Chris SS

Wouldn’t miss it for the world!

It would be interesting to know if this was related to the repair….

They were carrying fuel for an 11 hour flight. I reckon they would have had ferry tanks and been way over gross. Two up with normal fuel the 421 will still climb.

It’s the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. This explains why ‘there have been so many crashes’ since the worst year on record, which was 1972.

My money is on structural breakup. From the ADSB data he was stable at 9500. 30 seconds later he was at 9300' at 550fpm descent. 25 seconds later he was at 9600 but already at a 3700fpm descent! I suspect that a sudden updraft pushed them above 9600, followed by a strong pitch down to correct, and a spar or tail failure followed by instant incapacitation. 19 seconds later the plane was through 7300 descending at 9800fpm. It will be interesting to see where the control surfaces are. The lesson to be learned from early analysis - be weary of convective weather systems and dark cumulus!

It would be interesting to note the position of the mixture levers.

There is a post on Facebook where a witness alleges that the aircraft suffered a tail strike followed by a go-around with a steep pitch up and a wing drop. This post does not serve to speculate on the cause of this specific accident, but rather to discuss that this is a very plausible and common occurrence during a late go-around in high powered singles - especially Cirri. Let's be mindful of the need to apply firm forward pressure on the stick during the go around. Your priority should be to keep the nose down and get the speed up before initiating the climb. Remember - the trim will want to fight you.

It’s not. It’s a pilot problem. Thousands of RVs fly thousands of landings every day. If you treat them properly this doesn’t happen. The biggest killer of RV nosewheels is too much speed on final, followed by thinking you’re finished landing before the aeroplane has come to a complete stop.

Arguably the best aviation weekend I have ever had in Australia. Truly amazing.

Flying and camping. At least 5 aircraft in our group from YBAF.

There is a Youtube video simulation of the accident based on ADSB data. It looks from the simulation as though he lost the engine late on crosswind at 700ft. It looks like he turned back to mainland and almost made it - but sadly missed it only just…. Keeping the gear up would have given him that extra bit of glide distance - I wonder at what stage he selected gear down? My heart goes out to the families affected by this tragedy. Is there something in this that we can learn? Maybe circuits over water should be conducted closer to land? Keep gear up when over water?

And that makes it even worse…

Winning at lawn darts?

Very interesting. Thank you for sharing.

I’m looking forward to it!