Old Bar Ferris Wheel Incident

[Wayne T Mathews]

We all know that for sure Paul,Thanks for posting, chin up and all the best.

David

Hear hear.

 

 

[facthunter]

Same from me too Paul . It was a shattering experience. You will never quite get over it. I have all my close call experiences still with me. Nev

 

 

[Wayne T Mathews]

Paul, good to hear your okay ,and to hear a bit about the crash from some one who was actually there, hope the future is a lot more dull for you ,cheers Mat

What a great wish to give someone MM... I used to fly with a DC10 Captain who's closing sentence when giving his "Captain's brief" was always, "and our main aim today is to make this a boring flight,,, OK?" Let me tell you, I used to love hearing him say that. Especially before we went out to do the 6-7 hour test flights we used to do after major maintenance.

 

 

[Guernsey]

It is really good of you to come on this site Paul, I am sure that a lot of forum members appreciate it and needless to say we are all glad that no serious physical injuries occured.

 

There is another positive that has come out of this accident that you have already touched on, in particular for those of us who own or fly Gary Morgan's Sierras and that is the strength of his aircraft especially the cockpit area. Nobody likes to see crashed and crumpled aircraft however it benefits the designer who can confirm the strength of his design or make improvements if necessary. My wife and the wives of those who fly our Sierra certainly appreciate the proven strength of what we all fly.

 

Keep your chin up Paul our thoughts are with you and please remain on this Forum.

 

Alan Marriette......KJFAB's Father-in-Law.

 

 

[flying dog]

I wonder if he just left the flaps down by mistake.

Sorry, buy haven't read all the rest of the replies.

 

Hang on.....

 

When I was doing my BFR and was doing climbouts in a new plane I was shown the problem of taking the flaps up TOO SOON!

 

So if he did take the flaps up they would have lost even more lift and so have climbed out even lower.

 

Do you mean: I wonder if he took the flaps up too soon?

 

Just asking.

 

 

[kgwilson]

Good to see you on the site as well Paul. I am glad some of the earlier posts have been removed. There are some very good people who frequent this site but there are also those who put fingers into gear before engaging brain. I hope everything goes well for you. Garry has kept me up to date with things.

 

Cheers

 

Kevin

 

 

[Exadios]

Not very clever is it?. Although, the pilot has to assess the situation he is getting himself/ herself into voluntarily. The buck stops there. We must all realise it. Hope they are not injured though. Nev

Presumably the pilot did not do a circuit.

 

 

[facthunter]

My statement " not very clever is it?' actually related to the siting of the obstruction as much as anything else, but it is meant to apply to all possibhle situations we (as pilots) may get ourselves into. Climbing always causes a blind spot particularly with low wing aircraft ( another factor) and with any kind of downwind acting the climb out may be degraded by the increasing tailwind with altitude ( wind gradient) effect. Nev

 

 

[Guest Maj Millard]

Previously mentioned that there was a tree contact prior to contact with the Ferris wheel......is that true or just rumor.............................................................Maj...

 

 

[turboplanner]

There was one media story that the aircraft was coming in to land and connected a tree first. I think that's where that one came from.

 

 

[Guest Maj Millard]

OK Turbo, that's probabily where I saw it also. I have been a bit off thread lately, was there a tree strike prior to the ferris wheel or not ?...........if so it would throw a whole different light on the climb-out profile of the aircraft to me . I seem to recall someone on the ground stated he hit trees prior to the ferris wheel ?...............................Maj...

 

 

[turboplanner]

We've only got a short time to the interim report, so should know then

 

 

[Guest Maj Millard]

Roger that...........................................Maj...

 

 

[Gnarly Gnu]

We've only got a short time to the interim report, so should know then

Just curious, do you actually have much faith in the ATSB reports? Considering the infamous 'lead oxybromide' report made them an international laughing stock for many years and all.

 

 

[Guernsey]

All new staff now I would imagine.

 

Alan.

 

 

[facthunter]

The ATSB reports are subject to peer scrutiny. That should go someway towards keeping them in line. Nev

 

 

[turboplanner]

There's been a lot of grapevine discussion on that by pilots GG.

 

You'll notice these days that in some categories of accidents ATSB doesn't investigate. Examples are a couple of aerobatic practice fatalities, one of them possibly a turnback gone wrong, which would have been a salutory lesson to those among us who are totally confident they can do a 180 and land if they have an EFATO. I suspect that's not ATSB's fault, but Government cost cutting.

 

Certainly the ATSB reports are about a tenth of what we used to get from the brilliant Macarthur Job and the Aviation Safety Digest.

 

 

[facthunter]

In the old days it was aviation alone. Now it's every form of transportation lumped into one. Nev

 

 

[eightyknots]

Hi DavidYes legally I cant comment on anything that happened at the interview. ATS had me sign a legal document to that end.

Just briefly I have been through everything a 1000 times since the accident and believe a bad landing yes and an aborted landing but everything from the time I aborted was text book and I dont think i did anything wrong from that point. I was in a nose up attitude, as stated in the news interviews straight after the accident and neither myself nor my passenger saw a thing until the bang. From my persective I had nothing but clear skys in front of me and I was out of there.

 

-

 

Gary Morgan and Tim Morgan his son were there at the time watching the whole thing.

 

Gary Morgan his wife Chris and Tim Morgan his son stayed the whole time at the accident giving moral support. They have all kept in close contact with me ever since offering what ever moral support they could.

 

I feel for everyone involved no matter how distant they were to this including sideshow people guests at the show the poor children that were in the cage above. When you hear a child crying just above you for his mother and its because of what I had done and there was nothing I could do but listen to him cry puts a knot in your chest.

 

_

 

Any suggestions I can give to help from this.

 

Dont just look when at a strange runway. "Examine" Overfly the runway not just to check the windsock amd runway but "everything" Look hard because in photos you can see the ferris wheel from the runway but in a nose up attitude travelling at speed in a low wing you see nothing but open sky.

 

If I knew that ferris wheel was there I could have avoided it by a slight adjustment.

I am really thankful for you that there was no loss of life and you are on this forum "to tell the tale", Paul. I am sure that you have probably thought about alternative outcomes many times since the event, and I am even more certain that you are very very thankful that there was only some bent metal after the crash. The alternatives are too horrible to contemplate.

 

I am impressed with the strenth of the Sierra (and the ferris wheel too ...I used to think the transportable ones were pretty flimsy but I have now learned otherwise).

 

I wonder if anyone, anywhere has ever done any review of the relative strengths of light planes? It would make very interesting reading. It would certainly have an influence on a choice of aircraft I would settle on.

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

Just out of curiosity, what would have happened if you refused to sign that document?

 

 

[Guest Maj Millard]

They usually swear you in before taking an offical statement Ozzie, so there would be an offence connected to it I'm sure if you refused to the secrecy...................................................................Maj...

 

 

[Guest davidh10]

...I wonder if anyone, anywhere has ever done any review of the relative strengths of light planes? It would make very interesting reading. It would certainly have an influence on a choice of aircraft I would settle on.

Naah... Wouldn't want a Volvo with wings.

 

 

[turboplanner]

I wonder if anyone, anywhere has ever done any review of the relative strengths of light planes? It would make very interesting reading. It would certainly have an influence on a choice of aircraft I would settle on.

Someone made the point that planes were meant to fly, not crash, and the valid version of this is that they have a lower number of collisions, but they come from many different directions, and corrective action if often by modifying behaviour since the participant group is a lot smaller and the demographics a lot narrower.

 

In the automotive industry very simple standards were set based on the most common impacts - from the front and from the side. A lot of testing was done around the world, and today we have standards, and performance against those standards which allow us to compare makes in each class quite accurately.

 

Where aircraft are built using space frames, and the materials and dimensions are known, and engineer could compare makes based on a set of chosen impact directions - say from the front, from a nominal frontal angle (for a part flip), and for a full slam down flip. He could keep going of course, but these would tell some of the story.

 

What the mass production aircraft manufacturers do though is way more complex than that and extends to weld and fastener testing, bonding materials and composite delamination, strength testing components to destruction, bending and vibrating to destruction etc.

 

I recall seeing a Boeing 727 development film which showed the fuselage bolted to the floor, and a wingtip winched upwards very slowly, going up, up, up way beyond what you might imagine in flight, creaking, groaning, and still going up with big crinkles on the top skin, and finally letting go almost in the vertical position with a bang which scared the s$it out of all the pigeons, and raised dust right through the factory.

 

 

[facthunter]

You'd be better to have stronger structures for in flight loads rather than add weight to enable a contact to be better withstood. Aeroplanes are not built to hit objects, and never could be in a real sense. Some will perform better than others but it would be very hard to analyse. The roll over situation might be more important and fire resistance, objects that you might hit your head against in the cockpit should be padded, escape hatches effective etc.. All things being equal a plane should be as safe as possible . It's not wimpy to consider safety aspects. Saying "you wouldn't go flying at all if you think like THAT," is a bit of a cop out . I don't buy that one Nev

 

 

[dazza 38]

A quick safety item to fit to help in a impact would be the AMSAFE seat belts with the airbags on the webbing. I think.Never seen them in the flesh.But looks like a good idea.