Canopy separation?

In light of some recent sad events and some pictures that I saw posted on news sites, it seems that there were some pics of a slider canopy seperate from other pieces that were photographed (like the vs and hs in the tree and grass). Cant find them at the moment but they are out there.

I have never seen that before and while all are busy inspecting tail feathers, (absolutely worth looking at), I wondered about canopy issues and if worth double checking that too as an idea.

I am not speculating on anything, just like so many on here (look at the number of views!) trying to look at things and make sense of it all and learn how best to keep safe and prevent any future issues.

Wish I could find those pics. I have never seen a canopy seperate from the fueselage before. Can that be discussed without speculating on anything?

This has been discussed here over the years many times,usually it has to do with Tip up canopies and the real estate the T handle takes up on and behind the Panel. The slider is another issue and a slider with the Muskie conversion yet another animal.

RickWoodall said:

I have never seen a canopy seperate from the fueselage before. Can that be discussed without speculating on anything?

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It is actually fairly common for an RV canopy to be ejected off of the fuselage in severe crash sequences.

That is why it is important to wait for information from the NTSB... I am sure they will be able to figure out whether the canopy was still in place when the crash occurred.

Wait for the NTSB?

As someone else requested, the info is already known about the location of the various parts. The media probably has it. What harm is there in just providing the relative locations/separation distances of the major parts?

Most importantly, the harm is that Doug doesn't want such things discussed on the site.

Ron Lee said:

Wait for the NTSB?

As someone else requested, the info is already known about the location of the various parts. The media probably has it. What harm is there in just providing the relative locations/separation distances of the major parts?

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I agree, i would love to see a chart with distances of parts from crash site.

And you're going to get those locations and distances from media reports?

No thanks. Unless you have somebody trusted on site to collect GPS coordinates, I'll wait for the NTSB.

The canopy seperated in flight. I went to the crash site with Tony's wife Amy and Tony's mother Pauleen. They put flowers down where Tony's body was found. I spoke to the NTSB and he told me that the "tail" came off in flight. Don't know which ones he was talking about or he meant all of them. The only thing at the crash site was a twisted up wing and an engine. Everything else was gone. Burned up. No fusealage at all. No cockpit. No seats. No dash or gauges. Nothing. I wish I had seen the damage Tony had done to his rudder. I don't know if the NTSB will come up with an answer with only limited pieces to look at. But if I owned an RV I'd be inspecting the tail section. I also riveted for Tony on his RV-8 on Mondays. I trained and worked with Tony at ACY. I assembled planes for a year with Gulfstream so he wanted me to do the riveting when he had a lot to do. He did the bucking.

Butch, thanks for the first hand info.

And, welcome to VAF