Backcountry Pilot • How NOT to do a soft field take-off video

How NOT to do a soft field take-off video

Links to general aviation backcountry flying-oriented videos. It can be yours or stuff you find on the internet. Please no airline/military.
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How NOT to do a soft field take-off video

This is in spanish but you get the picture. The actual attempted takeoff is a little ways into the video

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZWC2XJYgcJU

Looks like some sort of an angel flight too.. Any ideas on what went wrong? Overloaded?.. CG out of limits..? Just never had any airspeed?
AvidFlyer offline
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Looks pretty aft CG to me...
punkgeek offline
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If you read the caption carefully there were four people on board in addition to the pilot, add the additional equipment and large oxygen bottle and not knowing what his fuel load was this guy was still obviously way over gross with an aft CG loading.

The guy lifted the nose to early instead of keeping it on the ground building his airspeed. As he horsed the nosewheel off the ground he also started losing directional control drifting right of the runway. Watching the ailerons you will see the pilot was not applying any cross wind correction to cancel drift. Also, as he was clearing the tree it looks like he retracted the flaps which resulted in the sink rate/mush that he couldn't recover from.

If you note the dust during takeoff and the smoke from the wreckage the crosswind was left to right and was obviously a contributing factor. Looked like a warm day from the short sleeves, density altitude also played a roll I'm sure.

God Bless the Souls on board.
Supercubber offline
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Hey Supercubber, do you work for one of those forensic labs or something? That sounds like something Sherlock Holmes would come up with. I'd say you have good attention to detail.
a64pilot offline
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The only lab I work for is a Yellow Lab that pretty much sits around the hangar waiting for bird season to roll around.

The attention to detail probably started as a kid tracking animals through the woods and then progressed through playing sports.

Distractions from passengers, line boys making mistakes, pressure to get airborne etc. make it hard at times for a pilot to pay attention to the details that make a difference.

I think it helps if a pilot can take a few moments and isolate himself a little from the distractions before planning those takeoffs, approaches and landings to prepare himself for the challenges for that specific flight instead of being rushed into detrimental situations.

The observations I pointed out were visual, there are always hidden details that may never be disclosed. Have no idea what thoughts were going through the doomed pilots head or personal challenges he may have been distracted by, but on this day his judgement obviously failed him.
Supercubber offline
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A little late for this one, but as your official Spanish translator, I thought I could add something.

First, yes, it looks like an equivalent of your Angel Flights (that was obvious, no need to Speak Spanish to say that, huh?).

Then the people on board. The news commentator lists the passengers after the crash, and they were a total of four including the pilot. BTW, no idea of how he evolved later, but by the time they released in the news, the pilot was alive.

She remarks a comment made by the pilot, so I guess reading the whole story we could find out that it had something to do with the accident. He says: "Quiet, don´t make me move the feet backwards. Don´t make me touch the pedals, did you hear me? At all" Not much idea of what he meant with that "move the feet backwards" and "(no)...touch the pedals", but anyway, it seems like she had her feet on them and seems to he already asked her before to stay away from the controls.

Watching them taxi, you can see her hand up; hearing her cry, you can say she was NERVOUS, so maybe she could have interferred with the controls at any time of the procces. As Supercubber says, he does nothing to fight the left wind, and I don´t think any pilot would leave the plane fly like that without at least trying to do something, at least moving the ailerons, the rudder... something. As he starts to get off the ground, the plane aligns with the wind, as it would do by itself if you were doing nothing to avoid it. Slightly aligned, but being displaced with the wind. It doesn´t make anything but flying like a kite until almost the end.

No idea of what happened by just watching a not exactly high quality video, but introducing the comments and the importance given to that pilot´s words, you can have another point to view it.

Of course, the heavy load, mostly placed on the back, could have put the CG out of the limits, no doubt about it, making the plane handle more or less as we can see. That´s what I´d have said if not influenced by the comment.
By Rocket I go offline
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Looks to me like there must have been some interference with the controls, the plane appeared to be almost completely cross controlled after lift off as if the pilot was trying to compensate with rudder for lack of aileron or vicaversa.......Ron
Redbaron180 offline
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Ground effect

Not to mention a classic example of ground effect and an airplane flying when not really flyable. Very Ugly.
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