I'd be interested in knowing what response you receive.Originally Posted by Matthew Long
A few weeks ago, my wife (who is a member, btw..., and who has an obviously female first name...) sent an email to "editor" about an unrelated-to-this-thread topic. Also, her middle initial is "W".
His response called her "Mr. Worton". Talk about warming up to the membership.
I think Matthew has stated the case pretty well, short and succint.
As for safety articles, I am all for them. I think we need more not less. However I wish we could make the articles more relevant. For example there is an article in the MARCH 2011 issue which is dubbed the safety issue. It is about the dangers of jet formation flights. Now I am not a jet expert, have only had one brief flight in a Soko, other than just riding in a Lear or airliner. By the way , I thought the Lear was overrated, not good cabin comfort.
I am sure that military jet formation flights are very demanding and have the potential for fatal accidents, maybe even a history of fatal accidents. I know that a number of formation jet pilots have been killed, U S, Canadian, Italian, RAF, etc.
But that really is not much the case for us civilian warbird pilots. Very few of us fly jets and even less of us fly jet formations. For the most part that is not where the danger lies. The majority of fatal warbird accidents, ( by that I mean civilian warbirds like T-6 or P-51), etc, come from one realm,that of low altitude acro or manuevering . That is doing a roll or loop at too low a level to allow recovery from a mistake or just pulling too sharp a turn or pullup on a low fly by. Take this out and you solve about 70 % of the fatal accidents.
Many experts will tell you that the key is training, that if you train enough to be an expert then the danger vanishes. All those jet teams had lots of very high quality training, they could fly great, they could march in lockstep out to the planes with the short haircuts and the tight flight suits and all the patches,and could talk all the lingo in the briefing and the bar, and still a lot of them have been lost.
But we have very few real safety efforts aimed at this cause. There are some shows, EAA in particular that approach it by just not having any acro for their fly bys.That is one way, but not the only.
We have groups called FAST. It is suppose to stand for Formation and Safety Training. There is a lot of formation training and an enormous amount of red tape that has grown up around this. Lot's of experts to show pilots how to do it, some of it that their way is the only way, ( for instance wing rock signals are good, hand signals are bad). Some of it is silly to the point of almost being like a ritual of a cult. For instance, radio silence is golden, just like they did it over Germany in the big war. But we are not at war now, nobody is listening in the U S.
So lot's of formation dogma, some very good training, and some silly stuff.
BUT VERY LITTLE REAL SAFETY TRAINING, other than the formation stuff.
For example, many experts stress the preflight briefing, as if the more you talk the farther away the danger goes. And you may be sure all those jet teams brief on and on. Doesn't seem to make them invincible.
I have virtually never heard a briefer say, ok here are the 5 or 6 things you really want to know.And the mantra is to fly as briefed, I almost never have heard them say, ok here is the plan, but we've got 50 different planes of different types and maybe airlines or military flights also, and things may not go as planned, stay calm, safe and adapt.
If you want to look at fatal accidents is normal planes, Cessna, Piper, etc. most of them are bad weather related, not acro. Same type of pattern, one type of flying results in most of the fatal losses. So in civilian training we have the student spend hours doing almost meaninless touch and gos, but spend very little time on real world weather decisons.
Last edited by Bill Greenwood; 11-30-2011 at 01:21 PM.
So how does one access these "monthly surveys?"
They are completely internal, done by the marketing department. It's great info for the pubs department, but internal only.
Chad Jensen
EAA #755575
Hmmm, maybe that's another sign of the problem... that EAA needs a marketing department.
No need...we have a very good marketing team.
Chad Jensen
EAA #755575
I think you may have misunderstood my comment... I was wondering why EAA needs a marketing department at all? Or who the new target audience is?
Why a marketing department? I can think of a few, not being involved in EAA marketing in any way:
1. To attract sponsors to Airventure. Why? So it's not just airplanes tied down in a field - not sure what all sponsors pay for, but sponsorship could go towards any/all costs that putting together such an event entails, as well as keeping down the gate charge for each attendee.
2. To attract companies to advertise in the magazine. Why? So they don't have to charge $10/issue to bring us 40-pages of black-and-white. Paying for all the contributors - authors - having to conduct interviews and collect information from around the world - probably costs more than just what is charged to the membership for the magazine itself. If you were a supplier in the owner-built airplane industry, how would you decide when a multi-thousand-dollar ad is worth the investment? I would expect that EAA has someone with the data to help with those kinds of decisions.
3. The obvious - to attract new members. One example that I can see is sponsorship of the forum tents at various regional fly-in events. Also sponsorship of the Sportair workshops. If you've been to one, it's pretty clear the money isn't being made there, but if an attendee becomes a builder and/or pilot... Someone has to get the word out as to the when/where/how to sign up for these events...
I'm sure there's more than that, and maybe the "marketing department" doesn't even do all of the above - but all of the above is needed.
I have one more level of discontent with the magazine.
I am an experimental builder .I have never built an aircraft . I am not even a pilot yet.
But still out in my garage there is an aircraft. I became a member back when it was light sport magazine and contained information pertinent to my project . I felt abandoned by the EAA when the new class LSA came into being and The UL became neglected and slowly disappearing. And now vertically none existent in the issues. The UL's will not go away in spite of some of the GA component that wishes it. Experimentation is affordable in the UL level . And that is were so many of the future fliers really may come from. We need more UL article as well for this reader.
If the magazine needs articles of projects persons like me .May not know how to get their projects published ,or even if or when it would be appropriate to published.
My project has a thread in the forums but never been in the magazine. Point is why aren't there articles on experimental projects under construction ,Because nothing is proven, well nothing experimental will be until it flies . Is there a fear that an article may suggest an unsafe design component? I want to see how people are doing there projects.
I am privy to such a bad experience a very good internet friend as been killed this past month. With his 9th experimental Mark Stull of Texas was killed Nov. 16th while testing his new design. A sad day for me. I learned this only today. He had articles published in sport magazine.
Norman, they kicked up The Experimenter for us (it's online only) and use SA for "general consumption."
The LSA focus is simple - it's the new kid on the block, and writing about something new is what writers like to write about, and more importantly the kind of content editors need to keep any publication new and fresh.
The jet stuff was a trial (I'm guessing) to see if it generated interest. It did, of course, but not the kind they anticipated.
On training, I'd like to see more "near miss" sort of scenarios and how best to handle them. I fly in and out of a non-towered field, and have seen a lot of really potentially hazardous situations during pattern work. We've had twins flying Texas sized patterns, helicopters, Champs flying dime sized patterns, some guy coming straight in on an IFR route (and stating position by IFR references), a student on his second solo in a 172, and some joker going the wrong way around unannouced AT THE SAME TIME.
We worked it out between us and everyone got down without mishap.
I've had both panels of a CTLS go blank on takeoff. Forget partial panel - this was no panel! Thankfully I had a great instructor and after leaving the pattern got it rebooted, entered back and landed (bad backup batteries or something; they replaced them and it never happened again, though the owner wound up having the whole thing replaced in an upgrade).
Heck, I took a right off the runway during fast taxi and found myself on the grass next to it. I corrected the issue without wrecking (well, except for that poor runway light, which had a different opinion on the matter) by just taking off, coming around, and landing to survey the damage (small tear in the fuselage fabric). We did a big post-mortem and found a lot of interesting factors behind why it happened.
I'd also like to see more on personal minimums. I know that they're just that - personal - but it's a topic that I'm constantly evaluating. Keep them too tight and one doesn't grow as a pilot; bite off more than one can chew and it's hazardous.
The opinions and statements of this poster are largely based on facts and portray a possible version of the actual events.
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