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Spencer Air Car Info?
Since the untimely death of our friend (and chief charter pilot at the
local FBO) while ferrying a Spencer Air Car back from Seattle, WA last week, our local pilot community has been roiled with speculation about the cause of the crash. Of course we won't know anything definitive for a long while, but the facts we can discern are as follows: - The plane was a Spencer Air Car, a homebuilt flying boat that looks like a Republic SeaBee made out of wood. - The landing gear was down when they crashed - Witnesses say the engine sputtered, then failed. - Witnesses say they hit very hard, and "bounced like a rubber ball" before hitting again and exploding into a million pieces. - There was no fire. - The wreckage was hardly recognizable as an aircraft, evidence of how hard they hit. - The area they landed in could not be better for an off-airport landing: Flat, frozen, open Iowa farmland. - The pilot was a CFII who flew daily, in everything from a Pietenpol (he learned to fly in one, with his dad), to a CitationJet. This was NOT an inexperienced pilot. Speculation about the way an amphib like this would fly after an engine failure (with the dead engine way up high above the fuselage) seems to indicate that it could make the elevator forces much lighter than with power on, and could lead to an inadvertent stall by over- flaring. In the absence of a mechanical failure, this would seem to explain the eye-witnesses account of the crash. We're all devastated by the loss of someone who could arguably be described as our best local pilot, and I'm trying to understand the (very unusual) type of homebuilt aircraft they were flying. Does anyone here own one? Or, has anyone ever flown one? Comments on the flight characteristics would be appreciated. Thanks, -- Jay Honeck Iowa City, IA Pathfinder N56993 www.AlexisParkInn.com "Your Aviation Destination" |
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