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Oops, darn it...

Right or wrong ..., but I used to teach this stuff. You should always have a place to put it down in mind. Trim for your best glide speed, then airspeed is one less thing to worry about, while you troubleshoot on your way to the inevitable full stop. Mixture, fuel , Mags, ! Not a whole lot else to mess with, and those should be automatic. Nothing flat in sight...forget about saving the airplane, and worry about saving your @&&. IE aim for between the trees, or maybe bushes instead of rocks etc.

Almost guaranteed, unless you are only flare height above the ground when you pull back, get slow and it’s not gonna end well.

I am relatively new to tundra tires or floats, but what an eye opener if you simulate an engine out and let the airspeed get behind the power curve. If I am engine out on floats, I can safely glide to a landing at 65mph, but if I get slow like say 55mph I will fall like a rock and a flare will make me fall faster. From 55 mph or less it takes + 1000’ to regain airspeed to do anything other than come down hard. Tundra tires are very similar. Also, I’ve found that trimming in a cub is different than trimming in a Cessna. The stability is different, and I’m still experimenting with it. Trim a Cessna for any airspeed, do anything you want with the power, and it will find its way back to that trimmed airspeed. Not so much with my cub.

Food for thought.
 
To add to what Troy mentions, you also must maintain enough forward speed so that when you do flair there is enough lift left in the wings to check the descent. This is why the nose MUST be pointed down RIGHT NOW! Gravity will be replacing the lost horsepower.

In reading all of the above comments, I'm reminded of a similar accident here a year ago in an Aeronca 7AC. That pilot was a low time fixed wing pilot and a high time military helicopter instructor. My thinking was that his helicopter instincts of back cyclic and down collective to flair in an autorotation overcame his low time fixed wing training of push the stick to prevent stall.
Was this pilot at Hood River a high time helicopter pilot???

The natural instinct is to turn back towards the airport where you know there is a runway. This emotional tendency is hard to overcome. A sudden change of power at low altitude does raise the anxiety level very rapidly to the point of being unable to think intelligently about what to do. Been there myself with only a sputtering taking place and with plenty of altitude to safely complete the return. There are a lot of questions running through your head very rapidly at the time with no sensible answers. The feeling is WTF do I do now? All of the piloting reactions must be automatic because your brain will be inoperative. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not pointing fingers at anyone, this is a tragedy from which through voicing our thoughts perhaps we can prevent just one more.

A neighbor of mine has a son who is a high time commercial helicopter pilot, but with no fixed wing experience. He just bought a **** (I want to keep it a bit vague) and with an instructor on board, totaled it. No injuries though. And, it was landing related, a tip over, a ride on the spinner I call it. I too wondered about his chopper background maybe working against him, could be unrelated.
 
One of my primary instructors 45 yrs ago (Bill Griffin) always asked what I was going to do if the engine quit - during takeoff, flight, or landing approach. I can still hear him.

Gary

Edit: Spelled Bill's name wrong and corrected...he would be yelling "No No No" if he knew I'd done that plus other aircraft close calls after his mentoring.
 
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So, I wonder what that engine will be in next. Sad to see.
Last time I saw the plane it was in front of the Bendix building getting defueled since one of it's gear legs had fuel running down it.
 
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Looks like the wind was gusty, 20-35kts. It was about that yesterday, quartering crosswind on 26.
I saw on FB him and his wife walked away. That’s all you can ask for.


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Sorry it happened. Super happy they are all fine....sans a broken nail.

Have a lot of respect for him accepting his responsibility!!!

cafi
 
If I heard correctly, Mrs. Patey broke a nail. You gotta admit, that'll make a good story after some time passes. Thank God nobody was hurt, or worse.
 
I bet he's already looking for a donor....

plenty of good parts left....
I am not sure it is all that bad, granted having not seen where the gear leg has been yanked out. But I think he would like to start fresh with the gear anyway.
The wing hinges probably need both structural as well as skin work. No issue for what he can achieve.
Looking forward to see just what direction he goes with it.
 
I am not sure it is all that bad, granted having not seen where the gear leg has been yanked out. But I think he would like to start fresh with the gear anyway.
The wing hinges probably need both structural as well as skin work. No issue for what he can achieve.
Looking forward to see just what direction he goes with it.

No lift struts I think. Something bad happened to topdeck/wing root area...


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No lift struts I think. Something bad happened to topdeck/wing root area...
There have been several strut less planes which required wing spar reinforcements. Cessna 195, Beech 18, Cessna 402 and more recently the Cessna 210 for example. I believe I saw in one of his videos that he was not going to extend the wings due to having some questions as to whether or not the center section could handle the increased bending moments. Did he change his mind, as he did extend the wings before going to Valdez?
It's interesting in that one wing broke up and the other down. I'm wondering, what exactly broke?
 
From watching the video Pete, I would theorise that the side loading on impact (nearly flying sideways at that point) broke the left wing upward. Assuming that destroyed the center section the right wing simply fails downward.
No? Maybe?


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From watching the video Pete, I would theorise that the side loading on impact (nearly flying sideways at that point) broke the left wing upward. Assuming that destroyed the center section the right wing simply fails downward.
No? Maybe?
Hard to tell from the picture. Perhaps it is just the way it came to a rest with one up and the other down?
 
No, you can see in the video that the RH wing comes off just after/as the LH wing impacts the ground.
So either the failure was transmitted to the carrythrough structure, or ?
Being a cantilevered-wing design, the Wilga doesn't have a one-piece wing does it?
Seems unlikely but ya never know.
 
It’s hard to tell from the video, but it doesn’t look like he was using crosswind corrections on the initial ground roll until the left wing came up. Then you can see the trailing edge of the left aileron tilted down.

A sad story. Glad everyone is ok.


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didn't want to start a separate thread... not exactly related... but watched a few of this series of videos tonight... ignore the first part of this video....

 
To me it is kind of sad that Fox chose a file photo of Aluminum Overcast that I just worked with and will be again in 9 days depending on the outcome of 909's crash.
Not knowing yet who the flight crew was this might not work out well for the Colling's Foundation.
At this time Aluminum Overcast is standing down in NH before heading out to Hyannis on the Cape.
 
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