It was interesting to re-read the wheel landing thread that popped up again, as it is starting to get some age to it. Still pertinent information in this thread for all of us, no matter how many hours we may have in tailwheels.

The thread meant more to me reading it today, as I just got an e-mail from the wife of Ron Royce, a former Moody Bible Institute instructor, who had been gracious enough to give me some additional tailwheel training in my 185, almost four years ago. Anyway, she had used Ron's contact list to send out an e-mail to let us all know that Ron had been killed in a plane crash on October, 22, while doing training, near his home airport of Elizebethton, Tn. I had no idea and was sad to hear of the passing of this wonderful man. Ron had contributed his whole life to providing aviation training to people, that in turn do service all over the world and had spent lots of time in remote areas of the world himself, doing what he trained others to do. Here is one article I gleaned from the internet http://www.johnsoncitypress.com/News/ar ... p?ID=71902

In reading the thread again, I noticed one of the contributors was Vet114, who was one of the originals here on Back Country. Mark was killed in a plane accident in the back country a couple of years ago and has not been the only one of our Back Country.org family to be lost in a crash. I guess the point is, no matter if we are new to this passion of ours, or have countless hours and years of experience, we need to be careful. Sometimes destiny is in our own hands, sometimes not. Training can only be a good thing. Steve

Not only is recurrent training good for safety, but it also lower our insurance premiums.

Sorry to hear about Ron....

sorry to hear about the loss of your friends, each and every time we strap ourselves into our machines, we are willing to take that risk doing what we love to do, hopefully we will learn from all others who go before us.