ping Dan Thomas/weird crashes.

Ken S. Tucker wrote:
On Mar 30, 9:04 am, wrote:
On Mar 29, 5:37 pm, wrote:



On Mar 29, 3:22 pm, " wrote:
On Mar 29, 1:03 am, "Private" wrote:
Piper Malibu down east of Edmonton 5 sob
FYI
http://news.google.ca/nwshp?hl=en&ta...577933&topic=h
http://discussions.flightaware.com/v...?p=47890#47890
http://www.aviation.ca/component/opt...temid,306/func...
Condolences to family & friends.
The pic that is posted on the Flightaware site is interesting. Is
shows an almost complete cockpit with very little damage. Too bad
these guys couldn't have hit a 20 foot deep pile of fluffy powder
snow. They might have survived...
Godspeed to all involved..
Ben
On the news a few minutes ago, the TSB guys indicated that it had
been an inflight breakup. That can be caused by several factors,
including spiralling out of control, severe turbulence, or some pre-
existing flaw leading to structural failure. It will take the
investigators some time to figure it out, and even then they're
sometimes not sure. I won't speculate further, but will say that
inflight structural failure is one of the things that scares me most;
the other is a midair collision. I pay a lot of attention to the
structural inspections of our aircraft, and have my eyeballs all over
the place when VFR.
Deep snow wouldn't help much if it was an inflight breakup. Most
frequent failures involve the tail, and an airplane will stick its
nose straight down if the stab departs.
Dan
http://www.canada.com/globaltv/natio...ce7fefa-920d-4...

Thanks Dan, (tears aside).
"Dean Braithwaite, chief flight instructor at the Edmonton Flying
Club"
sounds good in that ref.
We've recently discussed the importance of the Artificial
Horizon in this group,

Maybe the pilot ascended above 12500, that can **** up
judgement, went spiral dive (blam) and blamed the AH,
for judgement error. The debris field indicates an aircraft
structural anomally at high altitude.

My GUESS is he was trying to ascend above the weather,
did a stall in lowered air density, converted to a spiral dive,
that shattered the a/c in a few hundred feet at fairly high
altitude.
In a spiral dive the a/c is using gravity to accelerate, it's
like jumping off a building and it comes on fast.

Every pilot must know when he's in a spiral dive and
how to correct it.
Hard input will shatter the a/c, especially if IAS is near
red line, which happens quickly, so be gentle.

In my experience, gentle application of elevator with
reverse aileron is ok. However, jerking the elevator
can snug the turn and exceed the g-rating, specially
if the airlerons are used inappropriately.
I'd like to hear an expert opinion.

Me, too, as yours certainly is far from expert.