With all due respect, the airfield I fly from has a bird hazzard that most of you guys would fall of your perch at, and do not tell me about deer.......we regularly have dozens of Kangaroo's to land around.
Cattle on farm strips...just another day in the office.
This thread talks about a bloke being "an ace". Sure its good to talk about the fact this happened and plenty of reasons why and why not, but folks refer back to my last post, home strip or not. This was in my opinion a dumb thing to do and we should all be here discussing better ways.....not back slapping and champagne drinking on the strengths of a superior flying act. I am sure that the PIC would privately agree in hindsight.
For those of you who think a beat up scares animals away, yep it sure does, and often by the time you return they are in the middle of the strip. Cattle seem to run off and stay off. Kangaroo's bouncing across in front of you at night is a much bigger menace than you can believe.
Doing night circuits at YRED Redcliffe one night in a BE24 (so its slow) you would think a few circuits would have shaken them all out of the way......Nope, bounced right across in front of me. The ones ay my field sit their and watch you, you land around them. Much safer.
A 160 knot low pass is not a windsock inspection.....its a Beat Up or Buzz Job at night!
Toolbuilder should be thanked for posting this as a reminder here is what he said............
Go ahead and tell me how dumb the "low approach" is... I'm in no mood to argue.
So my pasting of anyone is not directly at him, he learned the hard way and wants to share, its the rest that think it should be defended or he is a hero that worry me. A few of us put together
http://www.rvflightsafety.org/ and in doing so I did a lot of research. This incident lines up with a group of incidents that did not end as well, and that is the reason the FAA are doing what they are right now.
As for Gerry's comments, I have the benefit of knowing where he spent a lot of those thousands of hours.....PNG....and I for one can not find fault in the safety arguments of folk who flew commercial ops up there....and survived. It might be worth us all, myself included re-reading his words.
Rant over!
PS:
One more thing that folks may not realize, is that this is his own private airport, and not a public one.
Mike......that has absolutely ZIP to do with it, except that as he became more complacent the risk profile went through the roof, and his home strip is the perfect place for that to happen.
