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03-01-2013, 07:40 AM
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Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: Victoria, BC, Canada
Posts: 3,932
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ironflight
In my old job, we had a saying - "The first answer is ALWAYS wrong". And with very few exceptions, that was true.
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A very pertinent point to this discussion, however, is that in accident investigation it's generally a given that the earlier you get a statement from parties involved in an accident, the more accurate it will be. Not always possible, sadly, in aviation incidents.
Maybe this could work, moderators willing: a forum called "accident discussions", where a thread can be started with one or two posts that contain reports of the event, possibly the local news content. The thread could then be locked, until the NTSB report is released or some long time (6 months?) has passed. After that, anyone interested in discussing it could ask Doug to unlock the thread.
It might still degenerate quickly... 'Tis the nature of these discussions. And it would be a significant amount of work for Doug and the Moderators to manage. But getting the discussions all in one place might make it easier, and forcing the time delay might reduce emotional responses.
__________________
Rob Prior
1996 RV-6 "Tweety" C-FRBP (formerly N196RV)
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03-01-2013, 08:22 AM
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Moderator, Asst. Line Boy
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Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Flower Mound, TX
Posts: 1,473
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Speculation aka Deliberation
Quote:
Originally Posted by RV8R999
Agree the investigators conducting a mishap board should be insulated from and avoid the pull to speculate beyond the supporting facts...but the truth of the matter is all mishap reports end in speculation. Some are supported by more facts than others but all have a degree (most often significant) of speculation. i've chaired too many mishap boards, lost pilots i've trained and commanded over my nearly 30 years active duty Navy and not one mishap board, with 1000's of man-hours expended exhaustingly investigating, collecting and analyzing facts ended without a degree or speculation - not one. The NTSB reports are even worse.
Even if the speculation is off and unsupported, it has no way to truly harm anyone. If the NTSB is trolling VAF for information we have bigger problems. Nobody forces the folks involved in the mishap to read the posts either..
Keep the language civil and express your theory, even if it is whacked beyond belief, rest assured somebody smarter and better looking will quickly square you away!
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Ken,
Cheers and a hand salute to you and your service, and cheers to civility...thank you, Sir.
I agree with your observation, although I firmly believe military safety boards take it beyond mere speculation. Armed with the evidence, and supported with analysis, the safety board can now deliberate the causes. Conversely, only the safety board is in a position to deliberate: Everyone outside the safety board can only speculate...and they shouldn't.
Yes, the causes are not always apparent, which is why we allow stumped safety boards to use the "undeterminable/most likely due to" finding. I don't let them use that as a cop-out: They've got to do the research, and we don't spare funds for our mishap boards. However, if they've reached a stand-still on several possible causes, our safety investigation process allows the board president to declare, "The mishap fuel widget failed in the open position for an undeterminable reason, but most likely due to [this], [that], or [the other]". They must explain fully why each factor could have caused the event, and why it couldn't be ruled out. Then, each possible cause must have recommendations that would prevent it from occuring (procedures, modifications, replacement, etc). We do this to speed the investigative process while ensuring we've hopefully hit the target. I don't know NTSB rules well enough, but I don't think they have this option.
About those "whacked" theories? I pay attention to them most closely. Like Iron Paul said, we're not inventing a lot of new ways to crash airplanes. However, sometimes it's the "whacked" theories that get us closest to the truth.
__________________
Scroll
Sid "Scroll" Mayeux, Col, USAF (ret)
52F NW Regional/Aero Valley Airport, Roanoke TX (home of DR's Van Cave)
"KELLI GIRL" N260KM RV-7A tipper
Catch her on YouTube's "Because I Fly!" channel
Exemption waived.
Proud and grateful 2020 -=VAF=- Contributor
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03-01-2013, 02:10 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: Atlanta
Posts: 878
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I strongly disagree
Quote:
Originally Posted by David-aviator
There was a post about an hour ago suggesting this forum consider having a Beech style "crash talk" section on accidents.
DR diverted the message to a private discussion as it constituted a discussion on a rules change which is a private matter here, not a public one.
Unfortunately, I read Jim's message before it was scrubbed and believe it warrants a public response - not on the subject of a rules change - but on the notion that accident speculation can be a learning experience and is justification for the Beech "crash talk" opportunity.
This was my response to the message.
Jim,
I have to respond to your theory on what constitutes a learning experience with regard to accidents.
An accident is a real event involving real people. It is not a class room situation where rampant speculation can harm no one.
In the real world Joe Pilot crashes. Every arm chair, sometimes not nearly qualified, pilot with a computer has an opportunity to contribute to "crash talk" with a theory on what caused the accident. That can not be a learning experience - it is based on speculation, not facts. It may be fun but it is meaningless exercise. The root cause of any accident is determined on facts, not speculation. Only then can something be learned about the event.
What is most troublesome about "crash talk" is such speculation always effects a pilots reputation, many times unfairly, especially so when the facts are yet to be known.
A pilot's reputation is at stake, that trumps "crash talk" speculation. I am surprised such a forum exists, if it does, but then just about anything goes these days so what's new?
dd
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I read and participate in similar discussions on the cave and technical dive forums that I belong too. While sometimes the discussion descends into flame wars, and often the specific accident is not solved, the discussionst frequently identify highlight, and lay bare for discussion issues in equipment, practices, and personal approach to safety that is critical in helping others stay alive.
Letting others die to save an already deceased persons feeling is imnsho a bad choice.
__________________
RV-8 IO-360 (Bought)
RV-6 O-360 C/S (Sold)
Walkman aka Flame Out
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03-01-2013, 02:53 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Venice, Fl
Posts: 1,020
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Try Facebook
Speculation, even after extensive investigation of the KNOWN facts, is often wrong based on who is doing the speculating.
Conversely, speculation on forums by people with very little information or knowledge of the events is even more damaging to those involved in the accident/incident.
Just my opinion, YMMV. 30 Years Law Enforcement/Technical Accident investigative experience. Doesn't differ much from aircraft investigations.
My Vote: Those that want to discuss accidents under investigation should do so in other forums.
__________________
Gary Palinkas - Gman.... VAF #161
Venice, Fl
RV-6 "Sassy" Flying 400 hrs since Oct 2011
Lycoming 0-360 A1A, FP Sensenich Prop
SARL #19 .... Van's Calendar March 2015
Although exempt several ways, =VAF= Dues paid to support this awesome site/family
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03-01-2013, 04:41 PM
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Senior Curmudgeon
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Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Dayton Airpark, NV A34
Posts: 15,420
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GLPalinkas
. 30 Years Law Enforcement/Technical Accident investigative experience. Doesn't differ much from aircraft investigations.
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Yep.
30+ years of firefighting exposed me to hundreds of fire cause investigations, pretty much the same thing with speculation vs. factual investigation.
Ever notice on the TV news they almost always state that the cause of the fire is "Under investigation".
Let the pros do their job.
__________________
Mike Starkey
VAF 909
Rv-10, N210LM.
Flying as of 12/4/2010
Phase 1 done, 2/4/2011 
Sold after 240+ wonderful hours of flight.
"Flying the airplane is more important than radioing your plight to a person on the ground incapable of understanding or doing anything about it."
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03-02-2013, 04:25 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: Atlanta
Posts: 878
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike S
Yep.
30+ years of firefighting exposed me to hundreds of fire cause investigations, pretty much the same thing with speculation vs. factual investigation.
Ever notice on the TV news they almost always state that the cause of the fire is "Under investigation".
Let the pros do their job.
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But we are not trying to prevent them doing their job. Indeed their job is entirely unaffected by any speculation, however wild, on an Internet forum.
However, the parallels between technical/cave diving deaths (and there are plenty and some by well known guys with 10's of thousands of dives) are strong. When there is a death in the tech diving community we rarely if ever hear of a reason. When we do, all we get is an autopsy. Guess what, guy was 7,000 feet back in a cave, of COUSE he died by drowning. Even then it's months if ever that we get even that tidbit.
Same with aviation. At least with tech diving we sometimes get the equivalent of black box data in the form of dive computer data. We never see that in our branch of aviation.
It is extremely valuable in the tech and cave diving community, and cave diving is well known to be the most dangerous sport in the world, to have these discussions. It works well. Go to thedecostop.com and check it out. The forums are heavily moderated. Often the discussions turn out to be hypothetical or philosophical discussions of safety, operational factors, decision trees, preparation and so on. Very, very valuable and the rv community is missing out on a similar value by these discussions not being available on a popular forum.
I'll reiterate, not having the discussion just to save the reputation or avoid hurting friends and family of an already dead guy is a poor choice.
If you have that sensitive of a nature, don't go that part of the site. Problem solved.
__________________
RV-8 IO-360 (Bought)
RV-6 O-360 C/S (Sold)
Walkman aka Flame Out
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03-02-2013, 04:43 PM
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unqualified unfluencer
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Highland Village, TX
Posts: 4,088
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Quote:
Originally Posted by walkman
snip...
I'll reiterate, not having the discussion just to save the reputation or avoid hurting friends and family of an already dead guy is a poor choice.
If you have that sensitive of a nature, don't go that part of the site. Problem solved.
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Is is a poor choice if you're the guy getting the call from the crying spouse or daughter asking for you to please take if offline while they grieve. I've recieved those calls. Speculate somewhere else, please. dr
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Doug Reeves (your host) - Full time: VansAirForce.net since '07 (started it in '96).
- Part time: Supporting Crew Member CAE Embraer Phenom 300 (E55P) @ KDFW.
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Last edited by DeltaRomeo : 03-02-2013 at 04:46 PM.
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03-02-2013, 05:32 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Sydney, Australia
Posts: 370
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Humans have been killing themselves in aircraft accidents for over 100 years now. When I look at that history, one of the observations I can make is that we only have a very small number of accidents, but we repeat them over and over again.
It's not unique to our specific sector of aviation either. I reckon paraglider pilots (for example) only have about 6 accidents. Oh look, Joe Bloggs was ridge soaring, got blown over the back, and hit a tree. There goes Jenny Biggs, launched in a cross wind with a half inflated canopy, stalled, and broke her ankle. Mike Rash over there misjudged his landing flare and faceplanted in from 20 feet. And who's the last person who got sucked into a thundercloud, spent 20 minutes being pummelled with ice blocks in IMC while his canopy shredded, and threw his reserve at the last second while regaining consciousness on the way back down? Lather, rinse, repeat, it's all just repetitions of the same thing, with very little incremental new knowledge gained from each occurrence.
We see the same in our area of aviation. CFIT. Runway excursion on take off or landing. Mishandled EFATO. VFR into unintentional IMC. Clipping a power line during low-level idiocy. Probably a catalog of perhaps 20 accidents that light GA pilots have, magnified into thousands by the force of repetition.
In aggregate, there's very little to learn from the most recent accident that can't also be learned from the hundreds of copies of the same accident that have occurred since the Wright Brothers' first PIO.
We can convey safety messages and safety lessons without drilling down into the flying history of an identifiable community member. We can analyse the whole corpus of accidents that relate to the message we're trying to convey, and draw from aggregate patterns of behaviour instead of focussing on individuals. The messages will be the same, we'll just use names like "Many Pilots" instead of "John Smith."
Is there anyone reading this who doesn't already know a myriad of ways to avoid CFIT under IMC, and who really needs to know the name, age and GPS coordinates of someone who's done it before the lesson sinks in? If there is, I respectfully submit that it isn't the VAF comment moderation policy that's the problem.
- mark
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[ Paid up on 3 Feb 2020 ]
RV-6 VH-SOL
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