Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:


"Flown with worse" in the business isn't a positive trait to posess
and can end up being a fast trip to a hole in the ground.
Unfortunately in Ed's case, it ended that way.
My job has always been to keep pilots alive in the acro environment. I
have to say that I never used Ed as a positive example. His kind of
aggression toward aerobatics was just beyond my comfort limit.


Interesting. As a kid I always thought he had it cracked. He didn't do
instruction AFAIK, but if he did I would have been there...
He used to roll inverted on takeoff as soon as he had clearance and his
flying was always pretty energetic, allright. I got to see him practice a
good bit and it was always very tidy, but in retrospect, as you say, he was
agressive compared to many. I have to say, as a young fellow I emulated a
lot of his stuff, and it was a major shock when he bought it. I suppose
your view of him would have been from the opposite end of the spectrum back
then!


Bertie


I think a lot of us who come up with the "aerobatics bug" start out even
without realizing it in some cases that knowing how to fly acro and
doing it sets us apart from the "average" pilot. It's a falsely
conceived premise at best that some actually never shed .
Those who don't are usually the ones who end up dead. It's THAT simple!

The pilots who make it all the way through a career in display flying
are worth watching as they have common behavior and habit patterns worth
emulating for those considering entering this venue.

Most have common traits that are recognizable to even the untrained eye.
The pilots who last in the display acro business develop early on, an
attitude of respect for the venue that borders on a kind of fanaticism.
These are the pilots who, when tempted to do a roll on takeoff by the
local airport crowd on a Sunday morning as they get ready to go cross
country to do an air show somewhere, simply smile and respectfully
decline. It's not the place....and it's not the time. They realize that
there's a self imposed "ritual" they have to go through with themselves
before executing aerobatics at low altitude and doing low acro without
this "mental tuning up " can spell real trouble.
This is why, as the number one rule I passed on to all acro the acro
pilots, especially display pilots, who got close enough to me to hear my
voice I always stressed;
"Never.....EVER....do anything with an airplane that someone asks you to
do unless you yourself are mentally and physically prepared to do
it....AND it's YOUR CALL!!"

This sounds simple enough, but you would be absolutely amazed how easy
it is to slip into doing something with an airplane because this person
or that one is watching.
Ego and complacency are high on the list of potential killers for
aerobatic pilots.
Lord only knows what made a pilot of Ed's caliber weaken his horizontal
stabilizer to match the other weakened side, then go fly hard maneuvers
for the camera.

What is completely puzzling to me and always will remain a puzzle to me
is that most any inexperienced pilot, even a student , if
asked whether THEY would have done what Ed did that day, and flown that
airplane on that day, at that time, for that purpose, would probably
instinctively say that they wouldn't have done it.

At least in this those of us in the business of flight safety were left
a lesson to pass on to new pilots.


--
Dudley Henriques