3 more gone too soon. Near Maffra 16/11/24

[Jerry_Atrick]

ATSB are investigating this accident: 

Australian Transport and Safety Bureau investigating light plane crash that killed three people in Victoria's east - ABC News

WWW.ABC.NET.AU

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The Australian Transport and Safety Bureau is investigating the crash in Gippsland that killed a 20-year-old pilot and two teenage passengers.

 

[spacesailor]

Aircraft travelling at 60kn downwind.

' 80 kn ground speed )

Turning at normal rate into headwind , the ground speedwell drop to 40 kn . Any windshear will drop your wing fast .

( according to my instructor ( always add airspeed when turning slow,). 

spacesailor

 

[Kyle Communications]

It had a 912ULS in it. That pretty marginal for a aircraft at that weight and it did have 3 people in it so it would have been up there in weight. performance would not have been great at slow speed

 

[pylon500]

There is a relevant detail in the spec sheets, 90lts in a fibreglass header tank, in front of the instrument panel...

Having a few hours in Garry's blue prototype Cougar, there is a noticeable CofG shift as fuel is burnt off, the subject plane also had wing tanks, behind the wing spar.

Now throw an extra body in the back seat, and life can get interesting if you're not on top of the fuel system.😳

On a side note, interesting to see a '100LL Avgas only' sticker on the fuel cap, but I guess if it had a home made turbo system on a 912ULS, it may be the case...🤔

[Thruster88]

20 minutes ago, Kyle Communications said:

 

 

 

20 minutes ago, Kyle Communications said:

It had a 912ULS in it. That pretty marginal for a aircraft at that weight and it did have 3 people in it so it would have been up there in weight. performance would not have been great at slow speed

 

After market turbocharged, supposed to be 135hp.

 

https://www.aircraft.com/aircraft/237212267/vh-ldv-2013-morgan-aeroworks-cougar

 

Edited Sunday at 08:18 AM by Thruster88

[turboplanner]

2 hours ago, BrendAn said:

I am as always talking all accidents in Australia, ga and ra. What we see on the news. Surely you have seen all these news stories too.

Sure I see them, but I drill down to the categories to get like-for-like so it relates to RA aircraft, not some very complicated flight relating to IFR or a very complicated aircraft.

[onetrack]

Quote

I may have this very wrong - Once airborne, unless subject to turbulence/wind shear/ gust, the aircraft does not "know" or care from which direction the wind is coming from. The aircraft will perform just the same with a 20 knot tailwind, as a 20 knot  headwind. The ground speed will differ but the air speed remains the same

Skippy, I've got no problem agreeing with your correct understanding of how an aircraft travels in a pocket of air, and does not "know" where the wind direction is from. 

But time and again, we see pilots crash at low level, and especially when banking or changing course, and they're looking for and acquiring a ground reference, which can distort their perception of air speed.

As Facthunter has pointed out, close to the terrain is risky operation, and things can go bad very quickly, if you're not expecting bad things to happen.

I'd have to opine, you can't put an old head on young shoulders, and youthful inexperience must have been a feature of this tragedy. I'm talking inexperience in total logbook hours, inexperience with low level flight and possibly gusty conditions, and inexperience with a relatively new (to him) aircraft.

 

[BrendAn]

he was flying 100 ft below minimum legal height so when things went bad they were on the ground in an instant.

i went past there tonight on my way to work, there would have been close to a dozen people walking around the site. 

very thorough.

the thing i keep thinking about is the parents who lost 2 sons and a nephew at once for no good reason.

[BrendAn]

1 hour ago, turboplanner said:

Sure I see them, but I drill down to the categories to get like-for-like so it relates to RA aircraft, not some very complicated flight relating to IFR or a very complicated aircraft.

if your a member of raaus you can get all that from the ocurrance page in the member portal.

why do you dismiss accidents that are not raaus. plenty of cessnas crash. at the end of the day they all have the same result regardless of the aircraft.

[Red]

7 hours ago, skippydiesel said:

I may have this very wrong - Once airborne, unless subject to turbulence/wind shear/ gust, the aircraft does not "know" or care from which direction the wind is coming from. The aircraft will perform just the same with a 20 knot tailwind, as a 20 knot  headwind. The ground speed will differ but the air speed remains the same.

Whilst absolutely true in steady windspeeds there is a caveat you have to remember an aircraft has inertia, the heavier it is and the faster it is travelling the greater the inertia, this evidenced in Gusty conditions when you will notice your ASI Fluctuating as your aircraft doesnt immediately adjust itself to its trimmed speed.

This is also applicable to an aircraft turning sharply in high windspeeds, there will be a lag in the aircraft re-assuming its trimmed speed, the lag being in proportion to the aircrafts inertia

In Reality with our low inertia aircraft at relatively low speeds this is not a major consideration, but the effect does exist.

[turboplanner]

7 hours ago, BrendAn said:

why do you dismiss accidents that are not raaus. plenty of cessnas crash. at the end of the day they all have the same result regardless of the aircraft.

I don't dismiss non-RAA accidents. because they cover long distance cross-country, busy airports more complex equipment, but I don't broadcast them to people who are just learning to fly every basic aircraft over short distances and will never encounter the issues in this area. No point in making people depressed about a lot of fatalities from things they will never e.cncounter.

[pmccarthy]

When I think of instructors, I picture a 40-something person or older imparting knowledge and wisdom. That has been my experience. Someone with a couple of hundred hours in their early twenties may be able to teach the basic skills, but they do not have wisdom. I think there should be a reassessment of minimum standards (age and hours) for instructors.

[BrendAn]

2 hours ago, turboplanner said:

I don't dismiss non-RAA accidents. because they cover long distance cross-country, busy airports more complex equipment, but I don't broadcast them to people who are just learning to fly every basic aircraft over short distances and will never encounter the issues in this area. No point in making people depressed about a lot of fatalities from things they will never e.cncounter.

That's a  very condescending  attitude.  A lot of aircraft now can be raa reg or vh so you dismiss it if it's flown with vh reg.  The one on Saturday could be raa if the backseat was removed. Anyway I am standing by my statement that there seems to be an aircraft accident on the news weekly. 

You only want to count aircraft with raas reg fair enough.

[Mike Gearon]

Heart goes out to that family that lost the boys. I’m building an aircraft  at the moment and talk with my daughters about one of the three grandchildren maybe taking over the S21 one day. Maybe the motor glider is a better option? I just purchased a Diamond aircraft Super Dimona.
 

Was reading up on the Diamond DA40 accident rate. It’s super low. Read below. No stall related accidents. 

 

The flight data when combined with a rough measurement of the turn along with altitude and speed don’t look good.

 

The DA40 has accumulated a very low accident record, particularly with regard to stall and spin accidents. Its overall and fatal accident rates are one-eighth that of the general aviation fleet and include no stall-related accidents. The level of safe operation is attributed to its high aspect ratio wing, low wing loading and benign flight characteristics. The aircraft can be trimmed full nose up, engine set to idle and it will descend at 600–1,200 feet per minute (180–370 m/min) at 48 kn (55 mph; 89 km/h) hands-off, a lower rate of descent than the competitor Cirrus SR22 can achieve with its airframe ballistic parachute deployed.^[13]

 

Edited Sunday at 08:52 PM by Mike Gearon

[facthunter]

Turbulence and/or control inputs create extra drag as well as banking. Ground effect can help if you are not above 1/2 wingspan from a  fairly level surface. (Not trees).  This is general comment. We don't really know what happened here except 3 young people's lives were lost.   Nev 

[Thruster88]

1 hour ago, Mike Gearon said:

Heart goes out to that family that lost the boys. I’m building an aircraft  at the moment and talk with my daughters about one of the three grandchildren maybe taking over the S21 one day. Maybe the motor glider is a better option? I just purchased a Diamond aircraft Super Dimona.
 

Was reading up on the Diamond DA40 accident rate. It’s super low. Read below. No stall related accidents. 

 

The flight data when combined with a rough measurement of the turn along with altitude and speed don’t look good.

 

The DA40 has accumulated a very low accident record, particularly with regard to stall and spin accidents. Its overall and fatal accident rates are one-eighth that of the general aviation fleet and include no stall-related accidents. The level of safe operation is attributed to its high aspect ratio wing, low wing loading and benign flight characteristics. The aircraft can be trimmed full nose up, engine set to idle and it will descend at 600–1,200 feet per minute (180–370 m/min) at 48 kn (55 mph; 89 km/h) hands-off, a lower rate of descent than the competitor Cirrus SR22 can achieve with its airframe ballistic parachute deployed.^[13]

 

DA40 has had stall related fatal accidents. The quote is just sales BS.

 

https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2017/aair/ao-2017-096

[Flightrite]

Grubby CH7 yesterday had an article about this crash showing a Piper Seminole wrecked on the ground, any wonder we have zero trust in these clowns!🤮 The Swiss cheese model will hopefully line all the wholes up as to why three young males lives abruptly ended in a tragic way!

[facthunter]

You can have a Commercial licence at 18.  Nev

[Mike Gearon]

1 hour ago, Thruster88 said:

DA40 has had stall related fatal accidents. The quote is just sales BS.

 

https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/investigation_reports/2017/aair/ao-2017-096

Good catch. I lifted that quote off Wiki. Not a sales brochure. Must admit it seemed a stretch of a statement. 

 

Wiki joins the trust but verify list now.

 

 

[F10]

That Saturday I took two young boys flying in my Gazelle, from West Sale. I saw the Cougar parked across the ramp in the grass. We had a fantastic time. Both boys said to me when coming in to land "This is the best day of my life!", too funny! They had a ball. I did the obligatory positive and negative G turn and gentle wingover, at 1500Ft, as much as you can do in a Gazelle. The one lad at the start, was a bit cautious, so asked if I could just fly around. I said absolutely, I will do exactly what you want me to do....But he soon was enjoying it and went for the gentle "G" demo...I got the "toy houses and cars" comment too! A week or two before I was up solo at 2000Ft, doing power on stalls and unbalanced stall....even a Gazelle will drop a wing!

 

Can't get my head around that, literally a half hour after I departed, having put the Gazelle away, three young men went out in that Cougar and died!?? Makes me sick. The pilot had around 600Hrs? But what upset experience? This looked like a steep angle impact. It looks like a stall spin scenario? With 600 Hrs experience I like to think an engine failure should have resulted in a landing in a paddock, even a hard landing. But also could have been stalled in a forced landing. Terrible, terrible event...what price for experience?? My Air Force training, and experience are invaluable as they keep me safe. I've seen too many horror incidents. I am not a daring pilot, If there's a play.....I play it safe.... Aviation can be extremely brutal.....but I guess so are the teen hooning car crash tragedies? But again....is upset training and accelerated or "G" stalls; severely neglected these days? I think so.

 

I walked out once I locked the hangar, and had a look at the Cougar. Must have as I said, just missed these guys....would I have maybe said something, chatted about the conditions (it was getting hot and was getting turbulent below 1500 Ft as was forecast. Would that have changed things? Probably not. Can't say I liked the Cougar proportions much..... it has a lot of keel area ahead of the wing, the engine being very far forward. The tailfin is small, just eyeballing it, I thought directional stability can't be great? Short span but broad chord wing. The winglets are large and may help with directional stability?  

 

   

[facthunter]

In turbulence, a stable aircraft is not always best. It's better to have a more NEUTRAL plane . Stays where it is. Dutch roll is an example of too strong a reaction to slipping. (Big Tail and wing sweep back.) The Gazelle is the easiest plane to fly that I've EVER flown. Do NOT allow it to SPIRAL.   Nev

[kgwilson]

No aircraft ever built is immune to pilot error & that is responsible for probably 90% or more of all crashes.

[facthunter]

 "Pilot Error" is an expression that has NOT been used by  investigators for quite a while. It actually gets you nowhere. There's ALWAYs some reason, why? Investigation is justified as being a way of improving safety Not just apportioning blame. A convenient answer as there's always a pilot at the scene of the crash. Yes Pilots are human and to err is human. . We must reduce the Frequency of these so called human error crashes. HOW is the hard part. Zero accidents is not possible but to not try to reduce them is dereliction of responsibility.. No one goes flying expecting to end up dead. That's obvious. We also think it only happens to others. Safety has to be an ethic. IF you're not sure check it again. Look again. don't show off. Don't be distracted. Fly to the conditions and your and the Planes Limits.. I'd hate to injure anyone or have a student prang because of something he wasn't taught  in a situation I've supervised or been a party to. Set a good example to others. Everyone has a part in it.  Nev

Edited Monday at 04:43 AM by facthunter
clarity

[facthunter]

Thanks Brendan.  Nev

[Flightrite]

I sure as hell wouldn’t be doing unbalanced stalls etc at 2000 ft!