Badwater Bill's Memorial Service

Stealth Pilot wrote:

I was wondering about that as well. I was also wondering if she was
able to give an account of the accident yet.

a bump on the head will more than likely lead to some amnesia at that
point. dont push her to remember the traumatic events that led to her hubby
buying the farm.it will be kinder for her to forget.

Unfortunately, without her, we'll never know what happened. The NTSB
preliminary report says observers saw clothing and other objects coming
off/out of the airplane soon after takeoff. This implies the canopy had
opened.

This has happened to other Lancair owners, and they claimed the airplane
was still flyable. Yet a nearly-identical Lancair accident occurred at
Sun-N-Fun earlier that year. One witness saw the pilot having trouble
closing the canopy before takeoff. After takeoff, objects floated down.
Another witness saw the plane after takeoff...the canopy was moving up
and down as if the pilot was trying to re-lock it.

Was the airplane in Florida unflyable...or was the pilot distracted by
trying to re-latch the canopy? We'll never really know, since the pilot
died in the crash and there was no passenger in this case.

Had Bill encountered canopy latching problems before? A downwind
takeoff with winds gusting to 20 knots implies that he might have been
in a hurry and not latched it properly. But if he'd had canopy problems
before, it's less likely the NTSB will attribute the accident to a
faulty preflight.

Was Bill wrestling with an uncontrollable airplane? Or was he
concentrating on trying to get the canopy closed instead of flying the
plane? Or did the blast of wind throw an object into his face, covering
his eyes and disorienting him? Or did the engine quit, with Bill
deliberately popping the canopy to keep from getting trapped in the cockpit?

Janice is the only one that could know.

Ron Wanttaja