VFR Flight at 7,000 MSL

[Bill Greenwood]

Dana, this time I think it is you who are wrong, in telling people that a spin is "hard to mess up", and "I wouldn't bother" with parachutes. A spin, any spin, is a manuever where the plane is not in normal flight. It is a state where, if not corrected the plane is going to crash and probably will be fatal in most planes in most cases. As for "if the pilot knows what he is doing"; almost all pilots think they know what they are doing;; they think they are safe. Very few people go up for a flight and plan to crash. Just like drunk drivers,and people who invested with Bernie Madoff, what could go wrong?
Spins killed many people in past days of multiengine training; they continue to be a cause in all airplanes, along with stalls of fatal accidents. I would say Art Sholl knew what he was doing, all the way down in until impact.It didn't make him impervious.
Of course a parachute is not gaurantee, but it is one more level of safety and it is foolish to forgo it or as you say. "I wouldn't bother.
Hey, why have enough lifeboats, on the Titanic, after all the Captain was super experienced, sure knew what he was doing, What could go wrong? Why were a seatbelt in your car or put your kids in car seats, after all the driver must know what he is doing. What could go wrong?

A spin may well be low g, at least until ground impact, but over g'ing or breaking the airframe is not the normal cause of fatalities. You can hit the ground with the whole plane intact.

[Dana]

Dana, this time I think it is you who are wrong, in telling people that a spin is "hard to mess up", and "I wouldn't bother" with parachutes. A spin, any spin, is a manuever where the plane is not in normal flight. It is a state where, if not corrected the plane is going to crash and probably will be fatal in most planes in most cases. As for "if the pilot knows what he is doing"; almost all pilots think they know what they are doing;; they think they are safe...
Spins killed many people in past days of multiengine training; they continue to be a cause in all airplanes, along with stalls of fatal accidents. I would say Art Sholl knew what he was doing, all the way down in until impact...

I'm not suggesting that just anybody should go out and do spins just for fun without a parachute; they shouldn't. I'm saying that a properly trained flight instructor should be competent in demonstrating spins and spin recoveries in an aircraft approved for such, and in this situation parachutes are unnecessary. Most planes approved for intentional spins will recover from the spin if the pilot simply releases the controls. Besides, most light training planes, including those approved for spins, would be difficult to exit from in flight even if the pilot makes the decision to jump in time.

Unintentional spins, especially close to the ground, have killed and continue many people. I wonder what the statistics are for intentional spins? Pretty good, I suspect, or the FAA wouldn't exempt them from the parachute requirement. Regarding Art Scholl, he was apparently in an inverted flat spin, and it's speculated the weight of the camera contributed to the inability to recover... not at all the same thing as doing a three turn spin at a safe altitude in, say, a properly loaded Cessna 150.

[steveinindy]

Steve, I don't want a glass panel; it's one point of failure for instrumentation and I've experienced the no-panel blank screens on takeoff, thank you

Agreed which is one reason for having backup instruments and besides, I was talking about for new designs not retrofits.

Similarly, I don't know what voice recording is really going to do to help investigate anything in my single seat aircraft. When performing crew management by myself in an aircraft there isn't a lot of verbalization.

Single seat aircraft are something of an aberration (that is, they are not exactly the most common thing out there).

One of the other problems with the idea of mandated black boxing is the variety of engines - both certified and non-certified - used on aircraft. What if I'm experimenting with power plant options for aircraft?

You noticed that I'm advocating it as a voluntary move right so we can be seen as proactive. We don't need 1000 data points. Given that most of our problems are likely pretty straight forward, finding a way of recording a few basic things like fuel flow, pitch, yaw, roll, power settings, TIT, EGT, etc would likely render an answer to most of the "undetermined" crashes. We might have a variety of engines, but surprisingly a lot of those varied engines are measured using similar gauges.

Do they make black boxes for electrical engines?

Taken a look under the hood of your average electric or hybrid car? They most certainly have data recording at some level. It's how you diagnose problems with them. Then again, for aviation, it's going to be a rather moot point since electric motors (they're not technically engines by definition) are not going to be common (>5% of the fleet) for any time in the foreseeable future despite what the manufacturers keep claiming due to the technical limitations. It might be a larger slice of the ultralight and the low end of the LSA fleet but that's still going to be a minority of all aircraft so it's kind of like derailing a productive discussion to worry about gyrocopters.

What would be the value added for the sort of recording that goes into a Boeing 777 being put into my little day plane? Other than to put another 50 or 100 pounds of stuff onto it, that is....

I'm not going to even grace such an argument with a full response.

I am planning on doing CFI training soon, the CFI can wear a chute or not, I am going to borrow or rent one, from the nearby FBO that teaches acro and rents acro planes.

You might also want to do a couple of jumps or at least some ground training to learn the basics of controlling a parachute and how to land without breaking your ankles. Nothing ruins an otherwise good jump like a botched landing.

[Bill Greenwood]

Steve, although I have done ground training, ( mostly mental reviews and actually pulling the release cord) in parachutes and I have flown in wind tunnel without a chute; that really does not change my wearing and advocating wearing chutes for acro, (including spins with CFIs who I don't regard as or flawless).
An emergency chute is to save your life in an emergency, it is not the same as skydiving for fun. It you have an extreme emergency and have to get out, and the chute opens and all you suffer is an ankle injury, most people would feel they got good value.
As for chute training, or practice in chutes; there is ample evidence that the emergency chute is valueable even without that training. In WWII thousands of allied crewmen were saved by parachutes, even though they had no practice jumps; the first jump was the first real one. And for the most part they did not suffer any major injuries in landing. It was the same for RAF pilots, during the Battle of Britain over 60% of their pilots shot down were saved by parachutes. And this is in planes that were often on fire or otherwise shot upand out of control, and again with no actual practice jumps.
The round emergency chutes we use now are not controllable like a skydiving chute,and don't have to be to work.
Of course there a some planes that are harder to get out of, but if you don't have a chute you don't have that 2nd chance. I will do my CFI spins in a Decathalon, WITH A CHUTE AND WITH QUICK RELEASE DOORS.
As for as a CFI being some kind of invulnerable god of the air and flawless in spin recovery, BALONEY! One can become a CFI with very little spin training, don't even have to have any sort of acro card or any sort of real acro training. My basic acro training came from Duane Cole. Funny old guy, who wore a chute and had one for me.
I could go on and mention a number of accidents that I know of the were fatal with a spin and no chutes, such as the one with 2 CFI s at Flightsafety at Vero Beach. I can give examples of pilots being saved by chutes. But as you seem to have your mind made up, and doubt if you are likely to change it. You do your acro sans chute, by please don't take anyone with you that way.
And you can save some money by not buying a chute, maybe enough to buy something really important like a super cell phone or Ipad.

[Frank Giger]

I think parachutes would have been firmly in the realm of "touchy feelie" during my spin training in a Champ. I have a hard time getting in and out of it on the ground (and I'm not a big guy); forget the CFI in the back seat - he's gonna ride that one out whether he wants to or not.

So it's a judgement call based on the parameters of the maneuver and the plane on whether or not chutes are a good idea.

But let's back up and give big thumbs up to the CFI that conducts actual spin training and not just "spin awareness." Even as your humble Sport Pilot type, I think it really should be mandatory - just to eliminate the bugaboo of fear.

I'll wear a chute for my initial test flights, but not after that (it's not an acro plane). Fortunately it's open cockpit so getting out should be much easier than most models.

On parachute training - if you're going to wear one, at a minimum get ground training on how to perform a Parachute Landing Fall (PLF) and actions to take if landing in a tree or in water.

[steveinindy]

But as you seem to have your mind made up, and doubt if you are likely to change it. You do your acro sans chute, by please don't take anyone with you that way.

Wait.....I think you have misunderstood my stance completely. I have 19 parachute jumps (all civilian) to my credit and actually get laughed at for my desire to wear a chute during "normal" spin recovery training. I am a huge advocate for people wearing them in more situations. I just think that having a little bit of knowledge about how to handle a landing under a chute is helpful. One of my friends is in a wheelchair due to a botched landing after bailing out of a glider that suffered a structural failure. I'm the last person to argue against something in the name of safety.

Also, you won't see me doing aerobatics. I have no interest in that.

[steveinindy]

Even as your humble Sport Pilot type, I think it really should be mandatory - just to eliminate the bugaboo of fear.

Amen to that Frank. BTW, I owe you a beer or two for the spirited discussions you help to foster on here.

[233507]

Back to the original topic. I've seen crashes like this that were found to be related to CO poisoning usually from a crack in the exhaust system. It seems incredible that 4 adults would sit there and die if they were not passed-out from CO. And remember the wife of the pilot was an accomplished pilot herself ... CO is my guess.

[Bill Greenwood]

Was it cold at the time of the crash, would they have been using cockpit heat? If not CO is less likely to have just come in the cockpit. And can the autopsy show any C O in body tissue, and did it? What does the NTSB report say? They probably have a preliminary one by now,and the more definitve one in 6 months or so. A tragedy any it came.

[steveinindy]

Anybody think CO had anything to do with it?

Not likely. That would have already leaked to the press (pun not intended) if it were the case.

It seems incredible that 4 adults would sit there and die if they were not passed-out from CO. And remember the wife of the pilot was an accomplished pilot herself ... CO is my guess.

There was a case where an entire three man airline crew in the 1950s or 1960s flew a parallel course to what they were supposed to be on and impacted a mountain due to subtle CO incapacitation. There was a defect in the cabin heater which allowed it to introduce CO into the cabin air. Unless there is a significant size difference or serious difference in underlying health, adults tend to respond relatively predictably to CO. Out of all of the cases (approximately 20) I am aware of, only two or three had some other person on board who made an attempt to control the aircraft. One was a successful landing (in that no one died at least) and the other one that immediately comes to mind ended in a crash.

And can the autopsy show any C O in body tissue, and did it? What does the NTSB report say?

Quite readily. It can be detected in both blood, or in the absence of that, in muscle tissue as it binds not only to hemoglobin but to myoglobin as well. Some research has shown that one can determine whether it was insidious (slow) onset of toxicity or a rapid spike in the CO level (such as in a post-crash fire) based on the correlation between the blood and muscle tissue levels due to differing affinities for each type of substrate (myoglobin versus hemoglobin).