There are enough red flags in this story to populate a Brezhnev-era May Day parade. Very sad.

Sweet Jesus........Let me count the ways. And that children is how you end up as teeth and bones in the bottom of smoking hole with all aircraft systems fully functional.
I remember flying over it the next morning and then heading back "upstream" tracking the various pieces that it shucked. I thought, "this one's gonna be good". Four years later......it is.
Gravity is ALWAYS working. Be careful out there.

Oh, and Caldwell is 122.7 NOT 122.8 as dude stated, one more demerit.......

Looks like he hit the ground inverted and flat, inverted flat spin? Not a grave yard spiral, I’m no expert but is that common for someone that’s disoriented to enter an inverted flat spin?

and what do you have to do to a Comanche to get it to shuck pieces like that?

denalipilot wrote:and what do you have to do to a Comanche to get it to shuck pieces like that?

You go real fast, and then pull back real hard... Mother Nature and her physical laws are cold, hard, and seemingly cruel to us fragile, carbon based lifeforms.

Gump

Weren't Comanche's known for shucking the tail? Inverted flat spin would be the logical descent attitude with no tail.

Found it. Maybe it was just the twins but this is scary:

denalipilot wrote:and what do you have to do to a Comanche to get it to shuck pieces like that?

If you look at the radar data the plane was in a spiral... they estimated 7,600 -12,000 fpm descent.
Also the photos of the wing fragments showed them in an overstressed state. Scary stuff. Don't lose the plane is on my list.

While that steep a descent rate sounds like a lot, since we typically go down at 500-1500 fpm, if it were only straight down, those speeds aren't all that fast--only 86-135 mph vertically. However, in a spiral, with that much of a descent rate, it's entirely possible to go much faster than Vne. Any time a slickish airplane, such as a Comanche, Mooney, Bonanza, gets pointed down too steeply, going well past Vne is very likely, and then parts start shedding. Spatial disorientation often leads to a graveyard spiral, which typically involves a descent angle of 30-35 degrees. I don't remember enough high school math to calculate the speed in a 30-35 degree downline necessary to have a 135 mph vertical speed, but it's darned quick. A non-instrument rated pilot, even one with plenty of experience, theoretically has only 178 seconds to live after entering IMC, and a dark, overcast night is effectively IMC: http://www.aopa.org/aopalive/?watch=h5d ... 4GMGDISx39

Scary stuff.

Cary

I think of it as transitioning from VFR to flying a video game, one of my scariest moments was climbing out of the valley in a spiral through a large hole in the clouds, only to find that I was now snow blind and could not read any of the instruments, that sucked me tight, I relayed this to me wife (God bless Her) and requested that she keep an eye on the AH and air speed, moments later I regained my eye sight. What do they say about being a pilot; hours and hours of boredom spotted by moments of terror, and there by the grace of God go I.

Read the friend's story, good reminder to consider how others will read it if one of us ever has to write something similar - factual accounting of events or pathetic butt covering drivel

delete

Nosedragger wrote:... Maybe it was just the twins but this is scary:

Other manually controlled stabilator equipped airplanes can have the same thing happen if balance is not correct or slop in the support/rotation mechanism. Extreme care should be taken to make sure that the support structure and bearings are maintained and replaced as necessary when worn. It is probably not a coincidence that you don't see manually controlled stabilator on high speed machines.