Preliminary NTSB report on Walton accident

On 2005-07-06 23:05:40 -0400, "RST Engineering" said:

...consistent with every "pilot was dead before he hit the ground"
report I've read in the last 40 years.


Jim and guys --

Lord, I hope that was the case for several reasons --

1. it means JW went instantly doing what he loved more than anything
(except maybe running recon). No suffering.

2. It means our sport is off the hook. Not that that will ever get the
headlines that Walton's premature death did.

3. It means that the questions some have prematurely raised about the
aircraft -- an aircraft that has flown tens of thousands of hours (at
least) by hundreds and hundreds of pilots (at least) over 20+ years --
can be laid to rest. They should not have been raised.

I keep saying (in every outlet I've got including here at the FBO) that
it's premature to speculate about plane crashes when we don't have the
data. Of course, it's hard to resist, yet mainstream media reports,
initial NTSB/FAA reports, and even aviation media reports (which tend
to depend on the first two in the early stages of a crash
investigation) are thin and speculative by nature.

The only regular in this group who has any significant amount of the
data is Chuck (as a "party" to the investigation, a term which has a
formal, specific meaning) and he is, in the way of the "party" system,
required to keep what he learns confidential, pretty much, until NTSB
is ready to release it (If I'm wrong about that, Chuck will correct me,
but I'm pretty sure he got the standard Board "what you learn here
stays here until the factual report is released" speech). When the
factual report is released, the information has been gathered and the
professionals are working it up for the actual Board members to vote on
probable cause at a Board meeting.

There are occasional NTSB reports I find that I disagree with, but it's
often a matter of degree or giving the right weight to different causal
factors, a pretty subtle thing. More often, I'm amazed at their
dedication and detective work (especially when you consider the
starvation wage those guys and gals get paid).

There are legitimate (and not so legitimate) disagreements between lots
of people in aviation. I would hope that safety would be one area where
we could work together and not resort to uninformed bashing. What if
some producer for 60 Minutes looked in here and contacted a basher to
do a hack attack on some manufacturer (that IS the way 60-min works)?
Not many people have been around long enough to remember when bad
journalism damn near killed ultralighting 20 years ago, but it did.

cheers

-=K=-

Rule #1: Don't hit anything big.