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.