On Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:03:12 -0800, John Ammeter
wrote:

Speaking of high energy crashes...

A few years ago a friend of mine, with his wife, was attempting a
landing that went wrong. He was flying an RV-6 and, somehow, lost
control of the plane on landing.

He careened off the runway to the left, dragging the left wing tip in
the grass, went through a barbed wire fence complete with metal posts,
through a blackberry thicket and then it got interesting.... The
thicket was at the top of a cliff next to a gravel pit and the plane
ended up at the base of the 60 foot cliff nose down in between two piles
of gravel. The nose of the RV was buried in the gravel and the wings
were buried in the two piles of gravel. The contents of the fuel tanks
drained out instantly (cut open by the metal posts) into the gravel.

He suffered a small cut on his left arm from the broken canopy and his
wife, in the right seat, suffered a crushed ankle from the collapsing
fuselage around her right foot.

The RV may not use wood construction but it certainly is well designed
for pilot/passenger protection.

John

one of our 80 year old pilots took an international visiting friend
for a fly in his Druine D5 turbi. gave the guy his normal rear seat so
that he could fly and flew from the front seat.
on approach to landing he found that the lower seat position in the
front seat prevented him from seeing much. the aircraft intercom being
a homemade unit that ceased working reliably probably back in the 50's
was no help in getting the visitor to take over so the landing
proceeded.

150 ft short of the runway, on the other side of a country road, in
the opposite paddock stood an old cattle loading ramp built from 6"x4"
timber posts probably about the time the radio intercom started to
quit.

the D5 turbi took the nearmost corner post of the cattle ramp fair on
the nosebowl. the impact demolished to a wood stack the entire cattle
ramp. the D5 then slid through a 5 wire farm fence taking out one
post. the aircraft came to rest on a demolished undercarriage in the
centre of the road pointing to the front gate of the airfield.

I arrived on the scene just as the dust settled intending to take my
aircraft out flying.

The D5 turbi is a tandem seat low wing wooden aircraft which is the
bigger brother to the single seat Druine D3 Turbulent.

The most damage was caused by the sawing action of the fence wires as
the aircraft slid through them. The engine mount was bent but not
broken. The guys suffered a cut lip for the pilot and a gash across
the eyebrow for the passenger.

The aircraft has long since completed it's third rebuild and is still
being flown by the now late 80's pilot.

timber is just as much an engineering material as aloooominum.
the glues are a hell of a lot more reliable nowadays.
whittling and aeroplane is good fun.
Stealth Pilot