Plastic planes are fast but landing speed too high

"Roger" wrote in message
...
On 17 Jun 2006 22:53:18 -0700, "Andrew Sarangan"
wrote:


It is not the approach speed that make the wreckages look so
horrifying. It is their abrupt stall characteristics and the fact that
composite materials melt and vaporize when under fire. I have seen a
Lancair after a wreck and I could only identify the metal pieces.
Everything else was gone.

Some where around 95 or 96 my wife and I flew the Deb down to visit
her folks at Dade City FL. We landed and kept the plane at Zypher
Hills. This was over the Christmas holiday week including New Years
week end.

Early one morning a Piper Cherokee tried to make it in to Tampa Bay
Exec. There was a lot of morning ground fog and he hit the power
lines about 2 miles short of the runway. The only thing recognizable
was the engine and prop. Even then the prop and all of the accessories
were molded around the engine as if they had been clay.

As I understand the rest of it rolled up into a ball and burned. The
couldn't even recover the instruments. Needless to say it was a fatal.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?e...08X09256&key=1