Terrible Waste

Heard similar story. Some guy was trying to hand prop his plane and left the throttle at the wrong setting. The hand propping worked!.

Red S.

....the pilot hand started the plane with the throttle set to high and it rolled away with him running after it. i think it was 13 planes it damaged before it hit the plane in the picture. damage was in the millions and the pilot feeling about as dumb as you can imagine, but everyone has a bad day now and then.

doug,

Reminds me of the Piper Cub that was hand-propped at full throttle several years ago, MA or NY ~ It took off with full fuel and no pilot, barely missing a hangar, flew through its service ceiling and continued a slow climb to a probable world record altitude for C-65 powered A/C () and glided to a gentle nose-over landing in a field several hours later. Similar to an R/C pilot watching his model fly off with a dead receiver battery, I'm sure the owner was relieved to get the call from local police.

DC3

| Reminds me of the Piper Cub that was hand-propped at full throttle | several years ago, MA or NY ~ | It took off with full fuel and no pilot, barely missing a hangar, | flew through its service ceiling and continued a slow climb | to a probable world record altitude for C-65 powered A/C () | and glided to a gentle nose-over landing in a field several | hours later.

Do you have any references for this? This would be fascinating to read more about, but I can't find it online.

| Similar to an R/C pilot watching his model fly off with a dead | receiver battery,

Similar perhaps, but on a much greater scale. Even if I lost my most expensive plane, I doubt I'd be out more than $400. And I wouldn't expect to hear about it on the news :)

| I'm sure the owner was relieved to get the call from local police.

Dumbfounded sounds more like it. Personally, I'd just be glad to hear it didn't do any damage when it rejoined the Earth :)

If this sort of thing happened today, I'll bet the plane would be tracked and shot down over some unpopulated area. (I assume the pilot called the FAA or somebody after losing the plane.)

snip

It's not a Cub but this is probably the report. From the NTSB site:

Greg

snip

> key=1

Thanks Vance! I just noticed the link missed underlining part of the address and was trying to shorten it a bit when your post came up. I learned something new today. :o) Greg

Hi Greg, You can go to tinyurl.com and get a button to go on your toolbar of your web browser, then when you come across a web page you want to post a link to and it is real long like that, while you are on the web page you click the tinyurl button and it will give you the shorter link. This button will work with Mozilla and Internet Explorer.

| > Do you have any references for this? This would be fascinating to | > read more about, but I can't find it online. | | It's not a Cub but this is probably the report. From the NTSB site: | |

Yup, that must be it. Thanks.

Interesting how the story mutated :)

Here is one case

another I am sure I could find you a few more, as it is anything but a rare occurance.

.

Of course, there's Stan Segalla, the Flying Farmer, who takes off without a "pilot" on board 2-3 times a week..... DC3