A Vic Syracuse article in Aug Sport Aviation is full of errors. He quotes a FAA accident investigator as saying that he had been involved in a couple of RV7 accident investigations that involved low level aerobatics.
I have been doing an additional review of RV7 fatal accidents starting in 2003 and find NO RV7 fatal's in the US due to low level aerobatics. The four inflight breakups of RV7's in the US involving aerobatics all started at altitudes well above the 1500' minimum legal altitude.
The official cause of the 6/27/17 accident near Buckeye AZ is bird strike.
I am just getting started with a study of RV4 accident reports. What I am finding very different is the number of low altitude aerobatic accidents. Ex: take off, at end of runway pull up to vertical, some kind of a turnaround to vertical down and dive straight into ground.
My motivation for this is two fold: A hope that I can prevent just one fatal accident.
The second part is the Atlantic City RV7 fatal. I had exchanged some emails with the pilot but had never met him. Had I known he was attempting to learn aileron rolls on his own, I would have tried to talk him out of it. Failing that I could have told him via email how to do a successful aileron roll. Stressing that this is a really bad idea in an RV.
