Another stall spin

I guess we were reading different posts, Bob, or, at least coming from
different mindsets. Having directly witnessed a low altitude departure and
the results, I'm just hard core about maintaining airspeed and NEVER getting
low enough that I need to claw my way out or crash.

Learn to recognize low airspeed by sound and control pressures and high AoA
by control feedback, buffeting, reversal, etc. Learn to extract the maximum
from your glider at altitude and learn to regain control with a simple flick
of the wrist at the first indication of a departure. Of course you should
also know how to recover from an incipient spin. You should learn none of
these things at low altitude because you most likely won't get the chance to
try a second time. That's my whole point - don't put yourself in a position
to kill yourself.


"BobW" wrote in message
...
On 9/5/2012 6:34 PM, Dan Marotta wrote:
In my last post I talked about making an early decision to land out and
never
attempting low saves ala 300' AGL. The many following posts are all
about low
altitude departures from controlled flight.

Nobody thinks he'll die on this flight but, if I was an insurance
underwriter,
I'd give lower premiums to those who commit to safe field landings over
those
who attempt low saves.

I have a hard time accepting "safety lectures" which espouse safely
pulling
your fat out of the fire rather than not letting it get there in the
first place.

Lordy. Are we reading the same posts?

*I'm* certainly not espousing safely pulling my - or anyone else's - fat
out of the fire (by attempting low saves in Russian roulette territory)
vs. "not going there in the first place".

Just to be clear, I think attempted thermalling at Russian roulette height
agl (and each pilot gets to determine what that height is for them) is
(choose what you'd like): asinine; foolish; irresponsible (at many
levels); playing with fire; etc., etc., etc.

That said, no "safety lecture" anyone thinks I may be indulging in applies
*only* to low thermalling. Minor messing about in the NTSB database,
paying attention to what one reads over the years, etc., reveals lots of
pattern-based, fatal, departures from controlled flight that may easily
have been avoidable had the pilots' involved not been "surprised".

Remember the Questair Venture? Designed by two highly experienced
professional aeronautical types, one of whom eventually died in a Venture
after a (very) high-altitude (meaning, lots of time to get things sorted
out and develop a plan) engine failure that resulted in a base-to-final
departure-from-controlled flight when they easily had the Des Moines
International Airport made.

That crunch merely springs to mind...there're lots more, including "benign
spam can" crunches.

Nor are pattern departure fatalities limited to power planes.

FWIW,
Bob W.