G44 wrote:No, the glass breaker tools for cars are of no help on plexiglass or lean. The crash ax pictured above is what you want.

Kurt

dogpilot wrote:Actually, while flipping though images for the crash axe I have, I came across this one, which is a bit more compact and looks a heck of a lot more evil and easier to store, cheaper too. Yes you do not want to burn. You should always be looking at solutions for your worst case scenario. The biggest problem isn't that you can't get out, but the occupants get a bit shaken up in a incident and do not react quickly, or necessarily correctly. This is due to impact trauma and the general disconnect people tend to get from a dramatic event.

When I went to the Naval PG school for safety and accident investigation we where studying the high number of deaths from helicopters making controlled water landings. It turned out people where so disoriented from the sudden immersion in water and the lack of reference, they just could not figure out how to get out before they succumbed (I think the term is "Panic"). So we started the "Helo Dunker" training. A device that was a helo fuselage and it went into the water in several different orientations and you had to get out, several of the times wearing blackout goggles. The death toll from subsequent accidents went down significantly.

So in short, the best tool is to make a game of it and practice it with your kids. They may understand your explanation, intellectually, but will lose it in actual practice. So actually make them do an evac in several scenarios. Heck, I was just showing my son what to do if I had a sudden health event and he was alone with me in the aircraft, how to talk how to squawk and so on.

A1Skinner wrote:

Sierra Victor wrote:

dogpilot wrote:I had the co-pilot door on the Soloy 206. It came with it, I didn't have to pay for it. It is rather hurtful in its pricing. Sure is nice to be able to let folks in on their own side. It also does make operating on floats a bit easier than climbing over the nose to get to the other float. It just you can also almost afford another airplane for its price.

Yes, but I look at it also from a safety standpoint. I often fly w wife and two kids and in an emergency there’s really only one useable egress point. Getting the back doors open would be difficult especially for kids.
Post crash fires give me nightmares!!!

That's why I bought a P model. Can't get quite as big of stuff in, but man I like the copilot door. And they are cheaper...