Well this is sad.

http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2017/07/zenith-stol-ch-701-sp-n701xl-fatal.html

Condolences, and best wishes to those affected by this tragedy.

Sounds like wires or weather or a combination. Sad sad deal

Akt

It is very sad. I would have thought that if this pilot was going to buy the farm, it would have been doing his ski stunt or something similar. I can't see in K's report what the weather was like, but even if it was VFR, if they did take off really early in the morning when it was still dark, it's a lot like instrument flying. He wasn't IR, and likely neither was his airplane.

It's a reminder that no matter what our skill level may be in one area of aviation, there's always something else that can bite us if we stray into some area in which we aren't skilled.

Cary

From article:

"On July 27, 2017, about 0415 central daylight time, a Zenith CH 701SP, N701XP, piloted by a non-instrument rated sport pilot, was destroyed when the it impacted terrain approximately 6.5 miles north of Laddonia, and 16.5 miles northeast of Mexico, Missouri. Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident."

Man, that article is hard to read, so sad. Inadvertent IMC in the dark has always been a big fear of mine. Sounds like a true nightmare, not being able to see the clouds before you're in them, or feeling forced to scud run without being able to tell how high you are since it's dark. Not saying this is what happened since no one will ever know, but it's what comes to mind. Hard to determine visibility at night, especially in rural areas.

This quote from the linked article, from an LEO describing the search for the airplane, might be key:
"...As you can tell out here there is no artificial lighting at all.."

Rural areas away from towns and houses can be darker than the inside of a cow's ass, if there are no stars or moonlight
Pitch black is IMC in my book.

hotrod180 wrote:This quote from the linked article, from an LEO describing the search for the airplane, might be key:
"...As you can tell out here there is no artificial lighting at all.."

Rural areas away from towns and houses can be darker than the inside of a cow's ass, if there are no stars or moonlight
Pitch black is IMC in my book.

One day about 13 years ago, my younger son and I flew from Fort Collins to Sidney, NE, a "Cabela's run". We were delayed on the departure by a glitch in the airplane, so by the time my IA could fix it, it was dark by the time we got to Sidney. After having dinner and perusing the Cabela's store, we took off from Sidney to return.

It was a clear but moonless night--pretty easy flying, but very few lights on the ground between there and here. We'd been in the air for a little while when my son asked "Dad, how can you fly in the dark like this?" I misinterpreted his question, thinking he was asking about navigation, and so I launched into an explanation of VORs and headings and such. He stopped me and said, "No, how do you keep the airplane upright?" Although he'd flown with me many times over the years, he was not a pilot, and from his vantage point in the right seat, he couldn't see any horizon, and he admitted that he was suffering from vertigo!

To him, it felt like the airplane was cocked in a steep bank, and yet he knew that I wouldn't be flying it that way. So I pointed to the AI, and suggested that if he would watch that for awhile and imagine that it was showing him the horizon, his vertigo would soon go away. And it did, within just a few minutes.

I suspect that most of us who are IR and who fly in IMC, whether occasionally like I do or often like many others here do, have had bouts with sensory illusions, when the feelings in the body don't jibe with the instruments. But we've learned to ignore those kinesthetic responses and believe the instruments--and sometimes that isn't easy. Sometimes the kinesthesia is enormously strong, especially when the airplane is accelerating as in shortly after take off or decelerating as in going from level to climb attitude (somatogravic illusions).

But then you take a sport pilot who might not have had any IFR training at all, flying an airplane that likely had nothing more than basic VFR instrumentation, in the dark that he wasn't legally authorized to fly in anyway, and the accident chain gets longer and longer. This fellow obviously had a lot of stick and rudder skills, but those don't count for much when you can't see what is happening and all you have to go on is how your body feels.

Although he was pushing the envelope of legality, it's likely that he really didn't know how much he didn't know. He wouldn't be the first.

Cary

Only in the Pretend VFR that MTV wrote about, night, and over water do integration of instrument and contact flying work well. Most of the time we need to be totally committed to one or the other.