On Aug 14, 8:49*am, Dudley Henriques wrote:
Bob F. wrote:
"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
.. .
Ricky writes:

Flying in IMC with visual reference is not dangerous.

That's what John Kennedy thought.

Puleeeze... inexperience flying a Saratoga in marginal VFR results in
exactly what happened. *He was simply not competent in flying that
mission. This was a case of a person flying having more money than brains.

I don't know about the money vs brains thing but what happened to
Kennedy has happened to a lot of other VFR pilots operating out of, in,
and around coastal areas, especially around dusk. Spatial disorientation
in this scenario is now and always has been a killer.
What has always bothered me about the Kennedy accident is whether or not
his instructor(s) ever made a POINT of warning him about this. The fact
that everyone in the world knew he would be operating any airplane he
flew in and out of the Martha"s Vineyard Block Island area should have
been a red flag to his instructors.
So for me at least, the REAL issue with his accident has always been
whether or not he had been SPECIFICALLY WARNED of the dangers involved
with flying in this area at dusk. If he was warned, I would believe that
then a case for the for the "money vs brains" thing would be warranted.

--
Dudley Henriques

John Jr flew that route with a CFII a number of times. If memory
serves, he planned to take one with him on that trip too. As it
happened, the ETA was chosen so that the entire trip would have been
flown in daylight, but traffic and other delays made it a dusk take
off. Worse than that, the night before (I'm using the book "The Day
John Died" as a reference here, but I read it a few years ago) he had
a major fight with his wife as well, and is magazine "George" was
failing.

I think he had 300 plus hours of dual -- but was not nearly ready to
take the flight test. I don't know if he passed the written, but don't
think so.

It was the usual case of a sequence of bad decisions. Probably the
worst one -- I'm guessing here, but there's good evidence it happened
this way-- is he was VFR at 5500 feet or so between Point Judith RI
and the Vineyard, close enough to his destination -- maybe 20 miles
away? -- so that it would be a good time to start down. (Personal
preference, I fly IFR has high as the winds will allow, and if traffic
is light l like to let down at 250 or 300 feet per minute, so if I'm
at 10,000 and want to be near the airport at 1,000 I start down 30
minutes out). the radar track suggests to me he disconnected the a/p,
(until that point altitude was pretty much rock solid) started to hand
fly, and impacted the water 30 seconds later.

Other pilots in the area said there was no visible horizon, and there
are NO lights in Rhode Island Sound. There are plenty of lights at
Point Judith (ask me about Harbor of Last Refuge there sometime, but
in a sailing newsgroup) and on the Vineyard.

John Jr had taken plenty of chances in his life, and when you roll the
dice as often as he did the odds are not in your favor. When there is
no visible horizon, regardless of whether the conditions are VFR or
IFR, a pilot had damn well better be able to fly with reference to
instruments -rated or not.

I really considered the training for the instrument rating having more
to do with learning the ATC system, although my *&&^&%(_) CFII was
really good at putting the airplane in unusual attitudes before
telling me, with my head down under the hood, "It's all yours."