Are we crazy, or just stupid?

He shouldn't have been reading the Playboy hidden in the hymn book. ;-)
tom

LWG wrote:
The
ball lightning hopped across to the back of the pew, followed the back of
the pew to where this man was sitting, and jumped on him, causing the man's
death.

I often think about this when making a decision to go flying. I don't
believe in pushing it, but when your number's up...

Great story.

Mary and I just returned from our first flight since our friend's
demise. It was a rather emotional experience, and I admit that I had
some second thoughts during the climbout.

We made a bee-line for the area where he went down, located some 50
miles west of Iowa City. It was very quiet as we slowly circled the
area, scanning the fields and contemplating the horrible thing that
had happened in such innocent-looking farm country. With five inches
of new snow, and the wreckage removed, we never did identify the exact
field he went down in...

Everything looked so peaceful and normal. The air was smooth as
glass, and my spirits soared as I arced effortlessly through a clear
blue sky. It was a beautiful day to fly.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay,

My condolences. No doubt, the aviation community lost a great pilot and
several lost a great friend as well. I hate it when there are so many
unanswered questions at a time like this. I can imagine the unanswered
how/why questions both spoken and unspoken. BTDT when family members
and friends have passed away, sometimes suddenly.

I'm glad you and Mary had a chance to get back in the air. I'm sure it
was uncomfortable and that feeling in itself must have been strange.
Here you guys are doing something so familiar yet Blane's death opens
your eyes wider to the possibility that something bad can happen to you.

From what I've read about Blane, IMHO, he'd want everyone he knew to
keep the dream of flying alive. I'm glad you and your family can do so.
I know that I sure will.


--
Jack Allison
PP-ASEL-Instrument Airplane

"To become a Jedi knight, you must master a single force. To become
a private pilot you must strive to master four of them"
- Rod Machado

(Remove the obvious from address to reply via e-mail)

On Feb 6, 12:00 am, "Jay Honeck" wrote: brevity
snip
I just returned from one of the hardest evenings of my life. Mary, my
kids, and I just attended the visitation for Blane Anderson, our
friend and fellow pilot who lost his life in the crash of a Spencer
Air Car

My heartfelt condolences.

Chief pilot of the FBO, CFII,
home-builder, tail-dragger, multi-engine, turbine -- you name it,
Blane flew it. Everyone who flew with him said he was a great stick.
And he had learned to fly in a Pietenpol, which is to say that he
*really* knew how to fly.

No man is immune to error, no matter how qualified, or experienced.
Ask anyone who is ultimately qualified and experienced. If they
refuse to admit to error, they ain't that qualified.

Are we just being selfish, putting our kids at
terrible risk every time we strap them into the back seat?

I think so, if they are so young as to be incapable of assessing the
risk. Would you fly with a GA pilot whom you didn't "know"? I do,
but I'm capable and willing to assess and accept the risk, with full
knowledge of what death means, and how it looks, not on TV, and that
no matter how skilled my PIC (I'm not licensed), **** happens.

Whose ass doesn't pucker a little when the take-off roll begins, and
when the wheels leave the ground? Mine does, every time.

As a former truck driving instructor (and advanced truck driving) I
know that when the fear leaves, risk creeps in, presumably to fill the
void. Rookie drivers have a better incident rate since they (usually)
maintain a fear of their equipment. Once they allow that fear to be
replaced by confidence (and complacency) , they become dangerous.

No relevance to your friend, but human nature is human nature, and
difficult to change without the application of conscious effort.
That's why morons drive identically in all conditions, they got away
with it last time.

The important thing, I think, is to learn from the error (if any) in
the incident of your friend, and reap what benefit there may be.
There can be no greater tribute to one's death than to save another
life. Make sure it never happens again.

It saved my ass, on more than two occasions...
-----

- gpsman

reason. There is none except that death waits for us all. We look for
something or someone to blame. Aviation is easy to blame, but
aviation is not death. Aviation has brought life to many, both
figuratively and literally.
--
Gene Seibel
Gene & Sue's Flying Machine -http://pad39a.com/gene/
Because we fly, we envy no one.

Gene,

I was working for an Idaho based avionics company in 2002 when a
tragedy occured. Three employees of the company, including my
immediate boss who was one of the three partners that had started it,
were in a landing accident in a Lancair. Two of them were killed
including the one who was PIC. My boss managed to survive with a
severe leg fracture that required surgery and had a risk of amputation
if it didn't succeed.

Immediately after the accident, I warned his wife that she should make
sure that he didn't wallow in survivors guilt since he had lived and
the others had not.

Two weeks after the accident, his partners and the head of the company
that had bought them out, called him in for a management meeting since
he had been at home recuperating. They demanded that he resign, which
he did under the pressure and the fact that he was a mess still from
the accident. Seems that they had blamed him for the accident even
though he wasn't flying the plane. You are right about people wanting
to blame someone for an aviation accident. I have seen it happen
first hand, and know that the guy they blamed was not responsible for
it happening...

I left that company about 9 months later, which was the first
opportunity I found to switch jobs. It was an awful place to work,
and was no where near the professional, supportive environment I had
known at Boeing.

Dean

On Feb 8, 9:15 am, wrote:
reason. There is none except that death waits for us all. We look for
something or someone to blame. Aviation is easy to blame, but
aviation is not death. Aviation has brought life to many, both
figuratively and literally.
--
Gene Seibel
Gene & Sue's Flying Machine -http://pad39a.com/gene/
Because we fly, we envy no one.

Gene,

I was working for an Idaho based avionics company in 2002 when a
tragedy occured. Three employees of the company, including my
immediate boss who was one of the three partners that had started it,
were in a landing accident in a Lancair. Two of them were killed
including the one who was PIC. My boss managed to survive with a
severe leg fracture that required surgery and had a risk of amputation
if it didn't succeed.

Immediately after the accident, I warned his wife that she should make
sure that he didn't wallow in survivors guilt since he had lived and
the others had not.

Two weeks after the accident, his partners and the head of the company
that had bought them out, called him in for a management meeting since
he had been at home recuperating. They demanded that he resign, which
he did under the pressure and the fact that he was a mess still from
the accident. Seems that they had blamed him for the accident even
though he wasn't flying the plane. You are right about people wanting
to blame someone for an aviation accident. I have seen it happen
first hand, and know that the guy they blamed was not responsible for
it happening...

I left that company about 9 months later, which was the first
opportunity I found to switch jobs. It was an awful place to work,
and was no where near the professional, supportive environment I had
known at Boeing.

Dean

Blame is usually not constructive in aviation or anywhere. One of the
very few things that stuck in my mind from some managenent training I
took is that if a good employee makes a costly mistake, you've just
made an investment in their education. No time to throw it away.
Unfortunately politics often get in the way. Come to think of it,
politics and blame go together a lot.

The fiance of whom I spoke was killed driving home from my house.
After several years, one of her daughters is still bitter towards me -
the other has thanked me for making her Mom's last days her happiest.
Same event, bipolar responses. One celebrates her Mom and adds joy to
the world, the other still mourns and adds pain. In the beginning, I
lashed out at a couple peole who didn't deserve it, but soon made a
choice to live on. Grief is a very complicated animal.
--
Gene Seibel
Gene & Sue's Aeroplanes - http://pad39a.com/gene/planes.html
Because we fly, we envy no one.

On 2007-02-06, Jay Honeck wrote:
Every pilot I know was there. We all feel and fear the same thing,
without saying a word. The thought on everyone's mind is simple: "If
this could happen to Blane, it could happen to any one of us."

My grandfather spent 10 years dying from the results of a stroke. If it
could happen to someone like my grandfather (who, incidentally at age 75
before the stroke had a physique to put many 25 year olds to shame), it
could happen to any of us.

We all die. Some of us will make a fatal error while aviating. Some of
us will spend years dying. But we all die. You have a choice: be afraid
of your own shadow and instead of living, merely waiting to die (like
many of the most risk averse in society are doing, without even
realising that they are merely waiting to die instead of living) - or
perhaps take reasonable risks and actually live.

Aviation has risks, but it isn't insane. The overwhelmingly vast
majority of us can expect years of trouble free flying. Even in my Dad's
sport (motorcycle racing - my Dad races motorcycle sidecars in road
racing), the overwhelming majority survive their entire racing career.
In the end it boils down to this: is the risk/reward relationship good
enough? And don't think wrapping yourselves in cotton wool gets rid of
risk - it doesn't - you still stand a 100% risk of dying, and however
you wrap yourself up as we live longer you're increasingly more likely
to spend 10 years having an awful death like my grandfather.

While doing 170mph on the back of a friend's Super Blackbird
(motorcyle), I was not afraid, I merely thought "well, if we do crash at
least it won't hurt for very long".

--
Yes, the Reply-To email address is valid.
Oolite-Linux: an Elite tribute: http://oolite-linux.berlios.de

Dylan Smith writes:

While doing 170mph on the back of a friend's Super Blackbird
(motorcyle), I was not afraid, I merely thought "well, if we do crash at
least it won't hurt for very long".

The difference between smart people and stupid people is that smart people
accurately assess the risks, and stupid people don't. Smart people may still
take significant risks, but they know what they are getting into. Stupid
people take risks without knowing what they are doing. Thus, the smart person
always has the satisfaction of knowing that the result justifies the risk (at
least in his own mind), whereas the stupid person just stumbles along, and
often stumbles into Darwin's rejected gene pool.

Astronauts know what they are getting into. The risks are substantial, but
they are smart enough to know what the risks are, and they've accepted them.
Good pilots are the same way. So are good motorcycle riders. All of these
people ask themselves in advance: Is this experience worth a risk of xx% that
I'll be killed? The answer doesn't matter so much as asking the question and
heeding the reply. The stupid people just say to themselves: Wow, this looks
like fun!

General aviation is vastly more dangerous than commercial airlines, but
clearly most of the risk comes from careless, stupid pilots and poorly
maintained aircraft (and one could argue that the latter is also a consequence
of the former).

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

On Feb 8, 12:25 pm, Dylan Smith wrote:
We all die. Some of us will make a fatal error while aviating. Some of
us will spend years dying. But we all die. You have a choice: be afraid
of your own shadow and instead of living, merely waiting to die (like
many of the most risk averse in society are doing, without even
realising that they are merely waiting to die instead of living) - or
perhaps take reasonable risks and actually live.

I agree to an extent. But when you engage in risky behavior, you have
to consider other things besides your own quality of life. You also
have to consider the people who would be affected.

I would consider flying somewhat risky behavior. Not outrageously so,
but riskier than the behaviors that the average person will engage in.
So I struggle with the question of whether I should continue to fly if/
when my wife and I have children. Should one engage in unnecessary,
above average risky behavior when one has responsibilities to family -
especially young children?

On Feb 8, 8:15 am, wrote:
reason. There is none except that death waits for us all. We look for
something or someone to blame. Aviation is easy to blame, but
aviation is not death. Aviation has brought life to many, both
figuratively and literally.
--
Gene Seibel
Gene & Sue's Flying Machine -http://pad39a.com/gene/
Because we fly, we envy no one.

Gene,

I was working for an Idaho based avionics company in 2002 when a
tragedy occured. Three employees of the company, including my
immediate boss who was one of the three partners that had started it,
were in a landing accident in a Lancair. Two of them were killed
including the one who was PIC. My boss managed to survive with a
severe leg fracture that required surgery and had a risk of amputation
if it didn't succeed.

Immediately after the accident, I warned his wife that she should make
sure that he didn't wallow in survivors guilt since he had lived and
the others had not.

Two weeks after the accident, his partners and the head of the company
that had bought them out, called him in for a management meeting since
he had been at home recuperating. They demanded that he resign, which
he did under the pressure and the fact that he was a mess still from
the accident. Seems that they had blamed him for the accident even
though he wasn't flying the plane. You are right about people wanting
to blame someone for an aviation accident. I have seen it happen
first hand, and know that the guy they blamed was not responsible for
it happening...

I left that company about 9 months later, which was the first
opportunity I found to switch jobs. It was an awful place to work,
and was no where near the professional, supportive environment I had
known at Boeing.

Dean

Can you name the company? I don't want to buy their stuff.