On Fri, 15 Jul 2005 19:51:28 -0400, "Kyle Boatright"
wrote:

Happy to see that these guys succeeded, but this kind of thing shows poor
judgement.

Maybe, maybe not. They managed to get the gear locked down, albeit
after 10 tries. They probably did a couple of passes while just
checking to see how things would work. The picture shows that it was
not necessary for the pickup to be below the airplane, it was on the
right so the pilot could see it. This made it much easier to maintain
formation with the truck, and visa versa.

I've seen pictures of a low wing retract having it's gear pulled down
and that was REALLY hairy because the truck driver was directly
beneath the airplane which would greatly reduce the pilot's ability to
see where it was.

In this case, the airplane and truck were beside each other so even if
something bad happened, there was some room to maneuver. The truck
driver was an experienced race car driver.

Seems like they tried to shave the odds in their favor as best they
could. The way some of you guys are talking it's as if this was
horrifyingly dangerous loonesy. But despite having to try the attempt
10 times, they apparently did not scare each other badly enough to
stop trying, and managed to do what they had to do. Looks like the
pilot and ground personnel made the best of a bad situation.

Corky Scott