On 2/7/2012 1:29 PM, Brad wrote:
On Feb 7, 12:14 pm, wrote:
On 2/6/2012 11:41 AM, Brad wrote:
Snip...



Not to be contentious, but more fodder for the safety
monkeys

Chortle!!! (I'll get back to this topic shortly...)

...................looks like this guy did a fantastic job

getting the sailplane down safe and with all in 1 piece.

Always a good thing when the landing can be walked away from; I've known of
lots of others since getting into soaring that didn't end so serendipitously,
even withOUT the stress this (as it developed over time) situation surely induced.

Back to "safety monkeys" for a bit, I (and many others) well remember a
long-time, opinionated, disputatious (contentious?), high-time pilot
well-known in the experimental power aviation field, whose opinions were
always crystal clear. He had built and test flown his own RV-?, and test flown
at least one other homebuilt of which I'm aware.

One of his opinions (which can presumably be found in the archives of the
rec.aviation.homebuilt newsgroup) was that a monkey could be trained to fly
airplanes...but probably not helicopters - they required more brains or
SOMEthing. I'm not certain of his opinion regarding the brains to fly gliders,
which I know he had flown IN (don't remember if he obtained the rating). In
any event, he obviously had a pretty high opinion of his own skill set and
cranial power...and I gather not without substantiating reasons.

He died not long after a post-T.O.-crash of his Lancair (which I believe he
purchased), which also seriously injured his wife.

http://dms.ntsb.gov/aviation/Acciden...hb3my1iryqyoqd...

Maybe we're too smart to safely fly, because evidently he crashed a
flyable/flying airplane because he failed to latch/verify-latching the canopy,
and was unable to aviate, navigate and communicate in that order.

My point is, I'm OK with those who would rather kill the messenger in private
than apply safety lessons which may one day help mitigate the severity of
their own situation (regardless of how the situation may develop), but I'm not
so OK with those who would casually and publicly use a contentions "throw away
comment" ostensibly serving primarily as a means of ending discussion about
something of critical importance to open-minded, thoughtful aviators.

I am interested in learning how the "loss of air" caused this to
happen.

I will not be criticizing the pilot, as we are all prone to being in
the news someday, despite the never ending articles in Soaring about
safety.

Brad

"[N]ever ending articles in Soaring about safety" hunh? There's one sure way
to end them, but our record strongly suggests the human race is unlikely to
cooperate. Ignore such articles (and related lessons) if it floats your
boat...but you'll be intentionally blowing off some possibility of learning
from others' mistakes.

Rotsa Ruck,

Bob W.
Unofficial Safety Monkey

Are you making some kind of reference to my building and flying the
Tetra-15 with the guy and his Lancair?

rust rundering,
Brad

Until posed, that particular question never entered my skull. (I believe the
Lancair's test hours had been flown off well prior to the crash by someone
entirely unrelated to the above synopsis.)

And for the record (having owned nothing but single-seat, experimentally
licensed sailplanes since 1976, including 195 hours in an HP-14), I hope all
the test flying of your initial example and all future examples of the HP-24
go safely and with a minimum of unwanted excitement.

But since my initial effort evidently was insufficiently clear, here's a 2nd
attempt...

I think a strong case can be made that pilots who intentionally ignore
(deprecate?) the lessons available through internalization of others'
misfortunes are doing themselves and future prospects for general aviation a
disservice.

Respectfully,
Bob W. (USM)