On Tue, 7 Feb 2006 11:11:35 -0600, "Tater Schuld"
wrote:


"Morgans" wrote in message
...

"Roger" wrote

The only way to do that is to never get in an airplane.

that might be the best thing to do sometimes. but it seems that a lot of
crashes are caused either by the pilot choosing a course of action that he
shouldn't have, or a mechanical failure

Outside of "divine intervention" those are about the only two
possibilities I can think of. Most accidents come from a string of
actions or inactions, not just a single mistake although sometimes,
"getting up in the morning" might count.


and that is what i mean by "not getting into that situation", as pilot in
command, you *should* be able to (instantly) react to any situation, in a
manner that gets the plane down safely. the incident in question was wether
the pilot should have gone stright or turned.


Nature has a way of playing tricks on us. Weather not associated
with frontal activity going down over wide areas in five minutes or so
(been there, done that), or frontal activity triggering activity over
a wide area, or fronts stopping and backing up as fast as they were
going the other way.

one of the things that stops me from going out and geting my liscence is
that there are some situations that i dont see how to get a safe solution
from. the more i ask though, the more of things i can plan to avoid.

The same is true of driving a car, or more so. I had an SUV come
shooting out of a parking lot onto the highway with all 4 burning. I
managed to leave about 12 feet of skid marks before shortening up my
Trans Am by a couple of feet.

I lost a friend when a truck lost a wheel. They figured he never saw
it coming. Those wheels are big and heavy.

A cousin was driving down a small street and of all things, collided
with a horse. Something caused the horse to shy and bolt out onto the
street, over his hood and ended up going through the wind shield. It
put the rider as well as both my cousin and his wife in the hospital.
They had to put the horse down.

Here we only
have one runway out of four that really gives you an out and even then
you are looking at merging with express way traffic, IF you can make
it over, or under the over pass.

sounds like a nightmare. how does one confidently plan for failure
contingencies?

Aim for the softest objects with the smallest number of people. (that
was not a joke). Do not pick streets and roads unless all the other
alternatives are big, hard, and contain lots of people. They are the
first thing most pilots think of when it gets real quiet. Unless it's
a deserted expressway, I'll take an empty field any day and even some
of those have power and telephone lines across them.

I have confidence in the Deb as it has only failed once in over a 1000
hours of flying. I've had radios fail, both nav and com. I've had
three AI failures and one tach failure as well as one tach cable
failure. The first AI failure was the day after bringing the Deb
home in a storm.


Engines quit, even new ones. Some times they give warning and a lot
of times they don't. Mine quit on take off with no warning, not even
a hiccup. It went from full power to silence all of a sudden.

I don't understand if you completely know your engine inside and out,
have given pet names to all of the little nuts and bolts, why is the engine
quiting?

It got tired of being taken apart, or developed hostility due to those
"pet names" involving canine ancestry, unnatural acts and incestuous
relationships, I've given it.


You will have to excuse "tater shouldn't" - he's our new troll. of the
month.

Ah, I'll treat this thread as legit...for the time being:-))


I apologize. I honest am not trying to be a troll.

I am trying to find a way to fly an airplane, how to avoid dangerous
situations,

You can minimize the number of dangerous situations to which you are
exposed, but you will never eliminate them.

and how to do it on a common mans income. threads like these
help explain why certain accidents happen, and how to avoid them.

Airplanes like any other machines will break from time to time.
They are quite reliable even with the old technology. Given proper
care and treatment they may go a long time between failures.

With training and thought we can avoid *most* accidents, but not all.
As for the ones that come looking for us, all we can do is be as
prepared as well as possible.

The thing is: There is absolutely nothing we do that comes without
risk. If we stayed home and tried to stay safe we'd all probably die
early deaths from heart attacks from being out of shape. Cars have
driven off the road and into some one's home, killing them where they
sat of slept. Airliners have crashed into homes (again a very rare
event). People fall down and break something vital. We take vitamins
for years only to find the dye in the pills causes cancer. Mice get
into wiring causing homes to burn down, furnaces develop carbon
monoxide leaks, and lightning strikes kill quite a few people every
year.

Life is about risk management whether we do it consciously or
subconsciously. Every movement, every action is accompanied by some
amount of risk in one form or another.

People are now living longer than ever, but they are doing so by
staying active longer and that exposes them to risks they'd have never
seen had they lived the average life span a century ago.

You decide what you want to do as in this case, flying. You learn as
much as you can, you learn your limitations, and your airplane's
limitations. You learn and practice what to do when things go wrong.
You practice to the point where you do not have to think about what to
do with emergency procedures. With enough practice you body will
react to things faster than you can consciously recognize what is
happening as with engine failures.

In addition to flying one of my hobbies is Amateur Radio.
http://www.rogerhalstead.com/ham_files/Tower29.htm In that photo I'm
working a bit over 100 feet above my wife who shot the picture. I
have spent as many as 8 hours up there at one time (not recently)

If we only go around once I want to enjoy it. I do nothing that
exceeds my risk tolerance limits and I do have limits.

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com