Mustang Collision Oshkosh

Big John wrote:


Dudley

Come on in and give us your opinion now afer running the clip multiple
times.

I asked MX a series of technical questions and he let them slide.
Guess he is one of the trolls active here ( I'll put him on the
list.

Big John

John;

I think I'm seeing basically the same thing as you are. I believe Beck
instinctively applied hard back pressure just before impact, catching
the stabilizer on the way up. The one thing that is a bit strange is the
violent roll to the right. Had he hit the throttle hard as he pulled
back, that roll should have been to the left. The only explanation I can
see that explains the direction of the roll is his right wingtip
catching the stabilizer as he pulled back on the stick. Doinf that hard
enough might very well have caused exactly what happened.
Just guessing here of course, but I think there's at least a good chance
that Beck might have misjudged the drag on a 51 touching down with 50
degrees of barn doors hanging off the trailing edge of the wings. I
would also be interested to know if Beck was landing with the same flap
setting as the D in front of him.
Judging from how close they were, Beck might have lost the D as it's
drag after touchdown started it back toward him under his nose, or at
least partially under his nose as he started to flare the A.. I honestly
believe this is what must have happened. The visual cues as I'm sure you
remember, are changing during the flare in a Mustang. You can see fairly
well over the nose on final but as you begin the flare transition, the
eye naturally goes to the lower corners of the windshield where you look
to keep the airplane aligned on the runway. Beck was landing on the left
side so his corner visuals were skewed from what he normally would be
looking for; equal parts of the runway showing on each side in the lower
corners of the windshield. What he would be getting flaring left side
would be the grass expanse with no direct reference line on his left
side and the runway showing wide on the right side with perhaps a piece
of Odegard's 51 showing in his immediate visual cues. As his nose came
up, the drag slowing the D and his own excess airspeed into the flare
would have ganged up on him. I believe we saw the results of all this.
I'm of course not certain, but from what I saw, this would be a
reasonable scenario were I giving a safety lecture on what I was seeing
on the film.
Dudley Henriques