See. Big airplanes have engine failures too.

groundlooped a t craft on a soft field landing and ended up on the nose... flew away after digging the plane out.... I guess 8..50s werent big enough.

Sort of on/off topic : A duster driving an AT 502 just died in northern Alberta, Canada. Forty years old so not his first pass. God bless

dogone wrote:Sort of on/off topic : A duster driving an AT 502 just died in northern Alberta, Canada. Forty years old so not his first pass. God bless

He was a great pilot and great guy. He will be missed by many of us.

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The reason God lets it rain on the good as well as the bad is that He wants us to understand that we are not to judge. In life crisis things, birth marriage sickness death, etc, it is not our call.

My count is zero so far, and hoping to keep it that way. Not to say there weren't some close calls during my IP days in Army Helicopters, but I was lucky.

I have to say that anyone that says they have not had a close call in an airplane and has been flying for many years just does not really push themselves. If you have had a close call then you might as well consider it an accident because you just got lucky that day probably. 2 are public record for me.

I ride dirt bikes also and when I go for a ride I try to improve my skills i.e. I push myself to climb that hill that does not look like it can be climbed etc. If I make it a whole day and don't go down at least once I probably did not improve my riding that day. I look like a transformer I wear so much protective gear and there is no guarantee that it will keep me in one piece but man do I love riding my KTM 300 like I was a teenager again.

I know of pilots that will not fly GPS direct because they won't be over a road if there engine quits. I think that is crazy but it is one way to go with your flying and that person will probably never have an accident. They will also miss most of what draws me to flying.

Greg

At just shy of 600 hours I'm accident free, thank God!

On the other hand, my grandfather, who was a backcountry pilot in ID in the forties and fifties supposedly walked away from 17 to 23 crashes. No one knows for sure.

He died of lung cancer at St Als in '74.

I haven't wrecked any, and don't plan to. Might happen, but I don't accept that as just the cost of doing business. I think the dirt bike analogy is apt in ways, but pretty thin overall.

Folks who own their airplanes are free to use them how they wish, and if they see bending them as just the price of getting better, that's fine. But I personally reject that philosophy. For one, I can't afford to use a $70,000 airplane like a $5,000 dirt bike. And if I could, I still wouldn't. The value of flight, to me, has nothing to do with aeronautical skateboarding or seeing just how many more inches can be shaved off a landing.

There's a lot of different philosophical approaches to flying, and everyone is entitled to their own. I don't believe that stepping over a line is the only way to know where it is. I also wouldn't put a loved one in an airplane with a pilot who didn't see damaging an airplane as something completely unacceptable. There is simply no amount of skill that will compensate for bad judgement or a dangerous attitude. Not that everyone who bent metal had either of those, but many did.

I will land fewer places than some other pilots because I have a greater aversion to risking my airplane than some. Doesn't make either school of thought right or wrong, but I disagree that you cannot hone your skills to excellence without wrecking a aircraft, or that people who haven't wreaked an aircraft have a shallower pool of knowledge or skill than those who have.

Fact is we have few excuses for wrecking an airplane these days.
What with engine monitors, relatively modern engine technology, wx info up the wazoo, and synthetic vision on every gizmo.
Takes a lot of the risk out of the equation.
The guys that flew the backcountry for a living 40, 50, 60 years ago though...
They were ball draggers for sure!!

Switching gears here for a minute though has me wondering about these high risk ops that seem to be all the rage now. Water skiing and STOL
Competitions. Bagging strips and just screwing around off airport. So when these guys prang their airplane doing this do they file an insurance claim?
I can see a future where not only are my rates higher but also a specific clause prohibiting off airport landings, which would really suck!
Thoughts?

Forgive me but I'm dealing with my insurance company now and I hate those SOBs.

Sierra Victor wrote:Fact is we have few excuses for wrecking an airplane these days.
What with engine monitors, relatively modern engine technology, wx info up the wazoo, and synthetic vision on every gizmo.
Takes a lot of the risk out of the equation.
The guys that flew the backcountry for a living 40, 50, 60 years ago though...
They were ball draggers for sure!!

It's been well documented that accidents directly related to mechanical failure are quite rare, and have been relatively so for decades. I've had one of those in my flying, since 1969. A broken crankshaft. I may still have been to blame for that, but nobody's been able to figure out how yet.

But, the vast majority of accidents are directly related to pilot decision making and behavior, not mechanical issues. And, yes, I've participated in that category as well--once.

Fact of the matter is, though, as a cartoon possum once said: "We have met the enemy, and he is us". Pogo nailed that one.

MTV

I will have to disagree with Hammer on this one. I think the mindset that you can not hurt the aircraft, or your reputation is what gets people in trouble. The last thing I want the pilot carrying my family or friends worrying about is the plane or if they will make the 6 PM news . We all make mistakes and stuff happens, trying to save the plane or your ego can lead down a slippery slope. If you are low on fuel don't keep flying until you run out, land on a road and go find fuel. If you screw up the takeoff run don't jerk it off the ground just to run into the trees. Suck it up hit the brakes and take the fence at the end of the field. You will get a new paint job and make the news, gives people something to watch. The bottom line is you and passengers walk away!! I know a lot of planes that get fixed out of pocket. When I am off runway I give myself as much landing area as I can, I turn around a lot, and I carry a lot of fuel. Its not that I worry about the plane, it is because I worry about me.
DENNY

Very good point, Denny. New paint and perfect records scare me a bit too. All we can say is, "you're probably right." We just don't have to live there. That ship has already sailed anyway.

DENNY wrote:I will have to disagree with Hammer on this one. I think the mindset that you can not hurt the aircraft, or your reputation is what gets people in trouble. The last thing I want the pilot carrying my family or friends worrying about is the plane or if they will make the 6 PM news . We all make mistakes and stuff happens, trying to save the plan or your ego can lead down a slippery slope. If you are low on fuel don't keep flying until you run out, land on a road and go find fuel. If you screw up the takeoff run don't jerk it off the ground just to run into the trees. Suck it up hit the brakes and take the fence at the end of the field. You will get a new paint job and make the news, gives people something to watch. The bottom line is you and passengers walk away!! I know a lot of planes that get fixed out of pocket. When I am off runway I give myself as much landing area as I can, I turn around a lot, and I carry a lot of fuel. Its not that I worry about the plane, it is because I worry about me.
DENNY

Good points, Denny, but you sort of side stepped what I was getting at. It's the "if you don't push yourself you're not learning, and if you push yourself you're going to wreck airplanes" viewpoint I refuse to accept as prudent. Anyone who gets in an airplane with the attitude of "well I'm going to try this new spot and if I scuttle the airplane, so be it" isn't someone I'm going to fly with. I don't claim they don't have the right to fly that way...just not how I do business.

My pops flew for many years. pancaked in a cub (I think it was) on july 4th. I was born exactly 9 months later.

just saying.

he still walks with a limp. and dribbles when he drinks sometimes. if he could pass his medical, I know he would be flying with me.

Hammer wrote:

DENNY wrote:I will have to disagree with Hammer on this one. I think the mindset that you can not hurt the aircraft, or your reputation is what gets people in trouble. The last thing I want the pilot carrying my family or friends worrying about is the plane or if they will make the 6 PM news . We all make mistakes and stuff happens, trying to save the plan or your ego can lead down a slippery slope. If you are low on fuel don't keep flying until you run out, land on a road and go find fuel. If you screw up the takeoff run don't jerk it off the ground just to run into the trees. Suck it up hit the brakes and take the fence at the end of the field. You will get a new paint job and make the news, gives people something to watch. The bottom line is you and passengers walk away!! I know a lot of planes that get fixed out of pocket. When I am off runway I give myself as much landing area as I can, I turn around a lot, and I carry a lot of fuel. Its not that I worry about the plane, it is because I worry about me.
DENNY

Good points, Denny, but you sort of side stepped what I was getting at. It's the "if you don't push yourself you're not learning, and if you push yourself you're going to wreck airplanes" viewpoint I refuse to accept as prudent. Anyone who gets in an airplane with the attitude of "well I'm going to try this new spot and if I scuttle the airplane, so be it" isn't someone I'm going to fly with. I don't claim they don't have the right to fly that way...just not how I do business.

No one has mentioned the fact that landing off airport, at an unknown place for the first time, is an entirely different thing with a passenger. I think some of the response here assume that is the case? Not for me anyway, the few times I have bent a gear leg or broken a prop, were solo, so "big deal." I don't feel bad about my incidents, no one got hurt anyway, and for sure those of us pushing our personal limits will bend things a bit more often, a complete wreck with injuries is a different deal. The satisfaction I get out of eyeballing a site and making the determination it is doable, and then doing it, is priceless, and well worth the occasional (very) prang.

And don't worry about me raising anyone's insurance rate, I don't have any. That just adds to the satisfaction of not screwing up, and besides, no insurance company is going to magically provide the nearly 1,000 hours of labor it took to build my plane, forget the kit cost. I do kind of cringe when I hear about a guy wiping out his (for instance) C182, and a few weeks later he's back in the air, as it's simple enough to peruse Tradeaplane once the insurance check is in hand I guess. More power to them that do it that way, but I'll just pay the fiddler if I screw up that bad, while saving the insurance premiums in the meantime.

Spdcrazy,

I limp when I walk, dribble when I drink something, and have no medical. Some of you have gotten under my butt to push me up into the airplane. Big tires put the cockpit up to high. Same with pickups. Do you guys use the beds anymore? How do you get the stuff up there? Just razzing you.

Contact

Hammer wrote:Good points, Denny, but you sort of side stepped what I was getting at. It's the "if you don't push yourself you're not learning, and if you push yourself you're going to wreck airplanes" viewpoint I refuse to accept as prudent. Anyone who gets in an airplane with the attitude of "well I'm going to try this new spot and if I scuttle the airplane, so be it" isn't someone I'm going to fly with. I don't claim they don't have the right to fly that way...just not how I do business.

Totally agree with you that an accident is a lousy way to learn, and I don't think it should be considered a "badge of honor" by those who've had them. More like using up one of your "9 lives".

On the other hand, I am sure you would agree that you never learn faster than during close calls. I didn't realize how quickly a routine landing can unravel until I had a close call. The illusion of being in total control of the aircraft, is what I would call it. All pilots are all but seconds away from a crash during any landing, anywhere - if they do the wrong thing at the wrong time.

I think that pushing the ragged edge is risky and not a safe way to learn. But I also think pilots must continue to expand their horizon and keep learning, which is just as true of backcountry aviation as any other kind. Otherwise you'd have 14,000hr pilots little better than 1000hr pilots. Personally I have had to take a number of calculated risks to learn new skills, and I am far from an expert. I couldn't have gotten the lessons I needed without doing the flying and taking some measured risks.

It is possible to fly in a way which totally minimizes every kind of risk. I know a few people who fly like that. However, it's not much akin to backcountry flying we're all here to enjoy. Personally, I would not enjoy it as much.
With off-airport flying, there is always a smaller margin for error and a greater level of risk. I really liked this quote from another user:

We are, after all, a niche of general aviation who accepts some risks readily, those inherent to backcountry and bush flying.

Well said Battson. You have a fine large engine which can blast a lot of pressure air relative wind over the part of your wings with flaps. A quick throttle can deal with quite a bit of shear on approach.

I'm leaning toward agreeing with Battson & Hammer.
I think I'd rather bust up a $5K to $10K (??) motorcycle than a $70K airplane.
And IMHO there's a lot more potential for personal injury up to an including death
crashing an airport vs a motorcycle.

"If you don't crash once in a while, you're not going fast enough" was fine, back in the day,
but the kind of extreme flying that goes along with that sort of comment.
Shit happens, true, but I know pilots who continually push the edge, and/or exhibit poor decision-making,
and I don't think I'd be comfortable with a loved one riding with one of them.