When will we learn?

The big twins start so easily and idle so smoothly making it very easy for someone to get too familiar and too at ease with them. I use both the 32 inch composite and wooden props on a DA-150. Either is capable of doing equal damage. I also won't be a party to anyone starting engines of any size when they have a transmitter strap around their neck, even if they have it tucked inside their shirt. Here is hoping for a speedy recovery from the injurys.

When will we learn? When it bites you in the ass...

Hope for a speedy recovery here...

I wish Charlie a speedy recovery.

Ed Cregger

Aeronautics

Agreed all the way.

Aviation whether it be 1 to 1 scale or simply models, one let-down of the guard can cause serious problems.

July 12th; Royal Historic Flight lost its Fairy Firefly in an airshow when the pilot snapped out of a low altitud maneuver, then retried same maneuver at an even lower altitude & airspeed. Pilot and crew member dead. Comment: Very experienced pilot let ego before the crowd over-ride common sense. See a lot of that in RC

RC is the same, especially with the current Buy and Fly syndrome, along with the hot-shot "Watch This" attitude. In 1 to 1 scale those words are part of the famous FIVE: "Now Watch This" followed by "Oh Sh-t". (Oh Sh-t is by far the last words on voice recorders.)

Now in my younger days, I, too, did a number of DUMB things in airplanes. I was lucky and got by. Now I get some sneers at the field because I preach a bit too much on safety. Oh Well!

HC

When you get to preach too much on safety, that at least means you're ALIVE to preach. Preach on, cain! Dr.1 Driver "There's a Hun in the sun!"

I'm an EAA member and I was at AirVenture, and saw the plane up close.

The implication above is that he was performing a reckless maneuver. Actually, he had reported problems with the gearshift for the engine. He was attempting to make an emergency landing on the road near the Midway Geyser Basin, but didn't make it. Please get your facts straight.

I haven't had any serious accidents. The worst thing I ever did was stick my hand into a spinning prop to retrieve the glow plug battery. My brain had turned off momentarily, probably because the engine was mounted upside down and I wasn't used to that configuration and it threw off my routine. It took the top layer of skin off in a small area so now I have a scar there. No big deal. However, I am a very cautious person by nature, and I don't know exactly why. It could be because I am the youngest in a large family and I got to watch everybody else screw up. I don't know... Maybe it's genetic. My kids (ages 4 and 5) are very cautious. They frequently tell me things such as "Be careful Dad. That's dangerous!" I find that comforting because I don't think I'll have to warn them all the time to be safe. But when you think about it, RC is full of potential hazards. A guy here in Kansas City cut his finger off with a G-38 propeller. The doctors sewed it back on and it is as good as new, but I'll bet he felt stupid. We even had a death at our flying field. The square steel tube mast for the windsock was up on blocks to be painted and a kid was playing on it. It rolled off the blocks, right over the kid, and crushed him.

The real point is that we are not stupid, and we shouldn't have to be warned over and over. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe after you see a guy bleeding or you heard about somebody cutting through arteries and bones and then you go and do the same thing yourself, then maybe you are stupid. I have a friend who flies models and is a very successful professional guitar player. He doesn't get his fingers anywhere near the propeller. He's what I would call a smart person, because he can foresee a lot of potential trouble for a 7 fingered guitar player. And those big gas engines and composite propellers look like a load of fun, but frankly I don't think I really want to mess with them. I have had a battery failure before with an OS26 powered plane, and I hate to think of what would have happened with a 50cc engine on a 25 pound aircraft. I wouldn't want to be the guy who was supposed to be in charge of such a plane and not have any control at all.

That sounds a whole lot better, and I hope you, faceless creature, are correct, as I fell in love with that beautiful machine the first picture of it I saw. I will write to "Air Classics" and inform them that a nameless internet critter has the true facts. It is certainly a better world when one of 41 years of professional aviation, finds that an accident, first reported as a dum-dum was not totally such. Yet, methinks I would have chosen a less "hilly" route for cross-country in a single-engined experimental aircraft. Thanks for the *facts*.

I sure don't have the hours that you do but I have flown enough to thought I new most of the controls for Big Round engines. The only thing similar to a gear shifter that I remember is the Hi-Lo Blower lever to change from Lo to Hi Supercharger.

Please explain to me the Gear Shift problem he was having on that airplane.

Dave Carr Old Fart

The best bet is that the gear shift was an analogy for the benefit of the press. The problem he was having was with the constant speed prop, not constant speeding.

-- Jim in NC

AH SO, I guess that would make sense. I suspect that plane could be a handful if you had to slow way down to try and keep a runaway prop from blowing the engine.

DEC

From the Casper Star-Tribune:

"Wright, who had been flying planes for 30 years, stopped in Gillette to refuel about 90 minutes before the crash.

"The air's thin enough here that the propeller gets stuck in low gear," he told The Gillette News-Record. "I'm just trying to get home."

Wright had been having problems switching gears as he flew over northeastern Wyoming but had planned to stop in Gillette to refuel anyway, the newspaper reported.

Shortly before flying out of Gillette-Campbell County Airport, he said he was going to attempt to take off in second gear. Whether gear problems were responsible for the crash is unclear. The FAA said the cause is not known."

-------------------------------------------------------------------- NTSB Preliminary report: NTSB Identification: DEN03FA138

This is preliminary information, subject to change, and may contain errors. Any errors in this report will be corrected when the final report has been completed.

On August 4, 2003, at approximately 1830 mountain daylight time, a Wright, Hughes 1-B homebuilt, N258Y, was destroyed during impact with terrain in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. The private pilot, the sole occupant in the airplane, was fatally injured. The flight was being conducted under Title 14 CFR Part 91. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the cross-country flight that originated at approximately

Witnesses said that the airplane was flying south to north at 300 to 400 feet above the ground. They said that the airplane pitched to the right and impacted the ground. Subsequently, a large postimpact fireball was observed.

Isn't that special? You don't know me, but Bill Calkins told me all about you.

ROFLOL!

Sorry to hear this. I do wish him a speedy recovery.

Ken Day

attempting an emergency landing in the Midway geyser basin in Yellowstone National Park when he changed course to avoid the onlookers, and lost his life in the process. Do you have other sources Mr. Cain?

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

There ya go, cloudin' the issue with _facts_.

Silly goose.

Cheers, Fred McClellan the dash plumber at mindspring dot com

Obviously he didn't tell you how to work a twit filter . . .

Do us a favor.

Learn how.

Helps keep the noise floor way down there, y'know, not having to wade past long quotations of Horace's bullshit to get at the real posts in the news group. Cheers, Fred McClellan the dash plumber at mindspring dot com

Yep, almost everyone can relate to an RC accident....here are two more

A local flyer some years ago placed his transmitter to his right on the floor. Knelt in front of an unsecured (Quadra powered) plane to fire it up, the throttle was set way down and the trim lever to the idle position. Earlier he'd been using a piece of rag to clean up spilled oil and it had left it there on the floor. The engine fired up, the prop picked up the rag and threw it at the transmitter, you can likely guess the rest. Suffice to say the there were something like 200 stiches involved to his chin, upper chest and hands.

The unluckiest guy alive has to be the flier who severed a couple of his fingers during a float fly at a rural western Canadian venue, then spent