Cle Elum crash on NTSB

On Nov 3, 11:13*am, Alex wrote:
On Nov 3, 7:03*am, wrote:









On Nov 2, 6:05*pm, John Cochrane
wrote:

On Nov 2, 3:39*pm, Ramy wrote:

On Nov 1, 6:54*am, JJ Sinclair wrote:

*Bill D wrote..........
If the glider has transitioned into a spiral dive, and the pilot does
nothing or uses spin recovery controls, it's going to get nasty -
especially at low altitudes.

I believe the way to distinguish between a spin or a spiral is to take
a quick peek at the airspeed indicator. If it is reading 60 knots or
more, you are in a spiral, not a spin and need to roll the wings level
and pull the nose up to the horizon. If you apply spin recovery
controls (stick forward and opposite rudder) you will find yourself
going straight down right now!
Cheers,
JJ

One important lesson from this discussion, regardless if it is related
to this accident or not, is the importance of practicing a spin
recovery as well as spiral recovery. However when the pilot is the one
who initiate the spin and/or the spiral dive, the recovery is straight
forward, since your controls are likely in extreem position and since
you initiated the manouver all you need is to basically reverse what
you did.
In a real stall/spin, there is the lement of surprise, and the
controls are likely near neutral so the recovery is not as obvious as
in practice. As such, the practice should be intitated by someone else
than the pilot.
So next time you do your BFR or fly with an instructor, instead of
practcing stall/spin/spiral recovery the traditional way where the
pilot initiate the manouver, ask the instructor to initiate the stall/
spin/spiral, preferably without warning, and let you take over the
control to recover. This should be a standard part of instructions and
BFRs. The current method mostly teaches you how to inititate spin and
spirals but not how to recover from accidental one.

Ramy

It seems to me the lessons of this crash are less likely in the
"improper operation of the controls" general area and more in the
"aeronautical decision making" area. What was the decision-making
process that led to even trying a ground tow behind a 200 foot rope,
with a plan to do a 180 at the end of the runway? To what extent was
camera pressure involved? Getting to the end of the runway at 200
feet, slow speed, and nowhere to land ahead seems the question, not
whether the pilot has a miraculous touch to avoid what's going to
happen next.

Though the FAA and flight instruction is focusing more and more on
decision making, the NTSB seems not so interested, so it is unlikely
we will hear the story well investigated from this aspect.

John Cochrane- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I agree strongly with John.
When doing something like this, there is HUGE pressure to do what the
guy running the photo shoot wants done. He is in control of the
"customer" satisfaction and the money. He is also an artist and likely
not a scientist or aviator. He will ask for things that may become
marginal, or worse, and assumes the pilot will say no if there is a
problem with safety.
This is a really hard situation to be in.
We walked away from a partially completed project many years ago when
we were being pushed too far in our judgement in terms of safety. It
was hard, we lost some money, there were tears- but nobody got hurt.
The sub topic of this related to spin recovery has little to do with
this accident. At these altitudes, there is no ability to recover if
the glider departs. The only way not to crash is to maintain
controllability in the first place.
FWIW
UH

What happened might have looked very similar to these
two videos on YouTube that most of have already seen. *How he got
himself into the
situation was different, and the how and why of that is open to
analysis and speculation,
but the end result, a *stall/spin from very low,
unrecoverable altitude, was the same. *I think the pilots in the
videos survived,
but they were very lucky.

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfFGN...eature=related
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxbulrrQVig

If this fact has been mentioned previously, I have missed it. This
commercial idea was dreamed up and successfully filmed previously in
Northern California perhaps in the early 90's. The tow vehicle was a
Toyota truck with the same concept of demonstrating the power of the
vehicle by launching a glider from a ground start. I sort of wonder
if Cadillac was aware of that campaign and wanted a similar look. I
think that commercial had a low pass and footage of trailer towing. I
think at the end of the commercial there was a shot of the actor
playing the driver jumping up in slow motion next to the vehicle. I
have tried to find the commercial on you-tube and there are hundreds
of the old spots but this particular one I could not come up with. If
someone can find it and provide a link I would love to see it.
Chuck (99)