Plane collision with tractor

[MossRoad]

My dad and uncle were pilots. They were taught in the seabee I beleive in the '40"s.
Uncle John's plane was an old, old, old, tail dragger with no radio. Flying from Long Island to Vermont one weekend (long ago) supposedly circle airfield twice landing the third time around a duster came up under him and they crashed to the ground. Uncle lost right leg from knee down and paralized from waist down.

Jeez. That's awful.

 

[MossRoad]

I'm now wondering who has the worst track record, dusters or civilian chopper pilots ? Seems to be a really long list of celebrities who have been killed in chopper crashes.

Should be safer on the ground, but if that was the case, I wouldn't have reason to start this thread .

Rgds, D.

This doesn't break it down like that, but it does list quite a bit of interesting information on aviation related deaths and injuries.

https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/flying-too-high-workers-fatalities-in-the-aeronautics-field.pdf

 

[Jstpssng]

Even with today's tech, the ocean is a big place...... back in the 90's, I was working for a company doing site work across Canada. The team that was out West was in BC when some unrelated survey work was going on in a local lake.

The survey crew found a totally intact plane, that had been missing for years. Best guess was the pilot got lost in a Winter storm, and tried landing on the lake when low on fuel..... ice didn't hold.

Rgds, D.

It is, but that's just my theory based on projecting his flight path and the fact they haven't found him in 50 years. He could have tried to put down in a lake, or might be out in the woods someplace. A few years ago a coworker found an unopened parachute out in the woods next to a pile of bones. He called it in and they determined it had been jettisoned from a military plane which had blown an engine on takeoff in the 1950s. They also had thrown out a bunch of other things including a big air compressor, trying to lighten the load; yet in over 50 years that was the first thing which had been found. The funny thing is that they had cut wood all around it but had either ignored it or the snow was too deep for them to notice.
The bones turned out to be from a moose.

 

[3930dave]

I came across this one years ago..... it's still up:

Image

I've never seen inappropriate pictures on there (gore), but I've known some otherwise bulletproof people who won't read that site. Too scared of never flying again, I guess.

Rgds, D.

 

[MossRoad]

I knew two pilots that died flying into the side of a mountain somewhere along the Appalachians (can't remember exactly where now, it's been so long ago). It was one of the few incidents that wasn't classified as pilot error. They were following a faulty instrument landing system to the letter. It put the mountain in their glide path. Hopefully it was so overcast they never saw what they hit and died instantly. One of their widows asked to see the remains of her husband. She said they were in a box about the size of a shoebox. So she decided not to look. It was just awful.

 

[cqaigy2]

Mountains are a big problem when you run out of space to get up and over them. I knew a few friends/co-workers that died in a crashed in the Cascades, on their way from Chehalis to Kennewick. A witness said it looked and sounded like the plane developed engine trouble. Apparently they had lost elevation as they were going into the mountains and got trapped in an inclining narrowing canyon. Sad day.

 

[Torvy]

I have an uncle who is/was a private pilot flying out of Bend (in the Cascades, for those unfamiliar). I loved flying with him, but you could not pay me to fly small planes near mountains.

Side note...I never consider the Appalachians mountains. The highest peak in the Appalachians is lower than the Black Hills....we don't call them the Black Mountains.

 

[3930dave]

A Winter or two back, I stumbled across some of the neatest/craziest slow-speed precision flying I've ever seen.

I don't remember the plane models (or even what class to call it), but they were basically small fixed-wing aircraft. Not ultra-light configurations.... think mini Cessna, very light weight.The ones that could afford it, had slightly hot-rodded engines swapped in.

Very short take off rolls..... vertigo safe to watch - they'll have fly-in's at remote small airports. Get out the tape-measure, and it's a Run Whatcha Brung event..... shortest lift off wins. Crazy how little distance they needed to get airborne.

Go AnyWhere..... that's where they had me...... These planes often had very big balloon main-tires. Added to drag, but allowed them to land on beaches (sand or low-profile stone) and relatively smooth random fields. Not much different than how the Wright Bros did it !

One of the most spectacular vids was several of these planes landing on a tabletop mountain. There was no other way up there; you only way down was to fly off, or wait for helicopter rescue.

Sounds crazy, and probably is..... but these guys looked sane enough; many had obviously spent many years training and prepping their planes.

I've never taken flying lessons, so had to relate what I saw to something I know better - motorcycles.

If somebody with absolutely no experience with motorcycles saw a Trials Rider performing, they might think "Cool." Followed by "Looks easy, maybe I should try that".

I think of the pilots I was describing as Trials Riders, in The Air.

Rgds, D.

 

[Jstpssng]

I used to dream of getting

A Winter or two back, I stumbled across some of the neatest/craziest slow-speed precision flying I've ever seen.

I don't remember the plane models (or even what class to call it), but they were basically small fixed-wing aircraft. Not ultra-light configurations.... think mini Cessna, very light weight.The ones that could afford it, had slightly hot-rodded engines swapped in.

Very short take off rolls..... vertigo safe to watch - they'll have fly-in's at remote small airports. Get out the tape-measure, and it's a Run Whatcha Brung event..... shortest lift off wins. Crazy how little distance they needed to get airborne.

Go AnyWhere..... that's where they had me...... These planes often had very big balloon main-tires. Added to drag, but allowed them to land on beaches (sand or low-profile stone) and relatively smooth random fields. Not much different than how the Wright Bros did it !

One of the most spectacular vids was several of these planes landing on a tabletop mountain. There was no other way up there; you only way down was to fly off, or wait for helicopter rescue.

Sounds crazy, and probably is..... but these guys looked sane enough; many had obviously spent many years training and prepping their planes.

I've never taken flying lessons, so had to relate what I saw to something I know better - motorcycles.

If somebody with absolutely no experience with motorcycles saw a Trials Rider performing, they might think "Cool." Followed by "Looks easy, maybe I should try that".

I think of the pilots I was describing as Trials Riders, in The Air.

Rgds, D.

I used to dream of getting my pilot's license I even looked into signing up for ground training. I quickly realized though, that it takes a level of concentration which I don't have.

Come to think of it, that's also why I gave up riding motorcycles. Maybe I was paranoid, yet it seemed like every auto driver on the road was out to get me.

 

[MossRoad]

STOL

 

[MossRoad]

stol videos

 

[3930dave]

Come to think of it, that's also why I gave up riding motorcycles. Maybe I was paranoid, yet it seemed like every auto driver on the road was out to get me.

^ The First Rule of Surviving the Street....

.... and, the Second, and Third.......

Sometimes I think that a similar sense of Awareness, Vulnerability, and Concern is missing from commercial aviation today... but that's a whole other thread on it's own Right 'Der !

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

STOL

There we go..... not quite Tilt-Rotor Mil peformance, but actually affordable for peasants like me....

Rgds, D

 

[3930dave]

stol videos

could easily fly in out of the Wally World parking lot. Get one of those long grabber sticks - Starbucks drive thru is doable !

Rgds, D.

 

[cqaigy2]

Wow, i've seen what i thought were short landings and take offs, but that's amazing.

 

[3930dave]

Wow, i've seen what i thought were short landings and take offs, but that's amazing.

Those balloon tires are pretty tough and versatile.

Popular in remote areas, you can find vids of people in Alaska etc flying into (and, safely out of) places you'd otherwise need a helicopter to get to.

Rgds, D.

 

[cqaigy2]

Those balloon tires are pretty tough and versatile.

Popular in remote areas, you can find vids of people in Alaska etc flying into (and, safely out of) places you'd otherwise need a helicopter to get to.

Rgds, D.

For sure. I remember being flown in similar planes, into a remote area on, i think it, was the Koyukuk river, and Yukon river and also doing some Caribou hunting on Kenai Peninsula landing on the beach. The most memorable was flying over a glacier and it felt like somebody had grabbed the plane and flung it like someone throwing dice, playing craps. When we were right side up again and climbing, i looked over at the pilot, was going to ask 'what the hell' but by the look on his pale face, i figured he didn't need any input from me.

 

[repete]

Not sure how many bodies I have taken out of small planes over the years but two incidents I can share here. First was a guy who came in to the airport short of the runway and ran through a Monkey Lube business. Not killed fortunately but it was amusing to see a plane stuck in the pit with no wings. Second was a call to a young female who had walked into a turning propeller. She has to be the luckiest young lady ever. She got out of the right side of the plane and was walking around the front and did not see the prop turning. We treated her for three lacerations on her left shoulder...

 

[Jstpssng]

Not sire how many bodies I have taken out of small planes over the years but two incidents I can share here. First was a guy who came in to the airport short of the runway and ran through a Monkey Lube business. Not killed fortunately but it was amusing to see a plane stuck in the pit with no wings. Second was a call to a young female who had walked into a turning propeller. She has to be the luckiest young lady ever. She got out of the right side of the plane and was walking around the front and did not see the prop turning. We treated her for three lacerations on her left shoulder...

She should have gone out and bought a lottery ticket. Then again maybe not... she'd probably used up all of her luck.
A relative works for the local air ambulance service. They'd been called out for an accident on the interstate and landed on the pavement. While they were working another EV ran into the tail rotor. No injuries but they were paunched and had to be towed. He said that the state trooper was NOT happy because they had to keep the highway shut down but there wasn't much they could do. Apparently AAA doesn't cover copters...

 

[MossRoad]

Back when I was a kid, a helicopter landed at a local airport. A state police car with the long whip antenna pulled up to close, the helicopter rotor hit the antenna, sheared it off and flung it through a person killing them instantly.

When I was working at the airport, we heard about an incident two towns eat where a pilot of a Mitsubishi MU2 opened the little pilot's window and motioned the line technician up to it for some conversation, and slipped his feet off the brakes. The plane rolled forward and propped the tech, killing him instantly.

And one day I was parking a Piper Cheyenne on the ramp. I swung him around and directed him up over the tire-downs. Then I gave him the signal to cut his engines. For some reason he throttled up significantly, the ramp was icy, and the plane with locked wheels came shooting right at me with those big props spinning. I dove to the right and the left prop missed my legs by inches as they passed over me. Besides close calls in near car accidents, I'm pretty sure that's the closest I've come to unexpected death.