cscotthendry

9 hours ago, aro said:

 

 

I am very skeptical about the radio not working. They go to a lot of trouble to show that the faults in the antenna were pre-existing, and not a result of the crash. But that means it must have been a problem a long time before the crash. How long can you operate in that environment without someone noticing that your radio isn't transmitting? More likely the radio call was over-transmitted, or just so routine that people couldn't specifically remember it.

On Monday, I did a lap of Moreton and Straddy. There were these same helis flying out of Tangalooma resort. 
On at least three occasions, I heard one of the helis step on other radio transmissions. That all occurred within a ten minute period. It was quite clear that the pilot of the heli couldn't hear the other aircraft's transmission, before he keyed up to make his own broadcast.

I can tell you that I was keeping a very keen eye and ear on these cowboys as I flew overhead of them.

Thanks for sharing, Gary!

And thanks for the plug for our series👍

Hi Keith.

Thanks for the invite. I'm currently near Manchester, heading next out to Wales.

Eventually we're heading down South and we'll try to engineer a pass through your way.

Scott.

G'day UK fliers.

I'm touring in the UK and would welcome a catchup if schedules and timing permit.

I'm currently in Barnsley heading for Wales and then South to eventually make our way to Reading.

Any takers?

7 hours ago, Garfly said:

 

Some busy circuit work, Dan Gryder style:

 

 

 

I would never attempt something like that, especially in such a busy circuit. But I do regularly communicate with other traffic, in the circuit and elsewhere.

1 hour ago, Mike Gearon said:

and 2.  What if you just finished your one call and then another airplane switches to your frequency one second later. They don’t know that you exist until your next call

 

 

 

Or a similar situation that happened to me:

You key up the transmitter to make your Joining call at the same instant another plane does. Neither of you hear the other's call and you end up at the same point in the circuit.

I had joined the circuit at Gympie, made a joining call  and heard no other radio calls and neither did my pax who is a commercial pilot. Just as I was about to key the TX for my Base call, I heard "Gympie traffic, Jabiru xxxx turning base for 14." and a second later a Jabiru popped out about 20 feet below me and turned base!

LOL The 146 was four vaccuum cleaners flying in formation.

But seriously, I always wondered at the design decision that equipped such a small aircraft with four engines.

I'll third that, call on joining and on base … but for everyone's sake, Base call WITH intentions.

Also, while I'm on a rant, will people please give an ETA to circuit when doing their 10 mile inbound call! Please don't make the rest of us have to calculate if we're going to be in conflict with a trike or a RV rocket ship. It's easy enough to get your GPS or EFB to show you a circuit ETA so you don't have to do maths in your head, which BTW you SHOULD be able to do for your aircraft from when you did your Nav training.

This was investigated by RAAUS and ATSB with input from the manufacturer.

I'm beginning to see from some of the posts here what the RAAUS people warned me about wild speculation about crashes.

Yes, the pilot is a very experienced pilot and also a friend of mine.

He claimed that they lost longitudinal control and then pulled the chute.

My contention is that once you deploy the chute you could end up on a building, in powerlines or a lake.

In the pics that I have, the H.Stab was still attached to the aircraft even after a devastating impact with the ground.

In spite of that we have to take the word of the people aboard the aircraft that it was uncontrollable.

I'm satisfied that the pilot would not have pulled the chute if he thought the aircraft could have been safely landed. He loved that airplane and so did his wife.

As it turns out it wasn't a structural failure. A loose tailplane mounting caused loss of longitudinal control and they pulled the chute.

The manufacturer's opinion (and mine after viewing the crash pics) is that the vertical fin was broken off by the parachute straps.

It appears that just before touchdown, the chute snagged a large tree and yanked the plane out of the air. It looked like as the aircraft slewed round, the parachute straps raked across the tail breaking it off. 
600kg of aircraft and pax on one end of the straps, a huge gum tree on the other end and the poor little tail in the middle. Something had to give!

And that IMO is one of the major drawbacks of recovery chutes. Once you deploy it, you totally lose control of where you're going to end up. They could have ended up in the middle of a dam or a lake, or on top of someone's house etc.

The feedback I've had so far is that is could be related to a SB issued by the manufacturer concerning the H stabilizer mounts. But I'm a bit puzzled how that relates to the V fin breaking off the way the picture shows.

I've included the pic from the newspaper article.

11 hours ago, Roundsounds said:

Stick position can correlate to exceeding the critical angle. The “stall stick position” seems to be gathering momentum at a similar rate to the Beggs Muller spin recovery technique, which I see as a dangerous trend. There are a number of factors where the critical angle can be exceeded without achieving the “SSP”. CofG and gusts being a couple. 
How would a pilot respond differently in the case described in this post given it had / had not stalled? 

I'm very wary of formulaic rules like “Stall Stick Position means it's stalled, otherwise it's not.”

There are too many variables in flying to make formulaic assessments like that.

And I guess, that comes back to my point. Pilots are taught implicitly, that the aircraft is stalled when the nose is pointing at the heavens and the controls are back in your chest, because that's how it was in training.
 

And the corollary to that is that if the nose isn't pointing way up in the sky and I don't have the stick back in my crotch, then the aircraft's not stalled. Which is what I think the other poster was claiming.

That's almost always going to be followed by confusion and a loud BANG!

5 hours ago, danny_galaga said:

Haven't read this all the way through but just thought I'd point out some low wing planes have doors, not bubble canopies. One I know well is the Piper PA28 Warrior, and all its cousins and brothers .

From what I've heard, the side door on a low wing is a double edged sword. Apparently, if the door pops open in flight it disturbs the airflow over the wing and can be a hazard at low (near stall) air speeds.

That is for doors that open forward. I don't know about gull wing doors. But with gull wing doors, you're back to being trapped in a flip over.

1 hour ago, Jabiru7252 said:

 Gee whizz, I must be silly. I thought the diodes converted the AC voltage to DC (rectification). The regulator then 'regulated' the voltage and/or current to charge the battery. The term "high voltage AC current" is meaningless to me. The alternator generates an 'alternating voltage' that when applied across a load will cause an 'alternating current' (AC) to flow. Maybe in this world of LGBT rubbish the electronic theory I was taught has been 'cancelled'.

What the H*ll has LGBT got to do with electrical principles?

That's as specious as the "High voltage electrical current" you objected to.

Disconnecting the alternator from the load causes the voltage across the induction coils in the alternator to rise past the breakdown voltage of the diodes. This causes current to flow backwards through the diodes and can cause them to fail.

1 hour ago, Jabiru7252 said:

It's hard to smash your head into a low wing...

Peter Dinklage could ...🤣

I'm guessing from the question that putting a spanner on the nut is not possible? But you didn't mention that.

If that's the case, I wonder how they were done up in the first place.

That fear of what happes in a noseover in a paddock is a big part of why I fly a high wing. That and tha fact that I burn easily. I live in the skin cancer capitol of the world (Qld) so it's a real issue for me.

Plus, I fly to see the sights on the ground. A low wing obscures a lot of downward view. Then if you add a sunshade on top … well I don't see the point of being up there anymore if you can't see down and can't see up…

Have you ever accidently / unintentionall / inadvertently flown into a stall?

If yes, can you post what happened.

31 minutes ago, Blueadventures said:

My read of the post was that at 150 feet above ground level and short final wing dropped and applied some aileron.   I took that as late final (close to threshold) and slow approaching stall then wing drop.  My understanding is don't use aileron; use rudder to pick up wing and at same time get speed by either lower nose or throttle more rpm or both.  The use of aileron will add to stall of one wing; won't end well if stalling is in progress.

Mike:

That is all true, but you have to recognize it as a stall first. And as I mentioned, the circumstances and indications were quite different to any stall I've experienced in training or reviews.

My understanding also is, don't use aileron in a stall, But you have to first recognize that it's a stall.

18 minutes ago, danny_galaga said:

... And of course to replace any crappy Italian electronics 😄

 

I hear you!

I have an Italian GPS and it's not very good. It hangs the heading indication occasionally. I have had numerous contacts with their support people. Nice people, but not effective troubleshooters.

On 3/7/2023 at 10:48 AM, facthunter said:

You are only Isolating a battery. Why does it matter which terminal is OPEN? Nev

Rotax reccomend a capacitor between the output of the regulator and ground. An isolator on the positive terminal of the battery shouldn't be placed between these two or it negates the benefit of the capacitor.

The capacitor provides a small load to the regulator to stop it from overvoltage damage if the connection between the regulator and the rest of the system is lost, most likely from the isolator switch being turned off, or a master relay failure, while the engine is running.

As a further point, when I was analyzing what happened I came to realize that you have very limited time to figure out what to do in the situation I was in. That is, entering a stall close to the ground.

In my case I've done lots of GoArounds as I stuff up landings pretty regularly. So a Go Around is something that I'm familiar and comfortable with. In the case I described, I initiated the Go Around almost instictively, even without knowing what was wrong.

It turned out that doing a Go Around happened to provide the solution to the problem, but I didn't know that at the time.

Contrast that with the recent death of the 16 year old who crashed on base/final and who may have tried to correct the wing drop with ailerons (as I started to do), rather than push the nose down and add power, as I did eventually.

I guess the point of this post is just to reinforce the fact that an accidental stall may not present itself with the same indications as an intentional stall. If you haven't accidently entered a stall (yet), be warned and be ready. But the positive is that the actions they teach to correct the stall do work.

7 hours ago, facthunter said:

The way stalls are shown you is near worthless, because that is not the way a stall will likely "present" to you in practice..  Nev

Nev:

That is consistent with my experience and my opinion based on that experience.