Lancair Legacy Design Flaw?

Ron, do you judge from this that the Velocity (or the pusher/canards in
general) have basic design issues (such as the Lancair's low speed
regime history)?

On Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:58:28 -0700, Ron Wanttaja wrote:

It's funny you should ask, because that was one of the questions I was
hoping to answer when I got into homebuilt accident analysis about five
years ago.

Still haven't answered it.

There are so many factors involved that I could spend years of full-time
work trying to dig them out. The fleet size of the Velocity is still
relatively low, for example, and as well all know, one or two extra
accidents can cause a disproportionate change.

I dug a bit deeper into my database, and extracted the accident-cause
data for about 20 homebuilt types. As I mentioned on my last post, the
Velocity has an accident rate generally higher than most. Yet, the
Velocity had nearly the LOWEST "stick and rudder error" rate. About 43%
of RV-6 accidents involved the pilot's handling of the aircraft, vs.
only 29% of the Velocities.

HOWEVER (geeze, there's ALWAYS a "however" when you analyze accident
statistics), the pilots in the Velocity accidents had about 25% more
flight hours than those involved in RV accidents, and *four times* the
hours than the average homebuilder involved in an accident.

Lower rates because they're easier to fly...or because more-experienced
pilots are flying them?

My analysis method is a bit different from the NTSB's, too. I look for
the first major event of the accident string, which means that if the
engine quits, I attribute the accident to the engine quitting. The NTSB
works a bit differently. If the investigator thinks the pilot should
have been able to safely land the aircraft despite the engine failure,
the cause of the accident is listed as pilot error.

So my "pilot failure" category does NOT take into account the difficulty
of handling the aircraft in an emergency situation. While my stats may
show the pilot error rate for the Velocity to be lower, the NTSB's may not.

Ron Wanttaja

Great work and thanks!