Plane crash – cartwheel at Oshkosh

July 28th, 2010

Just heard about a plane crash at Oshkosh – plane broke in two but remarkably the pilot and passenger were not badly hurt.

General Yeager had stopped me from a bad practice I had developed last summer when approaching a runway too fast and too high – slowing down the aircraft too much by raising the angle of attack dangerously high. He said that especially in the event of gust of wind, I wouldn’t have enough time to get my nose down to gain speed to prevent a stall.

I think I have more go-arounds per approach than anyone :-) and fortunately did not ever get close to a stall, but I sure listened and got a lesson from my former instructor in the plane in which I’m qualified to fly solo AND in the plane I used to fly a lot with General Yeager. In each, we went above and beyond figuratively…and literally :-) – through various scenarios since I was ready for more in depth and understanding.

The crash at Oshkosh from what little we have heard – was just what Gen Yeager warned me against. The guy was too fast and too high, about to overshoot the runway, so slowed himself down by too high an angle of attack. And stalled. He recovered but then apparently stalled after the recovery. He hit the runway with the plane’s wing, the plane did a 180 degrees and the fuselage broke in two.

Pretty exciting.  This same guy flew an ultra light into a wire, flipped, landed unconscious in a lake. Wires can be very hard to see – that’s why buzzing is not a great idea especially for the uninitiated and uncareful. Fortunately, a boat was there with an EMT guy – they fished the pilot out. Otherwise he would have drowned.

That’s 2 lives.

I sure didn’t need this pilot to illustrate the danger of what I was doing – General Yeager telling me was enough. But it sure puts a fine point on it.

c. GCYI

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