Wings of Peril
Posts: 82
Joined: 5/27/2005
From: Bellefonte,
PA, USA
Status: offline
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OK, now this thread has ceased to be entertaining. All I see now is a bunch of guys who weren’t at the crash site making judgments and laying down a lot of rules. Now you’re patting each other on the back for being masters of the obvious. OK, we shouldn’t stand on runway, ever! I get it now. Why don’t we make a whole list of no-brainers starting with this tidbit, Now, lets add rangerstl’s bullet points and end with perhaps “never stick your finger into the path of a rotating propeller”? Now, just to make the list worthwhile, let’s add a post-script, “Do everything possible to avoid injury to yourself and others”. Then, I could feature that.
This crash has a (somewhat) clear series of events and most of the “what-ifs” you geniuses are coming up with have more to do with the avoidance of these than the actual crash. Most RC’ers routinely make corrections in reaction to situations and save the model. If we crashed every time we had a problem, I don’t think this hobby would exist. Hell, I reckon my predicament to crash ratio is about 100:1. One of these events, such as the engine flame-out could be the root cause, but not necessarily the real or final cause. Yes, the avoidance of any of these events could have saved the model and diminished the threat to life and limb but in this case, the model was almost on the ground safely and from the clip, it’s not 100% clear that the model could not have stayed on course and landed safely while missing the humans. I'll concede that the plane could have been on a direct course to hit these guys because it appears that there was a ditching or a go-around attempt that went wrong and made matters worse-and that could be the real, final cause of the crash. With that being said, I do agree that no matter where these guys were stationed, or what thier reasons are for standing there, they attempted to land too close to themselves to allow for further errors in judgment or equipment malfunctions-for whatever reason.
AT the risk of stating the obvious, you guys who like to play NTSB investigator should remember the real differences between model flying and the transport of humans. With full-scale, every attempt is made and every expense is paid to avoid predicaments. Not so with models. We don’t have control towers or teams of maintenance professionals with reliability analysis programs. We just try to do our best and have fun. We’re encouraged to develop our skills to the point where we’re thinking ahead and our actions are predictive but we should not become robots and diminish our reactive abilities. We’ll need them. Whatever your skill level is, you are not immune to a case of dumb thumbs or a sense of panic. No matter how deep your pockets are, you’re not immune to equipment failure. Every time we maiden a new model, get distracted, fly with other models in the air, or try a new maneuver, we put the aircraft at risk. Let’s just be sure we do everything possible to avoid injury to yourself and others.
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RE: Never play chicken with a bomber*video* - 
