ORIGINAL: Vincent
I received a tele call from Kevin right after he crashed his F-18. He told me the jet took of and pitched up violently but he got it under control and by switching to low elev rates was able to get in some nice flying for about 4mins. He then set up for final and got slow on the down wind leg and the jet just fell out of the sky. He used the video of a SM F-4 falling out of the sky on final that was posted here on RCU some time back as an example. Those were the details relayed to me right after the flight. Does that sound like a SM defect to you ?? this is why i have a beef with the way SM has handled Kevins crash and completely ignored my concerns.Yes, it would be nice to get the real truth from Kevin Marks and stop this dog and pony show BS.
V..
Does that sound like a defect to me?? Not at all, sounds like to me someone got behind on the throttle or had a flame out. Now any number of things could have caused this problem wouldn't you say? Does he deserve a new plane for nothing? Well if you ask me, NO. There is no way to prove a manufactures defect for a jet falling from the sky due to what seems to be power loss. Sounds to me like bad fuel system setup or poor piloting skills. I recently have been flying the Skymaster F-18 and did some considerable slow flight flying and if you are not on your game when flying them they can bite you real bad, Raffy???
Regardless, is it unfair that he got a new plane and you did not?? Maybe, thats not my call though.
But I ask you one thing, if you sell someone a plane and then they go out and crash it and its not a defect, should you owe them a new one???
Thats the real question. Skymaster offers excellent support in my opinion, but in this case I think they are being overly generous. But thats just my opinion.