Let's have a moment of silence..................








Yup-







Mine is no more. was doing some downwind passes, LOW, and I got the "ground jumped up and bit me" feeling. As "almost better" as it made me feel, (the club sec. told me there was a visible gust that pushed me down) It was my fault by not factoring the downwind/low pass "leave a bit of room" thing into the mix. If you look at the video, you can see my immediate reaction on the sticks, but at (est) 130mph to 140mph, my reaction wasn't fast enough. Our videographer was filming me when it happened, so the impact isn't on tape... It did however make one hell of a sound! It hit square on the belly, and on impact removed the right aileron control horn off of the surface. Being top hinged, it fluttered, and the oscillation went through the entire wing. This of course is what I remember. She rolled over to the left, and I couldn't roll back over to the right, so I pushed the nose down (inverted = up) to flare or whatever I was thinking and as a result, she violently spun in. As confirmed by the video, this all happened in like 2 seconds or so. I'm sure some other things were hurt real bad from the first impact before she went in, but the control horn abrasion and removal at least explained the flutter...
Anyhow, here's the vid- I pushed her as hard as I normally do, only this time I got burnt.

http://www.cvrcclubvideos.us/SDVids/BobcatSplat.wmv