2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

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Gabriel
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2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby Gabriel » Sat Sep 25, 2021 12:06 am

Instructor and student killed. Of course there is no report on the causes, but from the images it smells like stall-spin-crash-not_burn-die.
The accident happened close to the Ezpeleta aerodrome, home of the Río de la Plata flying club, very close to Buenos Aires.

There are witnesses versions saying that the plane was approaching to land, so could be a "typical" base a base-to-final stall-spin.

https://www.infobae.com/sociedad/polici ... un-muerto/

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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby 3WE » Sat Sep 25, 2021 12:29 am

Airspeed + measured pull ups + reasonable banks…

Keep the AOA indicator.

I still wonder if we need two-mode stall warnings: The foffie warning if the AOA gets a little high (maybe a seat belt ding), and for the traditional AOA:

https://youtu.be/PPqTPUyAuPc
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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby Gabriel » Sat Sep 25, 2021 7:07 am

Airspeed + measured pull ups + reasonable banks…

Keep the AOA indicator.

I still wonder if we need two-mode stall warnings: The foffie warning if the AOA gets a little high (maybe a seat belt ding), and for the traditional AOA:

https://youtu.be/PPqTPUyAuPc
Sorry guys for the long post, but this accident hits close to home in many ways. The airplane involved, the fact that it was an instructor and student, the location in Arg and near Buenos Aires, and me being a fanatic regarding stalls.

As you all probably know, I do have some experience stalling the Tomahawk. I did countless of stalls (no spins) in at least 10 different ones. I did all my PPL in the Tomahawk, then transitioned to the Cessna 152, and then went back to the Tomahawk. At the same time and in the same flight school, a friend of mine did exactly the opposite (we had our PPL check ride the same day).

So let me rant a bit and tell you how the Tomahawk stalls and what I think are the issues here that makes that the Tomahawk has a greater stall-spin accident rate than the Cessna 152 (although a lower fatal accident rate overall).

The Tomahawk has the typical electrical stall warning buzzer that is quite laud and clear, impossible to miss (that said, I flew in a couple where they had replaced the stall warning buzzer with a stall warning light, I didn't give it much of a thought back then but later I figured it is almost criminal). The manual says that the stall will sound between 5 and 10 knots before the actual stall (at 1G, although the manual doesn't mention that). However, in the sample I flew it would sound closer to 10 knots above the stall, sometimes perhaps even a bit more. (I actually think that's bad, more on that later). Then when you are some 5 knots above the stall the Tomahawk has an unmistakable. As the flow over roots of the wings starts to separate, bubbles of turbulent air hit the vertical tail which, with the weight of the horizontal T-tail on top, creates ample oscillations for which the Tomahawk is famous and which many blame for the structural failure of the tail, that as far as I know never ever happened. But you can clearly hear the buffet an feel it with all your body. And at that point, and all the way to the actual full stall, the plane still behaves well and has fair aileron control. So with all that, I don't think that the plane lacks any warning, It does have 2, the buzzer and, if you get closer, the buffet, both in advance of the actual stall and with time to recover without loosing lateral control. Now, in the full stall, it stalls nastily and unpredictably, it can be straight ahead or you can have a wing drop (mostly left) that can go from mild to violent with an incipient spin (and ready to develop into a proper spin if not recovered immediately). (watch video at the end)

So what do I think are the issues?

Well, first the unpredictable behavior in when fully stalled. Compared with other small planes like Cessnas 152/172 and Piper Archers/Cherokees, the stall is in general more violent and unpredictable (although these planes also have their share of unintentional stall / spin accidents). I never tried it, but I think that the "leaf fall stall" (where you keep the plane fully stalled with the yoke all the way back and the nose goes down and up and you control any roll tendency with the rudder) would be almost impossible in the Tomahawk. You would very soon have a violent wing drop that will require you to unstall to recover. I didn't do a lot of full stalls where you keep pulling increasingly up until the nose just goes down against your will and you are powerless to stop it no matter how hard you pull, but in the ones I did I had several wing drops including a violent one where I instinctively tried to pick up the wing with aileron and the instructor just slammed the yoke forward hitting it in the middle with the open palm of his hand and putting us in zero if not slightly negative Gs (point at which my aileron input became effective) and after I completed the recovery he looked at me with a serious face and told me in a grave voice: "DON'T - DO - THAT - EVER - AGAIN". And explained to me, for the first time, the problems of doing what I did, something that should but never had been explained to me before even when we were already doing stalls including full stalls. If I hadn't made that mistake I don't think that an instructor would have explained that to me ever.

So here you have a hint: Instructors. They are not all great, and it is VERY difficult for a student to tell a good from a not-so-good one. Even if you talk with other students they can say "yes, he is great, very friendly, he has a lot of patience and explains the things very well". But that's not enough. I have had instructors that later I realized were not as good as I thought they were. The instructor of the stall I described above, who was not my main instructor during the PPL (my instructor was not available that day) still remains in my "great instructors" list, unlike my main instructor who at the time I thought must be the greatest instructor ever but then, as I learned more (not just from own flight experience but also by better understanding aerodynamics and flight mechanics and by reading lots of accident reports and learning about human factors) I realized that he had not been a great instructor. About 1 year after I got my PPL, he died in a stall-spin accident in a Tomahawk with another pilot that was preparing for his instructor check ride.

In my flight school, the deck for practicing stalls was 1500ft AGL which is a huge lot of altitude to recover from a stall (you just need a couple hundred feet at most) but if you go into a full spin by accident, it would be enough to recover but not with a lot of margin, meaning that if you are less than flawless in the recovery you are likely to not succeed. In the accident that killed my instructor, according to witnesses they saw the plane spinning from altitude and they managed to stop the rotation but too late to recover from the dive. The hypothesis is that they were practicing full stalls not too high (perhaps at 1500 ft?), got into an unintended spin and could not recover in time. Of course we will never know. I recently saw a video of an instructor practicing leaf-fall stalls in a Piper Archer or similar and they kept it stalled with the yoke all the way back and controlling the roll with rudder until 1500 ft where they recovered. They did great, but I don't think that is safe enough anymore (as I did back then). If you are going to practice the real-world stall recover procedure where you initiate the recovery at the first sign of stall, I am good with 1500 ft. If you are going to do full stalls, do it at a spin-friendly altitude.

When I transitioned to the Cessna 152 and did full stalls, it was a totally different behavior. I told my instructor "this plane won't stall" (I was holding the yoke all the way back and the 2nd tone of the air-powered harmonica stall warning was sounding like crazy, but the plane was "flying" smoothly without buffet or wing-drop tendencies and fair aileron control). My instructor said "Well, you are nose high, 40 knots, descending 2000 feet per minutes. I would say that we ARE fully stalled". I found flying the 152, in general, much more benign, easy and almost boring compared with the Tomahawk. Remember my friend? He transitioned from the 152 to the Tomahawk and found it quite challenging (and fun), with the stalls not being the exception, rather the opposite. We both ended settling for the Tomahawk. Which brings me to my second point.

I wonder how many of the stall-spin accidents in the Tomahawk happen with pilots that did the PPL in the Tomahawk, and how many with pilots that did the PPL in other planes that are easier to fly overall and have more benign stall behaviors.

Now I want to combine 2 things: the stall warning and the training. Because the stall warning sounds so early, it was not that uncommon to have it sounding while practicing different things NOT STALLS during flight training. Slow flight with 60 knots, you are at about the onset of the stall warning (some 10 knots above the actual stall). Slow flight with full flaps and 55 knots, you had the stall warning sounding continuously (some 7 knots above the actual stall). The most impressive example was the spiral descents. Hot carb air, fuel pup, throttle to idle, 60 degrees of bank, keep 80 knots, you have to make a 720 losing 1000 ft (500 ft per turn). The stall warning would sound almost continuously (while in a steep bank, no less).

So you sort of learn that the stall warning is a sort of alert to remind you that you are flying quite slow and that you need to be very cautious, but it is NOT something that requires immediate correction / recovery. And I did learn that. As you all probably know, I radically changed my mind on that. Lacking a variable AoA indicator, the stall warning is a binary AoA indicator with only 2 readings: AoA ok and AoA too high. Once you are in the AoA-too-high regime, you don't know how close are you from the ok/high threshold or from the full stall (or even beyond). I now consider it unacceptable to intentionally let the stall warning keep sounding, unless you are practicing stalls beyond the official stall recovery procedure (which should be to recover at the first indication of proximity to a stall) or you are 1 or 2 feet in the air during the flare.

In year 2014, 15 years after logging my last hour in my logbook, I decided to start flying again. I did 2 things: I started the process to get my medical renewed (which eventually I got) but in parallel I scheduled a flight with an instructor in the local flying club in the town where I was living (where there was only 1 flying club/school, only 1 instructor, and only 1 AME). One of the things we did was spiral dives. Sure enough, the stall warning started to sound but, unlike what I used to do in the past, now I was relaxing the back pressure every time that the stall warning sounded and then I would pull up again and so on, keeping the spiral dive at the onset of the stall warning which, on this plane, meant keeping a little more than 80 knots of speed and a slightly higher descent rate. After doing the 720 spiral descent, I had lost 1100 to 1200 ft instead of the "required" 1000 ft. The instructor said "that was VERY good given that you have not flown in so many years, you just need to pull up a bit more to keep the 80 knots and it will be perfect". I told him that I tried but the stall warning would sound so I relaxed it and tried to keep it at the onset of the stall warning the whole time and he told me not to worry for the stall warning so much, that it had ample margin over the stall and that it was normal in this maneuver to have it sounding most of the time. I told him that I didn't feel comfortable having the stall warning sounding and not taking a recovery action and he said, well, that's what you need to do to meet the 1000 ft standard in this maneuver. I knew then that this was my first and last flight with this instructor.

I wonder how many pilots consider it more or less ok to have the stall warning sounding in a steeper-than-normal base to final turn, after all that is what they always do when practicing slow flights and spiral dives. And then if it does stall and the Tomahawk has a violent wing drop, will they try to pick up the wing with aileron as I wrongly did? Possibly, especially if they didn't have the opportunity that I had to learn, by chance and almost the hard way, not to pick up the wing with aileron but instead first aggressively recover from the stall and only then level the wings and complete the recover. And to forget about approach and landing that you were trying to accomplish, you will have time to think of that later, if you survive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUYiV0kX710

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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby 3WE » Sat Sep 25, 2021 9:58 am

I hope you are kind of wrong that a stall warning “becomes ok” in pilots minds.

My ass-umption on base to final turns is that folks are FEELING CONFIDENT, but not really watching or thinking. They might even have good airspeed for shallow turns.

Visually locked in, working the crosswind, and you steepen and pull a little more and wham.

I don’t think Cessnas are immune to base-final crash and burns.

Maybe “the answer” is making folks more paranoid.

I have one lame personal example: Crosswind practice- finishing the turn to final- adequate altitude. I briefly steepened the bank to keep from over shooting and pulled a little. No stall warning sounded, no stall occurred. I was aware of airspeed and I wasn’t pulling up relentlessly. Did THAT “save the day”, or was I just lucky with adequae fat, dumbness and happiness?

/worthless babble.
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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby 3WE » Sat Sep 25, 2021 2:13 pm

One more nitpicky point:

Should the stall warning ON A TOMMAHAWK not_be something that is taken VERY SERIOUSLY?

Conversely- who says 15Xs are better…maybe they tend to crash UPRIGHT instead of upside down?

Still, the problem of powering up, breaking the stall, leveling the wings and establishing a climb WITH MINIMAL ALTITUDE LOSS can be a bit much- especially if it’s a surprise.
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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby Gabriel » Sat Sep 25, 2021 7:05 pm

My ass-umption on base to final turns is that folks are FEELING CONFIDENT, but not really watching or thinking. They might even have good airspeed for shallow turns.
Well, on one hand, the stall warning is hard to miss even if you are not watching or thinking, it should be a wakeup call.
On the other hand, I saw at least 2 youtube videos where pilots happily landed with the gear warning blaring continuously for a couple of minutes before touchdown... and they didn't notice it.
I don’t think Cessnas are immune to base-final crash and burns.
Oh, absolutely. It is just that Tomahawks have a significantly bigger (by a lot) spin accident rate than the Cessna 152 (and very likely other Cessnas and Pipers too, although I have not seen the numbers). Not necessarily of the base-to-final type. The NTSB did a special study on the Tomahawk's stalls/spin characteristic which, among other things, included a comparison of fatal accidents in general and spin accidents in particular between the Tomahawk the Cessna 152. What thy found was that the Tomahawk had a lower overall fatal accident rate, but a much higher spin accident rate.

Maybe “the answer” is making folks more paranoid.
I have one lame personal example: Crosswind practice- finishing the turn to final- adequate altitude. I briefly steepened the bank to keep from over shooting and pulled a little. No stall warning sounded, no stall occurred. I was aware of airspeed and I wasn’t pulling up relentlessly. Did THAT “save the day”, or was I just lucky with adequae fat, dumbness and happiness?
Bank if you will, just don't pull up (hence let the nose go down and the speed go up).

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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby Gabriel » Sat Sep 25, 2021 7:17 pm

Should the stall warning ON A TOMMAHAWK not_be something that is taken VERY SERIOUSLY?
As I said, in my PPL training days, I was perfectly happy doing slow flight with the stall warning sounding continuously while very cautiously want the airspeed indicator not to go below 55 knots. And I was very happy doing spiral descents at 60 degrees of bank and 80 knots having the stall warning sounding continuously. In my attempt to resume flying in 2014 I was not happy anymore but then my instructor was not happy with me not being happy with that and said I had to accept the stall warning sounding continuously to meet the standard.

So taken seriously? Sure. Taken as something UNACCEPTABLE THAT REQUIRES IMMEDIATE CORRECTION rather than a serious warning to be extra cautious in that regime (but it's ok to let it sound)? Well, in my experience (with multiple instructors and across decades) no it is not.

As an example, while practicing stalls I had NEVER EVER had an instructor tell me to recover as soon as the stall warning sounds. The stall practices went at least up to the point where buffeting started, typically beyond that, although normally not to the point where the nose would drop itself against your full nose-up elevator.

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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby Sickbag » Sat Sep 25, 2021 8:10 pm

Airspeed + measured pull ups + reasonable banks…

Keep the AOA indicator.

I still wonder if we need two-mode stall warnings: The foffie warning if the AOA gets a little high (maybe a seat belt ding), and for the traditional AOA:

https://youtu.be/PPqTPUyAuPc
Sorry guys for the long post, but this accident hits close to home in many ways. The airplane involved, the fact that it was an instructor and student, the location in Arg and near Buenos Aires, and me being a fanatic regarding stalls.

As you all probably know, I do have some experience stalling the Tomahawk. I did countless of stalls (no spins) in at least 10 different ones. I did all my PPL in the Tomahawk, then transitioned to the Cessna 152, and then went back to the Tomahawk. At the same time and in the same flight school, a friend of mine did exactly the opposite (we had our PPL check ride the same day).

So let me rant a bit and tell you how the Tomahawk stalls and what I think are the issues here that makes that the Tomahawk has a greater stall-spin accident rate than the Cessna 152 (although a lower fatal accident rate overall).

The Tomahawk has the typical electrical stall warning buzzer that is quite laud and clear, impossible to miss (that said, I flew in a couple where they had replaced the stall warning buzzer with a stall warning light, I didn't give it much of a thought back then but later I figured it is almost criminal). The manual says that the stall will sound between 5 and 10 knots before the actual stall (at 1G, although the manual doesn't mention that). However, in the sample I flew it would sound closer to 10 knots above the stall, sometimes perhaps even a bit more. (I actually think that's bad, more on that later). Then when you are some 5 knots above the stall the Tomahawk has an unmistakable. As the flow over roots of the wings starts to separate, bubbles of turbulent air hit the vertical tail which, with the weight of the horizontal T-tail on top, creates ample oscillations for which the Tomahawk is famous and which many blame for the structural failure of the tail, that as far as I know never ever happened. But you can clearly hear the buffet an feel it with all your body. And at that point, and all the way to the actual full stall, the plane still behaves well and has fair aileron control. So with all that, I don't think that the plane lacks any warning, It does have 2, the buzzer and, if you get closer, the buffet, both in advance of the actual stall and with time to recover without loosing lateral control. Now, in the full stall, it stalls nastily and unpredictably, it can be straight ahead or you can have a wing drop (mostly left) that can go from mild to violent with an incipient spin (and ready to develop into a proper spin if not recovered immediately). (watch video at the end)

So what do I think are the issues?

Well, first the unpredictable behavior in when fully stalled. Compared with other small planes like Cessnas 152/172 and Piper Archers/Cherokees, the stall is in general more violent and unpredictable (although these planes also have their share of unintentional stall / spin accidents). I never tried it, but I think that the "leaf fall stall" (where you keep the plane fully stalled with the yoke all the way back and the nose goes down and up and you control any roll tendency with the rudder) would be almost impossible in the Tomahawk. You would very soon have a violent wing drop that will require you to unstall to recover. I didn't do a lot of full stalls where you keep pulling increasingly up until the nose just goes down against your will and you are powerless to stop it no matter how hard you pull, but in the ones I did I had several wing drops including a violent one where I instinctively tried to pick up the wing with aileron and the instructor just slammed the yoke forward hitting it in the middle with the open palm of his hand and putting us in zero if not slightly negative Gs (point at which my aileron input became effective) and after I completed the recovery he looked at me with a serious face and told me in a grave voice: "DON'T - DO - THAT - EVER - AGAIN". And explained to me, for the first time, the problems of doing what I did, something that should but never had been explained to me before even when we were already doing stalls including full stalls. If I hadn't made that mistake I don't think that an instructor would have explained that to me ever.

So here you have a hint: Instructors. They are not all great, and it is VERY difficult for a student to tell a good from a not-so-good one. Even if you talk with other students they can say "yes, he is great, very friendly, he has a lot of patience and explains the things very well". But that's not enough. I have had instructors that later I realized were not as good as I thought they were. The instructor of the stall I described above, who was not my main instructor during the PPL (my instructor was not available that day) still remains in my "great instructors" list, unlike my main instructor who at the time I thought must be the greatest instructor ever but then, as I learned more (not just from own flight experience but also by better understanding aerodynamics and flight mechanics and by reading lots of accident reports and learning about human factors) I realized that he had not been a great instructor. About 1 year after I got my PPL, he died in a stall-spin accident in a Tomahawk with another pilot that was preparing for his instructor check ride.

In my flight school, the deck for practicing stalls was 1500ft AGL which is a huge lot of altitude to recover from a stall (you just need a couple hundred feet at most) but if you go into a full spin by accident, it would be enough to recover but not with a lot of margin, meaning that if you are less than flawless in the recovery you are likely to not succeed. In the accident that killed my instructor, according to witnesses they saw the plane spinning from altitude and they managed to stop the rotation but too late to recover from the dive. The hypothesis is that they were practicing full stalls not too high (perhaps at 1500 ft?), got into an unintended spin and could not recover in time. Of course we will never know. I recently saw a video of an instructor practicing leaf-fall stalls in a Piper Archer or similar and they kept it stalled with the yoke all the way back and controlling the roll with rudder until 1500 ft where they recovered. They did great, but I don't think that is safe enough anymore (as I did back then). If you are going to practice the real-world stall recover procedure where you initiate the recovery at the first sign of stall, I am good with 1500 ft. If you are going to do full stalls, do it at a spin-friendly altitude.

When I transitioned to the Cessna 152 and did full stalls, it was a totally different behavior. I told my instructor "this plane won't stall" (I was holding the yoke all the way back and the 2nd tone of the air-powered harmonica stall warning was sounding like crazy, but the plane was "flying" smoothly without buffet or wing-drop tendencies and fair aileron control). My instructor said "Well, you are nose high, 40 knots, descending 2000 feet per minutes. I would say that we ARE fully stalled". I found flying the 152, in general, much more benign, easy and almost boring compared with the Tomahawk. Remember my friend? He transitioned from the 152 to the Tomahawk and found it quite challenging (and fun), with the stalls not being the exception, rather the opposite. We both ended settling for the Tomahawk. Which brings me to my second point.

I wonder how many of the stall-spin accidents in the Tomahawk happen with pilots that did the PPL in the Tomahawk, and how many with pilots that did the PPL in other planes that are easier to fly overall and have more benign stall behaviors.

Now I want to combine 2 things: the stall warning and the training. Because the stall warning sounds so early, it was not that uncommon to have it sounding while practicing different things NOT STALLS during flight training. Slow flight with 60 knots, you are at about the onset of the stall warning (some 10 knots above the actual stall). Slow flight with full flaps and 55 knots, you had the stall warning sounding continuously (some 7 knots above the actual stall). The most impressive example was the spiral descents. Hot carb air, fuel pup, throttle to idle, 60 degrees of bank, keep 80 knots, you have to make a 720 losing 1000 ft (500 ft per turn). The stall warning would sound almost continuously (while in a steep bank, no less).

So you sort of learn that the stall warning is a sort of alert to remind you that you are flying quite slow and that you need to be very cautious, but it is NOT something that requires immediate correction / recovery. And I did learn that. As you all probably know, I radically changed my mind on that. Lacking a variable AoA indicator, the stall warning is a binary AoA indicator with only 2 readings: AoA ok and AoA too high. Once you are in the AoA-too-high regime, you don't know how close are you from the ok/high threshold or from the full stall (or even beyond). I now consider it unacceptable to intentionally let the stall warning keep sounding, unless you are practicing stalls beyond the official stall recovery procedure (which should be to recover at the first indication of proximity to a stall) or you are 1 or 2 feet in the air during the flare.

In year 2014, 15 years after logging my last hour in my logbook, I decided to start flying again. I did 2 things: I started the process to get my medical renewed (which eventually I got) but in parallel I scheduled a flight with an instructor in the local flying club in the town where I was living (where there was only 1 flying club/school, only 1 instructor, and only 1 AME). One of the things we did was spiral dives. Sure enough, the stall warning started to sound but, unlike what I used to do in the past, now I was relaxing the back pressure every time that the stall warning sounded and then I would pull up again and so on, keeping the spiral dive at the onset of the stall warning which, on this plane, meant keeping a little more than 80 knots of speed and a slightly higher descent rate. After doing the 720 spiral descent, I had lost 1100 to 1200 ft instead of the "required" 1000 ft. The instructor said "that was VERY good given that you have not flown in so many years, you just need to pull up a bit more to keep the 80 knots and it will be perfect". I told him that I tried but the stall warning would sound so I relaxed it and tried to keep it at the onset of the stall warning the whole time and he told me not to worry for the stall warning so much, that it had ample margin over the stall and that it was normal in this maneuver to have it sounding most of the time. I told him that I didn't feel comfortable having the stall warning sounding and not taking a recovery action and he said, well, that's what you need to do to meet the 1000 ft standard in this maneuver. I knew then that this was my first and last flight with this instructor.

I wonder how many pilots consider it more or less ok to have the stall warning sounding in a steeper-than-normal base to final turn, after all that is what they always do when practicing slow flights and spiral dives. And then if it does stall and the Tomahawk has a violent wing drop, will they try to pick up the wing with aileron as I wrongly did? Possibly, especially if they didn't have the opportunity that I had to learn, by chance and almost the hard way, not to pick up the wing with aileron but instead first aggressively recover from the stall and only then level the wings and complete the recover. And to forget about approach and landing that you were trying to accomplish, you will have time to think of that later, if you survive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUYiV0kX710
I can't be arsed to read any of this post but, Any Donkeys involved?
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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby 3WE » Sat Sep 25, 2021 9:35 pm

I know what you are saying but it sounds crazy. Slow flight practice USUALLY involves keeping the stall horn on AND A NICE ALTITUDE BUFFER.

BUT

(HUGE BUT)

Your mind needs to be very different when low…(and maybe watch airspeed)…Q-400s seem a little bit Tommahawk-like.

I THINK I know how to throw the switch in my brain between practice at altitude and making a low “slow” turn. I fear brief inattention much more.
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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby 3WE » Sat Sep 25, 2021 11:04 pm

MI can't be arsed to read any of this post but, Any Donkeys involved?
Yes. They eat grain (biofuel) and walk on a treadmill geared to the propeller.
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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby flyboy2548m » Sun Sep 26, 2021 12:41 am

Sorry guys for the long post, but this accident hits close to home in many ways.
That's OK, as is typical with your stuff, I stopped reading after the first line. The closeness of this accident to home is hereby noted.
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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby ocelot » Sun Dec 12, 2021 1:43 am

Lacking a variable AoA indicator, the stall warning is a binary AoA indicator with only 2 readings: AoA ok and AoA too high. Once you are in the AoA-too-high regime, you don't know how close are you from the ok/high threshold or from the full stall (or even beyond). I now consider it unacceptable to intentionally let the stall warning keep sounding, unless you are practicing stalls beyond the official stall recovery procedure (which should be to recover at the first indication of proximity to a stall) or you are 1 or 2 feet in the air during the flare.
Have to say, I completely agree with this. The stall warning defines your safety margin. Routine operation within your safety margin is normalization of deviance, and it's dangerous.

Also,
If you are going to practice the real-world stall recover procedure where you initiate the recovery at the first sign of stall, I am good with 1500 ft. If you are going to do full stalls, do it at a spin-friendly altitude.
I suppose practicing recovery when you haven't actually stalled yet helps to drill in the right instinctive response, but from a stick-and-rudder point of view it seems not super useful.

One of the things Popular Combat Simulator's taught me (and with luck, their flight models are good enough that the skill will transfer out) is recovery from fully established spins.

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Re: 2 dead in Beechcraft crash near Flyover

Postby 3WE » Mon Jan 10, 2022 12:25 pm

Credit: Flyover Post Dispatch

ST. CHARLES COUNTY — Two people died Saturday in the crash of a small plane in the New Melle area of St. Charles County on Saturday evening, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The twin-engine Beechcraft Baron 58 took off from Spirit of St. Louis Airport in Chesterfield and was headed to Centennial Airport outside of Denver, said NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson. It had reached an altitude of 8,000 feet before sliding into a rapid descent.

Officials have yet to identify the people in the plane. Mary Case, the chief medical examiner for St. Charles County, said it could be several days before identifications are made.

About 7:30 p.m., the airport reported a "mayday" call from the pilot, said Kyle Gaines, the public information officer for the St. Charles County Ambulance District. Around the same time, the ambulance district started getting calls from residents who heard the crash, he said.

First responders from the ambulance district, the St. Charles County Police Department, the Missouri Highway Patrol and the fire protection districts in New Melle, Cottleville, Wentzville, Augusta and Wright City coordinated efforts. The responders pinpointed the crash site in a heavily wooded, rural area near Highway F and Rugged Acres Lane, said Gaines.

"It was certainly a little bit chaotic," he said. "It took some coordination to get the search isolated to that general area."

About 9:30 p.m., searchers began finding pieces of wreckage, spread over about 300 yards of where the aircraft was believed to have made impact.

"The determination was made that it was not a survivable impact," Gaines said.

At that time, the investigation was turned over to the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.

The NTSB will issue a preliminary report on the crash, likely within the next two weeks, Knudson said.
Crash close to home in a somewhat capable aircraft.

Takeoff & ‘smart’ climb to 8000 feet, then “Maday!”

3BS needs to check the weather. Failure of both gyro and annular attitude indicators?

I would also imagine they did something that Kent
Olsen advised against.

flyboy: Your acknowledgement of a crash near my home is assumed, no reply needed.
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Re: 2 dead in Beechcraft crash near Flyover

Postby 3WE » Wed Jan 12, 2022 12:28 pm

Updates:

-There was some weather.

-Correction: No mayday call, but a report to ATC of “a problem”.

-This was a cargo flight, two commercial pilots operating it. From Cleveland to Denver. Fuel stop (ass-umed) at Flyover Corporate.

-The crash was high-speed and rather straight down.

-Repeating: This was very early in the flight leg.
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Re: 2 dead in Beechcraft crash near Flyover

Postby 3WE » Sat Jan 15, 2022 1:34 pm

http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2022/01/b ... fatal.html

Not_much new.

Their parlour area has a big discussion that it’s probably not_ice.

Plane and pilots seem to be on a pretty familiar route.

No mention of radio calls- early report was that there was a mayday, then modified to a report of a problem. The write up here states no communication after the initIation of a rapid descent.

Also: https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N585CK

A goofy little bobble after departure…wild guess, avoiding a cloud.

Then they toodle along, on course, and then seemingly turn left and dive.
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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby Gabriel » Sat Jan 15, 2022 2:39 pm


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Re: 2 dead in Beechcraft crash near Flyover

Postby 3WE » Sat Jan 15, 2022 3:11 pm

[Probable cause dude]

Gabe

Did you read the parlour talk at Katie’s place?: Weather folks have declared icing highly unlikely- apparently there was a significant inversion.

I’m aware of the general rule that any wintertime flight in mid-America in clouds and rain = likely ice.

I can run parlour talk math- in the artificial average world they should have been well above freezing, but it was rainy.

Then someone points out that the aeroplanie itself can cause ice (low pressure above wings, evaporation, etc.

I think there’s 33% chance it IS ice. There was weather and the plane did suddenly fall out of the sky, and math interpolation may not be accurate in an active rain shower.

Conversely- I’d expect the pilots to monitor their wings, and talk to ATC and descend to lower altitudes- I think there were good altitudes available.

Probable cause dude may be ass hat parlour pontificating…not that we’d ever do that.
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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby Gabriel » Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:52 am

I said FWIW.

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Re: 2 dead in Beechcraft crash near Flyover

Postby 3WE » Sun Jan 16, 2022 11:56 am

“I said FWIW” (with near zero discussion).

He did have the ATC call, which you can’t make too much out of, other than something ain’t right.

VFR minimum altitude is 1,500 feet in the area, with 7 degree centigrade (45F) temps, they could have descended. But we’re they looking for ice?

I’m thinking that some things may never be resolved.

One possible data source is EAS propellor flights to flyover. None of them fly in that exact area, and 7:30 PM might be late to have any of them encounter those rain showers and check air temps or ice.
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Re: 2 dead in Beechcraft crash near flyover

Postby 3WE » Mon Jan 17, 2022 7:20 pm

I read some of the parlour talk on Dan's video.

There was much discussion that ice should not_have been the problem.

One person claimed to be a controller that night, and there were no Pireps of ice (including a Lear that flew near there). But after some of flyboy's comments, I get the impression that there's something about the speed of a jet, that reduces icing vs. the speed of a propellor plane.

A minor note: Weather radar seemed to show a narrow line of rain, which would tell the pilots they might be out of the weather in a short time.

So, how do you suddenly crash a somewhat capable aeropoanie:

Ice is an easy answer, and I'll repeat that with raindrops falling and updrafts and downdrafts and stuff, who knows if there was a small area of the atmosphere stirred up and "icy"...so Dan MIGHT be right, even though many indications were otherwise.

There was a "strange transmission"...did PF lose their attitude indicator and blow it?

Did an engine malfunction? (It seems shitty to not be able to maintain speed when you have altitude to burn)...I guess one could have the autopilot on and not be paying attention as speed decayed??? The audio of the crash sounds like twin engines "screaming" much like in the movies, of course who says they were creating power?

Or something big, broke...control cable, control surface, a high-flying goose, a chunk of blue ice from an airliner above, a meteor, (and EtC.)

This may be a tough one as the crash may have damaged a lot of stuff.

Another trend is folks saying: "If you have concerns, don't take the flight...like Dan says...get a motel". BULLCRAP! As best as I can tell SO FAR, there really was no good reason not_to take the flight, UNLESS you knew that something critical on the plane was wonky. Sure, a rainy, wintry night SEEMS bad, but unless the forecast truly sucks, a capable instrument aeroplanie, and instrument pilots...not_a reason to cancel.
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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby 3WE » Mon Jan 17, 2022 10:13 pm

...and double posted there to:

1. Maybe not talk ONLY to myself.

2. Maybe troll for some fun input.
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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby Gabriel » Thu Jan 20, 2022 2:14 am

The problem with this accident is that there is so little on it to even speculate.

Dive with the props screaming.... so was it loss of control? Was it due to icing? Was it due to spatial disorientation? Was it due to a not_well managed engine failure? Stall-spin trying to (sort of) "for-one-oh it"? Did some control cable break? In-flight fire?

I don't even understand what was said over the radio. Would you care to transcribe it?

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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby 3WE » Thu Jan 20, 2022 2:54 am

I don't even understand what was said over the radio. Would you care to transcribe it?
No.

It’s basically gibberish- “umm, yeah, uhhhh” (not the transcription, but paraphrased).

I assume the voice matches earlier communications, and it’s consistent with someone troubleshooting a problem (if you use a tiny bit of imagination). It doesn’t really shed any light on things, other than a panic push on the transmit button…sudden grab of the yoke?

I’m guilty of being interested because of the “back yard”’ aspect.
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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby Gabriel » Thu Jan 20, 2022 3:52 am

The problem with this accident is that there is so little on it to even speculate.

Dive with the props screaming.... so was it loss of control? Was it due to icing? Was it due to spatial disorientation? Was it due to a not_well managed engine failure? Stall-spin trying to (sort of) "for-one-oh it"? Did some control cable break? In-flight fire?

I don't even understand what was said over the radio. Would you care to transcribe it?
Pilot incapacitation (stroke, CO poisoning), murdercide. (just expanding the list of possibilities)

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Re: 2 dead in Tomahawk crash in Arg

Postby monchavo » Thu Jan 20, 2022 10:52 pm

Sorry guys for the long post, but this accident hits close to home in many ways.
That's OK, as is typical with your stuff, I stopped reading after the first line. The closeness of this accident to home is hereby noted.
Needlessly harsh, Ike.
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