."? Unfortunately, I have never found a way for people to push the edges of their judgment envelope without putting them right on the edge, and occasionally having them operate in the gray area where they might or might not fall over. You can tell a person "don't scud run in low visibility or you might run in to an uncharted tower", but until they experience the fear that comes from seeing a tower loom up when they weren't paying attention, it is hard to make that lesson stick.
I have spent decades being trained in all sorts of emergencies in simulations, and that works - it works very well. But most private aviators don't have that advantage, and learn out "in the real world". Lectures don't work, reading books doesn't work ("buy 'em books, send them to school, and they eat the covers...") - experience has to be gained somehow. Pushing the envelope with caution and an understanding of your retreat capabilities seems to be a good way to build experience.
Yup - I have been there on a long cross-country as an inexperienced VFR pilot (decades ago), learning the lessons that come wit getting out in the real world. Some of those experiences I would rather not repeat, but I sure am glad that I have the experience that came from being in those situation - because they keep me from wanting to go there again.
Bottom line - I don't berate a person for learning a few lessons the hard way. I don't write a letter to the editor of Flying every month because someone honestly admitted their trepidation, mistakes, and foibles in "I Learned about Flying From That". I applaud those who share the experiences that might make others take pause. Fundamentally, it is bad judgment that kills more people in aviation than anything else. Let's do a better job learning to make good judgments!
Paul
|
Paul, that has been my experience as well. I agree with all your points. We need to widen our envelope at a very cautious pace.
I'm fairly convinced that one of the reasons I've survived my totally non professional flying hobby is that from about 1982 through 1996 I didn't feel like I could afford to rent often enough to stay current and safe. I quit flying and in the meantime I raised a family and worked at my career. This gave me time to develop a maturity and different outlook on life that I didn't even know I lacked.
I never gave up on avaition and I went for occasional flights with friends and read the magazines. One day I woke up and realized that I owned a nice boat and travel trailer and I was crashing R/C planes with frequency. I realized that " you know I could probably sell all this stuff and get into a flying club and be doing what I really want to do" and still have money for food.
By then I had learned a lot from flying R/C planes that no full size airplane instructor was capable of conveying to my pea sized brain. " Ahhh, so that's why that grouchy instructor said that an aft c.g. was dangerous", he's says while picking up his $600 worth of balsa wood splinters. Crashing those models and giving myself time to mature judgementally likely saved my bacon.
The person talked about in the coast to coast flight bared his soul and freely admitted he made mistakes. He had already learned the lesson. Publically berating him will only discourage him and others from opening up in the future. I was going to post a story about going to Monument Valley but now I'm not sure I want to. I made some mistakes and I've been flying a long time now.
Joe
__________________
Joe Schneider
RV-7, IO-360, BA Hartzell, N847CR
Flying since 2008
|

04-06-2011, 05:11 PM
|
|
|
|
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Granbury Texas
Posts: 1,136
|
|
Transition Training
As this thread has stated you cant fix stupid however each significant accident type should be addressed. This comment is about how to minimize accidents during the Phase 1 flight testing. The FAA rule that does not allow a passenger should be eliminated. I would suggest that a passenger should be allowed as long as that passenger has at least 100 hours in type. The passenger need not be a CFI. I also believe transition training in type prior to the first flight be required, something like five hours with a CFI. There are lots of new RV pilots that would fly most of their test period with a buddy who owns the same type if it were legal.
My 2 cents
Pat Stewart
|

04-06-2011, 06:39 PM
|
|
|
|
Join Date: May 2007
Location: Amityville, NY
Posts: 128
|
|
God is my Co-Pilot
"There is no substitute for actual experience".
"You can't learn to ride a bike by reading about it".
"Every once in a while you have to come back to the pits with just the steering wheel in your hand" - Mario Andretti
All of the above have the same meaning, that is, one needs to push the envelope to develop skills. Let's be honest, every flight presents a certain amount of risk. (I admit that I say a prayer before engine start up and my key fob has a religious "tone"). With that said, unlike Mario Andretti's race car, one of the wonderful qualities of most airplanes is they have dual controls. Why waste them? The value of a safety pilot cannot be overstated. Having another skilled aviator next to me always makes the flight safer and more enjoyable. At the very least I have another set of eyes looking for traffic. At best I have someone who can take over if I suffer a sudden illness or just want to "take a break". The majority of my cross country flights are with another pilot. It gives me a chance to fly under the hood or do some other airwork. If we land somewhere I welcome the opportunity to let my buddy fly from the left seat on the return trip while I enjoy seeing the sights. If I am ever fortunate enough to have the opportunity to fly my newly purchased bird cross country you can bet I will have a "second" co-pilot for the whole trip.
|

04-08-2011, 02:11 PM
|
 |
|
|
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: NorCal
Posts: 565
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by panhandler1956
I have not looked at the statistics so I can only guess where the accidents are occurring....
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironflight
...a series of articles by Ron Wantaja on the accident records of various popular lines of kit aircraft. He does a good job of laying the data out ....
|
I haven't read every post in this thread...so my thoughts might already be expressed here.
The two quotes above touch on one notion: before we think up solutions, shouldn't we understand the problem better? That is, we know What: that Experimental AB aircraft have a higher accident rate than certificated aircraft. Do we know Why? There are probably several significant reasons and a review of the NTSB reports should reveal the patterns. Sounds like Ron W. has done that or at least it is a good start.
Only after knowing the patterns of failure can we develop potential solutions to change the patterns.
Second, maybe it's time to develop some categories in between Certificated and Experimental. For instance, I don't consider myself a true experimenter. I'm closer to an assembler of a kit plane, and I find the closer I stick to the plans and instructions, the better my build is. Then you have the true experimenters who can build and modify a plans-built aircraft with confidence. Then you have those who hire someone to build their kit plane for them, they just want to fly it.
I would like to see the true experimenters left with as few restrictions as possible. The kit assemblers, like me, some more guidelines or restrictions. The hired guns, yet closer to LSA or certificated standards.
OK, that won't happen, or at least not soon. But maybe we should begin towards that? I know I'm not the first one to say this.
__________________
Ralph Finch
RV-9A QB-SA
Davis, CA
|

04-08-2011, 04:07 PM
|
|
|
|
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Lake Havasu City AZ
Posts: 2,393
|
|
categories
Looking at the FAA website under Experimental preliminaries for just the last ten days I found the following:
Gulfstream 650 fatal
Yak 52 fatal-airshow
T28 landed short of runway
There was a ground collision between a GP4 and a Bearhawk with minor damage
A gear up in a Glasair
The Lancair fatal
Most of the rest, 17 total, are what I describe as fringe airplanes, for lack of a better description. Rans, Honey Bee rotor, VP1 etc.
Question- is the administrator using Yak 52, Sukhoi, Gulfstream 650 etc to make a case against homebuilts?? I don't know the answer and wonder if anyone including the FAA knows.
IF THEY ARE then we need a number of new categories. If the FAA is using "fender benders" to make a case against homebuilts, then they are on a "witch hunt". The FAA has a number of ongoeing 'witch hunts", a solution in search of a problem if you will, in progress as we speak.
|

04-08-2011, 06:48 PM
|
 |
|
|
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Oklahoma
Posts: 672
|
|
I'm not sure about a witch hunt but I do believe it is not fair to lump all experimentals together. Case in point is the high fatality rate of the airshow pilots. How many of those are flying stock certified airplanes? Even the Extras and Edges are usually sporting hopped up engines. I'd wager these crashes skew the results towards the bad side.
I do think you can go back to the NTSB database and run an RV limited query and have enough information to scare ourselves silly. We've lost two hundred of our rank and file in 9 years and we think flying is safer than driving. We need to admit that we, or at least the majority of us, (including myself) are average pilots flying high performance airplanes and if we don't use good judgement we have a high likelyhood of taking ourselves and perhaps a friend or loved one out of this life early.
One point that I feel that I am in the minority on in this forum. I believe that we get so carried away with extolling the virtues of the RV series that we encourage very low time pilots to hop in them, get their license in them, and give the impression that they are mild mannered and easy to fly. Well kinda. Even the RV-9 though with all of its great low speed landing characteristics can get you in trouble in a hurry due to its astounding speed while flying cross country and into bad weather. Now the 12 is a different beast.
A Skyhawk or Cherokee gives you more time than the RV's unless you are smart enough to pull that "GO KNOB" back and slow down. Cross country training is in my estimation where most new pilots fall short. They just don't have enough of it to experience the different challenges that come up. They have to learn the hard way. I'd like to see people get 100 hours of low performance cross country before moving up.
Another problem I see is that the airplanes are so danged fun to fly that there is a nearly irrisistible urge to yank and bank, loop and roll, and do low level screaming passes. I am as guilty as the next guy to succumbing to this phenomenon. After all isn't that why we bought these things? To look cool and have fun?
I'm not trying to be a kill joy, I'm just trying to foster that little voice in everyone's head that might say, before I do this, maybe I'd better get more training or watch out for those low flying birds when I'm 200 mph 10 ft. off the deck or let's go up a couple thousand feet before we try this roll.
__________________
Joe Schneider
RV-7, IO-360, BA Hartzell, N847CR
Flying since 2008
|

04-08-2011, 08:24 PM
|
|
|
|
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Atlanta, GA
Posts: 4,218
|
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by Caveman
One point that I feel that I am in the minority on in this forum. I believe that we get so carried away with extolling the virtues of the RV series that we encourage very low time pilots to hop in them, get their license in them, and give the impression that they are mild mannered and easy to fly. Well kinda. Even the RV-9 though with all of its great low speed landing characteristics can get you in trouble in a hurry due to its astounding speed while flying cross country and into bad weather. Now the 12 is a different beast.
A Skyhawk or Cherokee gives you more time than the RV's unless you are smart enough to pull that "GO KNOB" back and slow down. Cross country training is in my estimation where most new pilots fall short. They just don't have enough of it to experience the different challenges that come up. They have to learn the hard way. I'd like to see people get 100 hours of low performance cross country before moving up.
|
I agree, you're in the minority! At least on this point.
IMO, the X/C speed of the RV is a huge safety benefit. It allows you to get a weather brief, check the radar, launch, and actually go a pretty good distance before the weather has enough time to change radically.
Also, the speed and altitude capabilities allow you to get up high and visually identify (and detour around) isolated thunderboomers on summer X/C's.
As far as these airplanes encouraging people to do dumb things like low altitude maneuvers. I agree. Buzzing over your buddy's cookout at 200 mph and 50' above roof height, then pulling up into a climbing roll is a heck of a temptation. One I've resisted for over 10 years...
__________________
Kyle Boatright
Marietta, GA
2001 RV-6 N46KB
2019(?) RV-10
|

04-08-2011, 08:32 PM
|
|
|
|
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: Lake Havasu City AZ
Posts: 2,393
|
|
accidents
Joe, I agree with most of what you're saying. The Yak 52 airshow accident was an Experimental EXIBITION category aircraft.
definitely not a homebuilt. The vast majority of Airshow aircraft are Experimental Exhibition. The Reno racers may be Experimental Exhibition or they may be Amateur Built.
I don't think the loss of 200 RV's out of 6000 plus is significant. Yes it would be nice if the accident rate were zero, but that is not going to happen.
Out of the first 1000 Bonanzas, 100 crashed. Most accidents were weather related.
Out of the first 100 Lears 10 crashed. Many of the Lear accidents were 200 knot piston pilots trying unsucessfully to fly a 450 knot jet. The airlines had similar problems in the early jet days.
Van has lost two airplanes that I can think of, one to weather, one to aerobatics.
|
Posting Rules
|
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts
HTML code is Off
|
|
|
All times are GMT -6. The time now is 12:42 AM.
|