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#12
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Vermont Fatalities Today
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#13
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Vermont Fatalities Today
On Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 11:02:30 AM UTC-6, wrote:
On Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 12:24:58 AM UTC-4, wrote: Three people were killed in the crash of a 2-32 today. This is an especially sad situation. The pilot was Don Post, the owner of Stowe Soaring, was a good friend to all of the glider pilots flying out of Morrisville Stowe airport. For the last 10 years Don had been the backbone of the soaring movement at MVL. We of course, also want to remember all the lost souls and their family members as well. For those of you who fly 2-32s who were not checked out in them by a pilot as competent as Roy McMaster, who checked me out in 1967, it is important to remember that the 2-32 can be an especially lethal sailplane to fly that has often ended up killing the pilot, and on some occasions the passengers in the rear seat as well! A crucial factor is the laminar flow NACA airfoils that were used, that results in most stalls falling into a spin immediately. It is especially important to fly patterns well above the stall speed, at least 70 mph, and if you plan to use full dive brakes to fly the pattern at 80 mph, never pulling full dive brakes below about 60 mph as at this airspeed attempting to recover from a rapid descent results in the tail slamming down hard: this fact can be discovered by simply looking at the last bulkhead in the tail of most 2-32s, that has either been replaced or doubled over. As a former FBO who owned five 2-32s over a 16 year period, at the 1971 SSA convention I asked Bernie Carris, the test pilot at Schweitzer, why were there so many 2-32 spin ins. What he then told the group attending the FBO meeting that I believe was published in Soaring Magazine was that the 2-32 had a peculiar spin characteristic: after entering a fully developed spin, that might take more than one turn to get to, the 2-32 can then take up to two turns to recover, and if a recovery is not held for two turns, upon restarting it will take two more turns to recover. Of course, at low altitude, with typical spin entries starting with the ship appearing to roll over onto its back, there may not be enough time to even recover the spin. As a former FBO whose knowledge of these peculiar flight characteristics haunts me to this day, it was not my mission in life to expound on these sorts of issues after leaving the business 36 years ago. One of the real problems that the SSA and the FAA has today, is the fact that the old timers like myself, who are aware of the Achilles tendons that some gliders posses, do not have the time to go around pointing out the hidden dangers in the sport including the hidden dangers that only become obvious when you are also running a shop that repairs the sailplanes you sell, which in the 70s included Blanik L-13s, that had a pair of Achilles tendons that kept on bringing back to us ships that CFIGs were flying in which they landed with flaps against our advice and when low, instead of pushing the dive brakes off, pushed the flaps, off, a mistake you can make in any flapped sailplane by the way, but seemed to be a bigger problem in Blaniks than others because of the close proximity of the flap and dive brake handles. These sorts of issues, like the fact that around 30% of the ASH-26e owners on their first flights thought the brakes were locked when they were not, is just another example of this sort of human interface problem that some gliders have that repeat regularly or on first flights do not get properly publicized, one of the most common accidents that often ends up in fatalities being the canopy flopping on take off, which after another triple fatality in a 2-32 accident Schweitzer determined did not prevent a glider pilot from controlling the glider while ignoring the canopy completely and yet there is a video on the web showing how to fly a 1-34 while holding the canopy with one hand and flying with the other, and by the way, the gliders that end up crashing with pilots attempting to close their canopies instead of flying them, turn out to include other two seaters as well. Stephen Fried Stephen, Boy, you must have flown different 2-32's than I did. I took all my private/commercial training in one at the Hailey, ID airport south of Sun Valley and over the years gave many tour rides in three different ships. Yes, the stall speed was higher than most single seat models of the time but flying the pattern at 80 mph, never did that. My instructor, John Baugus, was a spin freak. Until one had demonstrated multiple times a proficiency for spins/recovery, more than one rotation, to a heading, recovery from the instant the spin started to full flight in less than on turn, one could not solo.. Yes, taking off the flaps in any glider close to the ground and in a landing attitude/speed will cause a drop not just in L-13's, I know as I had a momentary laps of thinking in a SGS 1-35C. Yes, the Blanik has the spoiler and flap handle on the same side and in close proximity which required the pilot to verify what they were doing. Isn't that the case for everything a pilot -in command - is supposed to do. Boise Pilot |
#14
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Vermont Fatalities Today
On Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 1:02:30 PM UTC-4, wrote:
On Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 12:24:58 AM UTC-4, wrote: Three people were killed in the crash of a 2-32 today. This is an especially sad situation. The pilot was Don Post, the owner of Stowe Soaring, was a good friend to all of the glider pilots flying out of Morrisville Stowe airport. For the last 10 years Don had been the backbone of the soaring movement at MVL. We of course, also want to remember all the lost souls and their family members as well. For those of you who fly 2-32s who were not checked out in them by a pilot as competent as Roy McMaster, who checked me out in 1967, it is important to remember that the 2-32 can be an especially lethal sailplane to fly that has often ended up killing the pilot, and on some occasions the passengers in the rear seat as well! A crucial factor is the laminar flow NACA airfoils that were used, that results in most stalls falling into a spin immediately. It is especially important to fly patterns well above the stall speed, at least 70 mph, and if you plan to use full dive brakes to fly the pattern at 80 mph, never pulling full dive brakes below about 60 mph as at this airspeed attempting to recover from a rapid descent results in the tail slamming down hard: this fact can be discovered by simply looking at the last bulkhead in the tail of most 2-32s, that has either been replaced or doubled over. As a former FBO who owned five 2-32s over a 16 year period, at the 1971 SSA convention I asked Bernie Carris, the test pilot at Schweitzer, why were there so many 2-32 spin ins. What he then told the group attending the FBO meeting that I believe was published in Soaring Magazine was that the 2-32 had a peculiar spin characteristic: after entering a fully developed spin, that might take more than one turn to get to, the 2-32 can then take up to two turns to recover, and if a recovery is not held for two turns, upon restarting it will take two more turns to recover. Of course, at low altitude, with typical spin entries starting with the ship appearing to roll over onto its back, there may not be enough time to even recover the spin. As a former FBO whose knowledge of these peculiar flight characteristics haunts me to this day, it was not my mission in life to expound on these sorts of issues after leaving the business 36 years ago. One of the real problems that the SSA and the FAA has today, is the fact that the old timers like myself, who are aware of the Achilles tendons that some gliders posses, do not have the time to go around pointing out the hidden dangers in the sport including the hidden dangers that only become obvious when you are also running a shop that repairs the sailplanes you sell, which in the 70s included Blanik L-13s, that had a pair of Achilles tendons that kept on bringing back to us ships that CFIGs were flying in which they landed with flaps against our advice and when low, instead of pushing the dive brakes off, pushed the flaps, off, a mistake you can make in any flapped sailplane by the way, but seemed to be a bigger problem in Blaniks than others because of the close proximity of the flap and dive brake handles. These sorts of issues, like the fact that around 30% of the ASH-26e owners on their first flights thought the brakes were locked when they were not, is just another example of this sort of human interface problem that some gliders have that repeat regularly or on first flights do not get properly publicized, one of the most common accidents that often ends up in fatalities being the canopy flopping on take off, which after another triple fatality in a 2-32 accident Schweitzer determined did not prevent a glider pilot from controlling the glider while ignoring the canopy completely and yet there is a video on the web showing how to fly a 1-34 while holding the canopy with one hand and flying with the other, and by the way, the gliders that end up crashing with pilots attempting to close their canopies instead of flying them, turn out to include other two seaters as well. Stephen Fried A very sad day indeed. Don was a friend. I was his guest a few times and we flew together a number of times. Don loved everything about flying. He was fun to be around. It is so difficult to accept this loss. Unfortunately the losses keep coming. Andrzej |
#15
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Vermont Fatalities Today
On Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 5:16:53 PM UTC-4, Boise Pilot wrote:
On Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 11:02:30 AM UTC-6, wrote: On Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 12:24:58 AM UTC-4, wrote: Three people were killed in the crash of a 2-32 today. This is an especially sad situation. The pilot was Don Post, the owner of Stowe Soaring, was a good friend to all of the glider pilots flying out of Morrisville Stowe airport. For the last 10 years Don had been the backbone of the soaring movement at MVL. We of course, also want to remember all the lost souls and their family members as well. For those of you who fly 2-32s who were not checked out in them by a pilot as competent as Roy McMaster, who checked me out in 1967, it is important to remember that the 2-32 can be an especially lethal sailplane to fly that has often ended up killing the pilot, and on some occasions the passengers in the rear seat as well! A crucial factor is the laminar flow NACA airfoils that were used, that results in most stalls falling into a spin immediately. It is especially important to fly patterns well above the stall speed, at least 70 mph, and if you plan to use full dive brakes to fly the pattern at 80 mph, never pulling full dive brakes below about 60 mph as at this airspeed attempting to recover from a rapid descent results in the tail slamming down hard: this fact can be discovered by simply looking at the last bulkhead in the tail of most 2-32s, that has either been replaced or doubled over. As a former FBO who owned five 2-32s over a 16 year period, at the 1971 SSA convention I asked Bernie Carris, the test pilot at Schweitzer, why were there so many 2-32 spin ins. What he then told the group attending the FBO meeting that I believe was published in Soaring Magazine was that the 2-32 had a peculiar spin characteristic: after entering a fully developed spin, that might take more than one turn to get to, the 2-32 can then take up to two turns to recover, and if a recovery is not held for two turns, upon restarting it will take two more turns to recover. Of course, at low altitude, with typical spin entries starting with the ship appearing to roll over onto its back, there may not be enough time to even recover the spin. As a former FBO whose knowledge of these peculiar flight characteristics haunts me to this day, it was not my mission in life to expound on these sorts of issues after leaving the business 36 years ago. One of the real problems that the SSA and the FAA has today, is the fact that the old timers like myself, who are aware of the Achilles tendons that some gliders posses, do not have the time to go around pointing out the hidden dangers in the sport including the hidden dangers that only become obvious when you are also running a shop that repairs the sailplanes you sell, which in the 70s included Blanik L-13s, that had a pair of Achilles tendons that kept on bringing back to us ships that CFIGs were flying in which they landed with flaps against our advice and when low, instead of pushing the dive brakes off, pushed the flaps, off, a mistake you can make in any flapped sailplane by the way, but seemed to be a bigger problem in Blaniks than others because of the close proximity of the flap and dive brake handles. These sorts of issues, like the fact that around 30% of the ASH-26e owners on their first flights thought the brakes were locked when they were not, is just another example of this sort of human interface problem that some gliders have that repeat regularly or on first flights do not get properly publicized, one of the most common accidents that often ends up in fatalities being the canopy flopping on take off, which after another triple fatality in a 2-32 accident Schweitzer determined did not prevent a glider pilot from controlling the glider while ignoring the canopy completely and yet there is a video on the web showing how to fly a 1-34 while holding the canopy with one hand and flying with the other, and by the way, the gliders that end up crashing with pilots attempting to close their canopies instead of flying them, turn out to include other two seaters as well. Stephen Fried Stephen, Boy, you must have flown different 2-32's than I did. I took all my private/commercial training in one at the Hailey, ID airport south of Sun Valley and over the years gave many tour rides in three different ships. Yes, the stall speed was higher than most single seat models of the time but flying the pattern at 80 mph, never did that. My instructor, John Baugus, was a spin freak. Until one had demonstrated multiple times a proficiency for spins/recovery, more than one rotation, to a heading, recovery from the instant the spin started to full flight in less than on turn, one could not solo. Yes, taking off the flaps in any glider close to the ground and in a landing attitude/speed will cause a drop not just in L-13's, I know as I had a momentary laps of thinking in a SGS 1-35C. Yes, the Blanik has the spoiler and flap handle on the same side and in close proximity which required the pilot to verify what they were doing. Isn't that the case for everything a pilot -in command - is supposed to do. Boise Pilot I was a partner in N59228, a Blanik imported by Jose Segarra and myself, the first or second to come into the United States, and it was still flying fine when I bought it around 1975, and had it certified. By that time Yankee Soaring out of Plymouth MA had imported at least 10, three of which came back in less than one year, with two different types of flap dive brake mix up accidents, one in which the glider fell out of the sky after the dive brakes were left on and the flaps closed, and the other in which the pilot closed the dive brakes and then attempted to use the flaps as dive brakes which results in a long landing. Another common accident was pilots tying Blaniks down by the wing tip skid that looks like a tie down, but is not, causing the outboard panel to fail at the aileron gap location, where the out board spar gets connected to the inboard spar, all three variations on a theme requiring a new outer panel (aileron out to tip) plus the first D tube skin. The Blanik used a very stiff alloy and employed special countersunk rivets that were also very hard and used a different countersink. I saw numerous Blanik repairs in the field over the years done by rogue shops that used neither the right skins nor the right rivets and attempted to repair instead of replacing the outer panels. Stephen Fried |
#16
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Vermont Fatalities Today
On Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 10:02:17 PM UTC-7, wrote:
...The Blanik used a very stiff alloy... Nitpick: All aluminum alloys have about the same stiffness; around 10M PSI or 70 GPa. --Bob K. |
#17
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Vermont Fatalities Today
On Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 1:58:13 PM UTC-4, Retting wrote:
Bernie Carris checked me out in the 32 and I don’t recall it being the monster portrayed on this thread. It was bit of a ‘truck’, but I enjoyed flying it, giving rides in it. And I bet Don Post, who I do not know , was an experience pilot. What ever the cause, I’m reminded of a great article in Soaring on the subject of cascading events leading to an accident, and how important for the pilot to recognize and stop the progression. The writer was also a Doctor who has written several safety related articles. Would someone find and post a link. I would like to read it again. This may have nothing to do with this accident, I am sadden and sorry to all involved, the families. R R, You are correct, cascading events frequently cause serious accidents. One killed the last FBO who operated out of our base of Operations in Plymouth MA. in which he was doing a BFR in a powered Blanik sitting on the right side of the ship, teaching the owner of a powered Blanik how to make power off landings, not using the glider runways we put in at PYM that had 1,000 foot displaced thresholds, on a day when the wind shear produced by a Buzzards Bay Sea Breeze front was significantly stronger than normal, the applicant making his first power off landing using the power runway instead of the glider runway (the last glider FBO at PYM didn't own a towplane so he was using a power glider instead, and the BFR candidate feeling comfortable in the pattern while setting up for his base turn possibly because he always had the power to use if he needed to and therefore never feeling particularly bad getting too far down wind which is the situation he had worked the ship into partly because the instructor pilot could not see the runway to the ships left from the right seat, and not getting a good view of the situation until the glider turned base, by which time it was too late the three cascading problems being wrong runway, heavy shear on final and check pilot not being able to spot the problem until it was too late, all coming into play, killing the FBO but not the BFR candidate, and if the FBO had simply chosen to continue using the glider grass strip at PYM making a normal high approach on this day he would have been able to land in the 1,000 foot grass strip short of the taxiway we always landed over on 24. We had two accidents involving tow pilots not managing L-19 flaps properly, the first situation involved a tow pilot who neglected to raise the flaps after landing for a 2-32 (the "Blue Canoe" that was used at Franconia when Jon Putnam ran it) departure,leaving them in the normal position for a 2-33 launch and a tow out at 55 mph, this mistake causing a 2-32 spin in which the front seat passenger had two broken ankles and the instructor pilot no injury. The instructor pilot sitting in the rear seat feeling uncomfortable being towed aloft at 55 mph, ended up in low tow position and being partly pulled up by the L-19, which can occur today often with ships carrying water and deciding at mid field to abort and rather than landing straight ahead he instead attempt a 180 from about 100 feet that resulted in a wing down cart wheel in which the right wing collapsed because it hit a taxiway that crushed it like a beer can that was followed by a nose contact with the taxiway that was much less severe than if the taxiway was not the point of contact. This by the way, was not the only spin in I know about with similar consequences in which a metal glider (an L-13 Blanik) spun in during take off that resulted in non-fatal injuries to the front seat passenger because the spin terminated in a wing down wing crushing event on a macadam taxiway, again in the middle of an airport, being flown by the "FBO of the year" at this field who had never flown a Blanik before and being unaware of how effective the trim of a Blanik is or that it was set back, took off like a home sick angel, the latter event in some instances resulting in the towplane not being able to pull its tail down to generate a high enough angle of attack to take off which can end up generating injuries to the tow pilot, but in this case and several others that I am too familiar with, the tow pilot, not being able to pull the tail down to take off simply pulled the release, and on three occasions that I am familiar with, ended up killing a total of four people in gliders and severely injuring a fifth. Like many glider FBOs, sooner or later, you come to believe that your main task is essentially baby sitting, not only your customers, but your CFIGs as well: in the 16 years that my wife and I ran FBOs in New England using Plymouth as our base of operations and in which we also operated out of four airports in Northern New England that included North Conway and Franconia NH, as well as Sugarbush and Morrisville Stowe in Vermont, we taught 1,000 people to fly gliders and single engine land aircraft producing many airline captains who are now retiring, two AE professors at MIT, a famous children's book author, and even a glider pilot Marc Ramsey, who has flown several 1,000 KM flights, not to mention, Dale masters, who gave me an aural test on I think his commercial glider check ride, that was just as off beat as the articles he writes for Soaring today. Now, in the process we had a single deliberate suicide in a sailplane and produced a single CFIG who eventually turned out to be one of those pilots that everyone knows one of his stunts is going to be his last, which it was. However, during these 26 FBO years, we knew 20 people to at least say hello to, who died in power planes, and over that same period knew only four glider pilots, one of whom I attempted to counsel with one of my best friends in the movement, Raouf Ismail (the founder of Cambridge Aero Instruments) who had a part time employee who was a junior at MIT and we both observed making a very slow landing (just above stall speed) in a Ventus B he had rebuilt when he worked for Klaus Holigaus (who I also knew) and who died three days later on a day when Ted Falk an experienced context pilot flying on the same day that David Shapiro spun in about four miles from Sugarbush on a day without wave but with very violent rotor to say the least decided soon after getting off tow, that winning a regionals was not worth risking his life, and pulled out the brakes and landed carrying adequate pattern airspeed to compensate for the rotors he accurately predicted were sitting right over the airport, landed and put his ship away. To get a good idea about how bitchy making landings in the mountains can be, at a site (Sugarbush) where its possible to get a low point at 2500 feet in the primary rotor with the airport sitting only 900 feet below this altitude and the secondary rotor right above the airport and which on a single day when John MaCone who pioneered the Sugarbush Warren airport, had every one of his polyethylene ropes break on a great wave day forcing him to replace them with nylon the following day. To see just how bitchy the rotors in Vermont can be (which are not nearly as bitchy as the Mount Washington rotor can be) read David Nadler's description of the 86 Sugarbush Regionals at which there was another glider fatality, and in which two pilots attempting high speed finishes attempted to pull up on final and the down burst was so strong they could not, both essentially spinning in with no injuries. Again, airspeed is crucial on some days, and flying our 2-32s at the indicated airspeeds that Jim Doyle and Roy McMaster dictated to me to use, flying out of an 1800 foot field in Nashua, that never presented any spot landing problems, and like one of my airline captains who worked for us for many years and who would replace me as an FAA designee after we sold out in 1982 told me, the 2-32 flying at 80 mph felt just like a DC-9. So why not fly 2-32 approaches that will guarantee that you will not spin in on the horse farm that sits right next to Sugarbush airport that David Nadler describes here. http://www.nadler.com/public/Nadler_...g_May_1987.pdf We are still in shock over the loss of Postie. Don was a very experienced pilot who often flew his Stemme out to Nevada and back. And he was a great FBO and a dear friend for many years who was the third FBO to take over a gliderport that we were hired by the state to run in 1978, and where we built a hangar so that winter power operations would be possible, that right now, the state of Vermont has been attempting to put out of business! In 2013 we were told by the head of Vermont Aeronautics that after 2014 when they would spend $4M redoing the power runway, we could no longer be able to use the glider turf operating area that I originally obtained waivers for in 1978 from what then was the Portland GADO. And sure enough, after the 2014 work, we discovered that all of the issues that appeared after the 1984 runway work, re-appeared, along with the almost complete elimination of what is called the ROFA (the Runway Object Free Area) that starts at the boundary of the RSA (Runway Safety Area) that in the case of Morrisville Stowe starts at the macadam runway and extends the 37.5 feet to the ROFA, the RSA and ROFA often being used as a glider turf operating area, that except for 250 feet, did not exist, as a pair of 1,000 foot long ditches that were 10 feet in width and three to four feet deep ended being crucially placed, at the RSA ROFA boundary, and in other regions of the glider operating area, were left unairworthy either not being mowed or containing D8 tracks. These 1,000 foot ditches that were supposedly needed for drainage (MVL is essentially sitting on a gravel pit), and were added by the ANR (agency of natural resources) whose first victim was a PA-11 whose pilot knew about them and on his way to being blown into the East side ditch, hit full brakes and flipped over. Now, maybe one of the reasons I am so irritated with the state of things, is the fact that we can't get the local FSDO to come out and even look at these damn things, that anyone who has ever seen them, immediately thinks they are looking at tank traps. Finally, Don, like Peter Fuss and me, also owned an ASH-26E. Eric, my approximate statistics on first flights with dive brakes not locked, came from a point in time many years ago, when I sat on the ASH-26E site, and as I remember it, after admitting it happened to me on my first tow (the ship I bought had two flights in its log book and on these two flights the owner who used to fly out to California to fly with Dale (Masters) was scared enough for the first owner to put it back in the trailer which he then stuck in a hangar for two years) in which I didn't yet trust the engine and being my first flight, would have probably still taken a tow, the problem being the sealing pressure of the dive brakes on my ship which made it feel as if the brakes were locked when they were not and which I discussed with Eric at the time, and after mentioning it on the ASH-26E site was amazed at how many other pilots had the same problem on their first flights, one of which resulted in an accident. This problem is not really a problem of the ASH-26E, like the landing gear that Dick Johnson needed 12 tries to retract, these are features of what is a really superb sailplane. Higher performance gliders with L/Ds approaching 50 or more, like the ASH-25 that I just picked up so I could give my grandchildren rides, has characteristics like those of the ASH-26E that are unique to them that have to be learned thoroughly, but it certainly helps if the ship you are moving into next comes from the same vendor, as at least the controls in the cockpit will remain very familiar, which will mean you can employ them by what the FAA calls by wrote, which means the first time you go for the flaps to pull it from slot 2 to slot 4, and you end up pulling the brake instead, similar to the Blanik L-13 problem, you are so familiar with the ship, that you instantly know precisely what you did wrong, and being careful to instantly lock the brake, move your left hand up to the flap and ease them back into slot 4, climb position, automatically, by wrote, without even thinking or taking your eyes off the ASI and tachometer. That this didn't happen to the three ships Blaniks we sold our first year and came back soon thereafter whose CFIGs ignored our warning to not use the flaps, and to leave your hand on the brakes, is not all that surprising, many clubs then had CFIGs who did not have anytime in flapped ships and it just so happens that the flap and dive brake handles were deliberately colored to help to wash out pilots in iron curtain country air forces. What I don't have the time to bring up were the other issues introduced by FAA Belgium during the certification process that included leaving on a bungy tow hook that had no release and looked more like a Schweitzer tow hook than the actual tow hook, this problem only causing one ship to get totaled that was sold by another dealer (we removed the clips from these tow hooks on the ships we sold). Steve Fried |
#18
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Vermont Fatalities Today
My sincere condolences to family and friends of the three people who died in
this tragedy. Though I knew none of them, my heart grieves nonetheless. I also wish to thank Mr. Steve Fried for his obviously heartfelt, thoughtful, personally informed and broadly knowledgeable insights occasioned by, and very generally related to, the tragedy. A number have shed light on some fatal soaring accidents about which a part of my brain has pondered off and on for up to decades. Having - as I know more than a few RASidents have - lost *way* too many friends and acquaintances to this incredibly uplifting and gratifying sporting activity, I've long struggled to come to grips with the emotional extremes associated with it, while never being in doubt as to continuing to love it for what it is as a life-enhancing activity. There is mere "existence"....and then there's *life" - as in worth living! If any RASident ever finds him or her self occasionally inclined to dismissively think something along the lines of, "Oh, I'd *never* do this or that sort of silly/stupid/thoughtless/whatever thing that led to this or that sort of fatal soaring accident (or merely nearly-crunchworthy incident)," please try and not "go there." IMO, some forms of self-doubt are healthier than their absence. Flight safety and fun are two sides of the same coin, in my view. Sadly, Bob W. --- This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. https://www.avg.com |
#19
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Vermont Fatalities Today
This article has an interview with the NTSB investigator:
https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/...ed/1142075002/ |
#20
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Vermont Fatalities Today
On Friday, August 31, 2018 at 1:40:09 AM UTC-7, wrote:
On Thursday, August 30, 2018 at 1:58:13 PM UTC-4, Retting wrote: Bernie Carris checked me out in the 32 and I don’t recall it being the monster portrayed on this thread. It was bit of a ‘truck’, but I enjoyed flying it, giving rides in it. And I bet Don Post, who I do not know , was an experience pilot. What ever the cause, I’m reminded of a great article in Soaring on the subject of cascading events leading to an accident, and how important for the pilot to recognize and stop the progression. The writer was also a Doctor who has written several safety related articles. Would someone find and post a link. I would like to read it again. This may have nothing to do with this accident, I am sadden and sorry to all involved, the families. R R, You are correct, cascading events frequently cause serious accidents. One killed the last FBO who operated out of our base of Operations in Plymouth MA. in which he was doing a BFR in a powered Blanik sitting on the right side of the ship, teaching the owner of a powered Blanik how to make power off landings, not using the glider runways we put in at PYM that had 1,000 foot displaced thresholds, on a day when the wind shear produced by a Buzzards Bay Sea Breeze front was significantly stronger than normal, the applicant making his first power off landing using the power runway instead of the glider runway (the last glider FBO at PYM didn't own a towplane so he was using a power glider instead, and the BFR candidate feeling comfortable in the pattern while setting up for his base turn possibly because he always had the power to use if he needed to and therefore never feeling particularly bad getting too far down wind which is the situation he had worked the ship into partly because the instructor pilot could not see the runway to the ships left from the right seat, and not getting a good view of the situation until the glider turned base, by which time it was too late the three cascading problems being wrong runway, heavy shear on final and check pilot not being able to spot the problem until it was too late, all coming into play, killing the FBO but not the BFR candidate, and if the FBO had simply chosen to continue using the glider grass strip at PYM making a normal high approach on this day he would have been able to land in the 1,000 foot grass strip short of the taxiway we always landed over on 24. We had two accidents involving tow pilots not managing L-19 flaps properly, the first situation involved a tow pilot who neglected to raise the flaps after landing for a 2-32 (the "Blue Canoe" that was used at Franconia when Jon Putnam ran it) departure,leaving them in the normal position for a 2-33 launch and a tow out at 55 mph, this mistake causing a 2-32 spin in which the front seat passenger had two broken ankles and the instructor pilot no injury. The instructor pilot sitting in the rear seat feeling uncomfortable being towed aloft at 55 mph, ended up in low tow position and being partly pulled up by the L-19, which can occur today often with ships carrying water and deciding at mid field to abort and rather than landing straight ahead he instead attempt a 180 from about 100 feet that resulted in a wing down cart wheel in which the right wing collapsed because it hit a taxiway that crushed it like a beer can that was followed by a nose contact with the taxiway that was much less severe than if the taxiway was not the point of contact. This by the way, was not the only spin in I know about with similar consequences in which a metal glider (an L-13 Blanik) spun in during take off that resulted in non-fatal injuries to the front seat passenger because the spin terminated in a wing down wing crushing event on a macadam taxiway, again in the middle of an airport, being flown by the "FBO of the year" at this field who had never flown a Blanik before and being unaware of how effective the trim of a Blanik is or that it was set back, took off like a home sick angel, the latter event in some instances resulting in the towplane not being able to pull its tail down to generate a high enough angle of attack to take off which can end up generating injuries to the tow pilot, but in this case and several others that I am too familiar with, the tow pilot, not being able to pull the tail down to take off simply pulled the release, and on three occasions that I am familiar with, ended up killing a total of four people in gliders and severely injuring a fifth. Like many glider FBOs, sooner or later, you come to believe that your main task is essentially baby sitting, not only your customers, but your CFIGs as well: in the 16 years that my wife and I ran FBOs in New England using Plymouth as our base of operations and in which we also operated out of four airports in Northern New England that included North Conway and Franconia NH, as well as Sugarbush and Morrisville Stowe in Vermont, we taught 1,000 people to fly gliders and single engine land aircraft producing many airline captains who are now retiring, two AE professors at MIT, a famous children's book author, and even a glider pilot Marc Ramsey, who has flown several 1,000 KM flights, not to mention, Dale masters, who gave me an aural test on I think his commercial glider check ride, that was just as off beat as the articles he writes for Soaring today. Now, in the process we had a single deliberate suicide in a sailplane and produced a single CFIG who eventually turned out to be one of those pilots that everyone knows one of his stunts is going to be his last, which it was. However, during these 26 FBO years, we knew 20 people to at least say hello to, who died in power planes, and over that same period knew only four glider pilots, one of whom I attempted to counsel with one of my best friends in the movement, Raouf Ismail (the founder of Cambridge Aero Instruments) who had a part time employee who was a junior at MIT and we both observed making a very slow landing (just above stall speed) in a Ventus B he had rebuilt when he worked for Klaus Holigaus (who I also knew) and who died three days later on a day when Ted Falk an experienced context pilot flying on the same day that David Shapiro spun in about four miles from Sugarbush on a day without wave but with very violent rotor to say the least decided soon after getting off tow, that winning a regionals was not worth risking his life, and pulled out the brakes and landed carrying adequate pattern airspeed to compensate for the rotors he accurately predicted were sitting right over the airport, landed and put his ship away. To get a good idea about how bitchy making landings in the mountains can be, at a site (Sugarbush) where its possible to get a low point at 2500 feet in the primary rotor with the airport sitting only 900 feet below this altitude and the secondary rotor right above the airport and which on a single day when John MaCone who pioneered the Sugarbush Warren airport, had every one of his polyethylene ropes break on a great wave day forcing him to replace them with nylon the following day. To see just how bitchy the rotors in Vermont can be (which are not nearly as bitchy as the Mount Washington rotor can be) read David Nadler's description of the 86 Sugarbush Regionals at which there was another glider fatality, and in which two pilots attempting high speed finishes attempted to pull up on final and the down burst was so strong they could not, both essentially spinning in with no injuries. Again, airspeed is crucial on some days, and flying our 2-32s at the indicated airspeeds that Jim Doyle and Roy McMaster dictated to me to use, flying out of an 1800 foot field in Nashua, that never presented any spot landing problems, and like one of my airline captains who worked for us for many years and who would replace me as an FAA designee after we sold out in 1982 told me, the 2-32 flying at 80 mph felt just like a DC-9. So why not fly 2-32 approaches that will guarantee that you will not spin in on the horse farm that sits right next to Sugarbush airport that David Nadler describes here. http://www.nadler.com/public/Nadler_...g_May_1987.pdf We are still in shock over the loss of Postie. Don was a very experienced pilot who often flew his Stemme out to Nevada and back. And he was a great FBO and a dear friend for many years who was the third FBO to take over a gliderport that we were hired by the state to run in 1978, and where we built a hangar so that winter power operations would be possible, that right now, the state of Vermont has been attempting to put out of business! In 2013 we were told by the head of Vermont Aeronautics that after 2014 when they would spend $4M redoing the power runway, we could no longer be able to use the glider turf operating area that I originally obtained waivers for in 1978 from what then was the Portland GADO. And sure enough, after the 2014 work, we discovered that all of the issues that appeared after the 1984 runway work, re-appeared, along with the almost complete elimination of what is called the ROFA (the Runway Object Free Area) that starts at the boundary of the RSA (Runway Safety Area) that in the case of Morrisville Stowe starts at the macadam runway and extends the 37.5 feet to the ROFA, the RSA and ROFA often being used as a glider turf operating area, that except for 250 feet, did not exist, as a pair of 1,000 foot long ditches that were 10 feet in width and three to four feet deep ended being crucially placed, at the RSA ROFA boundary, and in other regions of the glider operating area, were left unairworthy either not being mowed or containing D8 tracks. These 1,000 foot ditches that were supposedly needed for drainage (MVL is essentially sitting on a gravel pit), and were added by the ANR (agency of natural resources) whose first victim was a PA-11 whose pilot knew about them and on his way to being blown into the East side ditch, hit full brakes and flipped over. Now, maybe one of the reasons I am so irritated with the state of things, is the fact that we can't get the local FSDO to come out and even look at these damn things, that anyone who has ever seen them, immediately thinks they are looking at tank traps. Finally, Don, like Peter Fuss and me, also owned an ASH-26E. Eric, my approximate statistics on first flights with dive brakes not locked, came from a point in time many years ago, when I sat on the ASH-26E site, and as I remember it, after admitting it happened to me on my first tow (the ship I bought had two flights in its log book and on these two flights the owner who used to fly out to California to fly with Dale (Masters) was scared enough for the first owner to put it back in the trailer which he then stuck in a hangar for two years) in which I didn't yet trust the engine and being my first flight, would have probably still taken a tow, the problem being the sealing pressure of the dive brakes on my ship which made it feel as if the brakes were locked when they were not and which I discussed with Eric at the time, and after mentioning it on the ASH-26E site was amazed at how many other pilots had the same problem on their first flights, one of which resulted in an accident. This problem is not really a problem of the ASH-26E, like the landing gear that Dick Johnson needed 12 tries to retract, these are features of what is a really superb sailplane. Higher performance gliders with L/Ds approaching 50 or more, like the ASH-25 that I just picked up so I could give my grandchildren rides, has characteristics like those of the ASH-26E that are unique to them that have to be learned thoroughly, but it certainly helps if the ship you are moving into next comes from the same vendor, as at least the controls in the cockpit will remain very familiar, which will mean you can employ them by what the FAA calls by wrote, which means the first time you go for the flaps to pull it from slot 2 to slot 4, and you end up pulling the brake instead, similar to the Blanik L-13 problem, you are so familiar with the ship, that you instantly know precisely what you did wrong, and being careful to instantly lock the brake, move your left hand up to the flap and ease them back into slot 4, climb position, automatically, by wrote, without even thinking or taking your eyes off the ASI and tachometer. That this didn't happen to the three ships Blaniks we sold our first year and came back soon thereafter whose CFIGs ignored our warning to not use the flaps, and to leave your hand on the brakes, is not all that surprising, many clubs then had CFIGs who did not have anytime in flapped ships and it just so happens that the flap and dive brake handles were deliberately colored to help to wash out pilots in iron curtain country air forces. What I don't have the time to bring up were the other issues introduced by FAA Belgium during the certification process that included leaving on a bungy tow hook that had no release and looked more like a Schweitzer tow hook than the actual tow hook, this problem only causing one ship to get totaled that was sold by another dealer (we removed the clips from these tow hooks on the ships we sold). Steve Fried Steve, You must be setting some sort of record for long sentences. One of them broke the meter at 293 words. Consider shortening them and your posts will be MUCH more readable. Tom |
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