On Fri, 28 Nov 2003 15:03:35 GMT, Robert Moore
wrote in Message-Id:
:

Larry Dighera wrote

Another question that no one seems to be asking is, what
prevented the pilot and student from employing their parachutes
as would be expected?

Getting out of an airplane with a parachute was difficult enough
that the Navy required us to complete a "bailout" training program
using a T-34 bailout trainer. It consisted of the fuselage and
no wings but a lot of foam stuff to land on. The engine was running.
Not a simple task even considering that the trainer was static.

In your experience, specifically what did you find hindered your
egress?

I have a hard time imagining someone (trained, or not) getting out
of an airplane with one wing missing doing it's death gyrations.

Thankfully, I have no firsthand experience bailing out of a damaged
aircraft, but I can imagine the difficulty accomplishing egress under
hi-g.

If you track the survivors of damaged aerobatic aircraft, you will
find very few who successfully bailed out even though they were
wearing parachutes.

I'm having difficulty parsing that sentence. Are you saying those
survivors rode their damaged aerobatic aircraft to the ground, because
they couldn't manage egress, and yet they survived?! Or are you
saying, that many survivors of damaged aerobatic aircraft successfully
bailed out without waring parachutes? :-)

I know of only one airshow pilot in recent years
that completed a successful bailout.

How many do you know of that were unsuccessful?

FAR 91.307 is nothing but a big farce. I strap a parachute on my 70
year old neighbor and go out to enjoy some acro in a YAK-52, now we
are perfectly legal, but what are his chances of using that parachute
if required?...I'm not even required to instruct him on the location
of the rip cord!

I have no idea what his chances might be.

I'm not sure that I could get out of an airplane
gyrating with one wing missing, the forces encountered might even
prevent one from raising his arms to open the canopy.

With only one wing generating lift, I would expect the aircraft to
roll rapidly (something like a snap roll) in the direction of the
missing wing in a near vertical, nose-down attitude. If the pilot
were positioned above the CG, it would seem that centrifugal force
would act to force him toward the canopy. However, if the roll was
not occurring centered on the longitudinal axis (as in a barrel roll),
that wouldn't be the case. It's difficult to predict.