Eddie P

My Feedback: (4)

Just to prevent the random take on my above post, when I say "preventable accidents", I'm not implying we can prevent crashing our models Sorry, we're still gonna have to deal with our own carnage from time to time. I mean preventing a spectator or innocent bystander injury.

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

Well, it's like riding a motorcycle. You can do things right every time, and STILL get killed!
But, like you say, we can greatly reduce the risk.
There IS this whole cultural aspect to the US jet community of "nudge nudge wink wink" towards any rules, by a lot of people. Not all, but a lot. And a very prevalent attitiude that "AMA hates jets, screw the AMA." It's not very helpful.
It comes down to this, again: either WE can regulate ourselves, or someone can do it for us. I would hate to become like the UK, where the CAA, their equivalent of the FAA, has control over models, and can actually forbid you from flying. As it is right now, FAA relies on AMA to keep things under some general control. Non-AMA flying out on dry lake beds or private property, well, nothing that can be done about that, and it's again, the least of our worries while violations happen constantly at major AMA-type events.

Gazzer

I don't know anyone in this hobby who delibarely sets out to kill or maime, and to trash their model. That's good for us all.

But, lack of education, that will allow the risk to build up. Impatience, the Tenerife 747 incident dramatically shows the issue with this behaviour, worlds worst air disaster I think, incompetence, and over confidence. All human traits within us all but controlled differently. Unchecked and a disaster will occur. The scale of that disaster will depend on how it impacts you, if your the father of a child injured or killed (two in the UK with prop models in the last 5 years), could you even imagine how wretched you'd feel about someone's toy aeroplane??

In the UK the situation is very controlled when you get to a stage where the model hits certain boundaries, up until that point, and tiat is far down the line in my view, everything is just reccomended as good practice and etiquette.

Working with rather than against representing institutions is good, providing they reciprocate, ignorance of the facts is just as bad when its wilful or a demonstration of its prejuidice and lack of interest. You will not get anywhere if they refust to listen and can you afford them to not keep listening, go back to impatience as above.

But safety safety safety, is no bad thing.

Given each and every minute of the day aircrat fly all over us from all parts of the world, conforming to standards, some better than others, but nevertheless at a standard, why can't we as a specialist interest minority group, seek international safety and competence standards??[:-]

Of course there are local politics, and some "well that would never work here" syndromes, but hey why not give it a try, and set a standard that presents "safety" first across the globe, easing our multi nation events, and getting best practice from everywhere?

They say there is safety in numbers, so grouping together may just add some voice, and if a good thing happens in one part of the world, the ignorance is harder to prove justifiable when ohters seek to avoid adoption!!

It could even be fun to have a model "international" jet turbine operator and pilots "licence". There are enough full size practices to be modelled (pun intended) and enough officials, CD's representatives et al, to come up with something.

Truly I throw the gauntlet to the big umbrella organisations, put this to the test, prove your worthy of representation, and create a logical, emulation of the full size.

You can't avoid accidents, you can't de-risk everything, but you can reduce them, and if they happen less, they'll likely cause less consternation, damage and injury..... should we start a new thread???

Gazzer

erbroens

A interesting point raised in this thread is that the two worst disasters in aviation: Tenerife, a ground collision between two jumbo jets and the the Ukraine Sukhoi crash is that those aircraft where flying at their lowest possible speeds, or not flying at all, and both pilots in the crashes where considered "some of the best" of that time, including the KLM 747 pilot...

The common point on those two crashes where reckless decisions on the planned piloting...

IMO there is a huge lesson here.

Enrique

EASYTIGER

My Feedback: (119)

This is pretty interesting...
I would REALLY like to hear the thoughts of some of the "silent majority", some of the many lurkers out there who don't post much.
You heard MY bit, nobody wants to hear it anymore, and I know where a lot of the "regulars" stand, but I think there are a lot of people who might have something to say but are afraid of getting their heads bitten off.

F106A

My Feedback: (2)

ET,
The "political" subject of turbines have been discussed to death: AMA, JPO, Waivers, 200 MPH and on and on. There nothing new to be added to the discussion anymore, it just a few people still posting defending their position, which is fine as this is a discussion forum.
Very few turbine modelers are going to change whatever their position is on the subject by anyone posting on RCU.
Like I said, it's been discussed ad nauseum.
BRG,
Jon

EddieWeeks

So your saying statistics on the safety record of jets is irrelevant…

Without statistics you don’t know what you have… What is a safer flight ?... Flight #1 or #100

Turbine flight #1 or turbine flight #300,000


What is easier to come up with…

1. Perceived danger of jets. This is where the rule makers,
with no turbine experience, say, “Jet plane go fast, boom, kill everybody”
2. Statistically valid data of number Jet flights, amount of crashes, number of fires ect..

The only way to move forward is with the facts. Not perceptions.

The facts are, full size air show crashes can be deadly. Flying Model jets can be deadly also.

But it has not happen in 10-12 years.. WHY.. ?

Eddie Weeks

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

I'd agree more if you said
Real safety is not measured only in how long an accident hasn't occured. It's also measured in how well we buffer our everyday mistakes (we are human afterall) with the consequences.

...otherwise you are indicating that its ok for stuff to blow up every day as long as we try to ensure that we have sufficient buffer. In reality, the rate at which the mistake occurs is rather important too, and safety-conscious people try to reduce the incident rate as far as possible as well as reduce the likely consequences of the mistake.

Gordon

Eddie P

My Feedback: (4)

Hi Eddie. No, I'm not saying statistics are irrelevant. My personal opinion is that real safety does not solely consist of numbers and statistics. Real safety is proactive, requires a plan and most importantly accounts for the human element. It prevents casualties, and reduces the negative effects of human mistakes. Real safety and accident prevention has been a dynamic discipline for some time. Statistical analysis surely has it's place, especially with mechanical reliability (machines do not have that random human element). However, relying on statistics to have a warm fuzzy feeling on current conditions is very, well, hazardous. Statistics are what you see behind you and are indicative of exactly what and how data was collected - and nothing else. It's like riding in a train and looking backward over the tracks. You know where you went - and the tracks follow a rule, so you should know where you will go. What about driving by looking out the back window? Get's trickier. Now how about flying through an unfamiliar canyon at low level while looking backwards? Get's even sportier. Statistics will lie to you as sure as the sun rises if you don't have enough data and if you don't account for the human element.

What has to be done to make statistics work for you is to first collect an enormous amount of detailed, accurate data (and nobody has come close to collecting data on every time a radio hit happened, every time anyone over G'd an airplane, every time anyone ever flew toward a flight line, etc.) and only then after much projection and analysis can predictions be attempted. And then it's just a prediction based on many assumptions still. Just saying a fatality HASN'T happened so far, means absolutely nothing.

Eddie, I'm totally hearing you on this. I think we all want the same thing here. But what are facts? They are in some ways perceptions of reality. How else can you account for warfare throughout history. Each country had their own facts and went to town with them.

As far as stats go, maybe we don't want these "facts" to speak for us just yet because we may get stuck with them. If a severe injury or fatality does happen, we'd go from a 100 percent safety record to an abysmal safety record in just one event. The numbers (facts) would support it.

Take an airline operation for example. 1500 missions a day, 365 a year. That's nearly 555K missions a year. Now look at rc flying. Lets say you have 25 major special interest events a year with 200 flight at each, on average. That’s 5000 missions. Cause a fatality one time at an RC event within 10 ENTIRE years and you have the equivalent of a fatality at the airline operation every 18 hours. Doesn't this example seem unfair? Well, the old saying of "figures don't lie, but liars figure" comes into play. I'd bet a few would like to gin up some facts to sell papers, or push their agenda, or whatever. That's my take on stats as far as we are concerned.

Gordon- Hi, thanks for the comment. I agree, I should have covered every base but when I posted I really just had a few minutes to comment so I put out a pretty general statement. Yes, stats count. But I still feel they are way over used to poor effect. The last thing I want to see is a false sense of security based on poor data.

I think we all want the same thing. We have to really be more active and less passive about it though. I'll stand by that statement until the end.

Lollpopp

Jesus christ, how can anyone possibly say that the video is fake, you can clearly see the airplane passing in front of the last tree...

B58

My Feedback: (43)

That B-52 picture still makes me sick to my stomach. Hope I spelled that right, but you know what I mean. I had 17 years with the Buff, and remember one night in Dec. of 1972 that we lost 7 over Hanoi. That was bad, but it also was different. That was combat, and you take the chances. But that crash was so totally tragic. 3 guys died because of one fool's ego, and their reluctance to take action against him. When you read the accident report, it was common knowledge that he was a hazard. It is very hard for one of your peers to step up and say you are a danger, but it has been done in the past, and probably that accident will help give more people the cajones to do it again. As for the B-52, when he rolled past about 45 deg at that altitude the plane was going in. All they could have done was eject sooner. And since you need 600 feet, I am not sure that would have helped either. Man, what a shame. The old plane deserved better, as did the crew. Well, I'll climb off my box now and shut up. Bob