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This is disgusting. Did this pilot not have any friends? Someone to sit him down over coffee after the first or second incident and ask "what were you thinking?"
Some people just will not listen. A perfect example was the Dan Lloyd RV-10 fiasco. Myself and numerous other folks told him to take it easy and to correct a laundry list of issues but he refused and he paid for it.
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If he were a military or commercial pilot, or a member of a flying club, he would not have got past his peer group without someone calling him on his judgement.
Flying club? Maybe? Commercial pilot? Probably. The military? I hate to show my near complete lack of confidence in the leadership of the Air Force (thanks to what I witnessed and heard first hand while serving in that branch) but I have two words for you: Bud Holland. If that didn't change the attitude of commanders about grounding pilots who perform stupid or risky flying maneuvers, nothing will, but yet they don't appear to have learned anything as judged by the fact that the AF commanders still love to see steeply banked slow passes down the flight line at airshows because of the "WOAH!" factor from the crowd (Elmendorf C-17 airshow practice crash anyone?).
For those of you not familiar with who Bud Holland is or why he's an example of why being a "skilled" pilot and being a "good" pilot are often not the same thing, I offer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUEhNKBi4DY
...and: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgJl7b9bQH0
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If anyone sees a bad actor like this, don't hold back.
I find that handing an autopsy report release form for our research to a stupid pilot's passengers and explaining why I am handing them out to be signed tends to a good way to gut check bad pilots. I stopped a guy at KHUF from taking off in freezing drizzle in a 172 a few years back. He told me to mind my own business and I proceeded to talk to the lady who was loading her bags into the plane. After pointing out that they would be lucky to make it out of the county before they would both be dead, she proceeded to question him and could tell he was trying to weasel his way out of admitting that he had made a bad mistake. He was pissed at me at the time (and I can't say I blame him to be honest) but before they left the next day in good weather, he and his wife treated me to lunch and he apologized for cussing at me and not wanting to listen.
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Good luck. Pilot pulls out AC 00-6A and references the section on how to penetrate a thunderstorm, located in the "Do's and Don'ts of Thunderstorm Flying" section and it's game over. Difficult to establish a violation when the pilot is following FAA guidance.
Yeah, but if you manage to live through it, you're going to have a lot of questions to answer about why you allowed yourself to get into a situation where you had not choice but to penetrate a convective cell. It's a violation but just of the broader regulations against actively hazarding your aircraft. We had a guy near here who survived doing just that and was ratted out by someone. He tried that defense and ended up losing the argument and his ability to fly.