ORIGINAL: highhorse
Flaps in a high speed loop that's a no no, so he could have lost a servo during the loop which would also cause the death spiral...(pilot error)
Who says it's a no-no? Who says it was a ''high speed loop''? (everyone else seems to be condemning the guy for being too slow) Who says the servo wasn't a stout, high quality, metal geared unit ? I think it's at least as factual to say that lots of flaps get deployed at higher speeds every day without failure. But that's just my opinion based on guesses
C'mon, y'all. It's human nature, I suppose, to see a vid like this and WANT TO BELIEVE that it wouldn't happen to us (or our wallets and pride) because we are somehow smarter than the guy who was on the sticks. But WANTING it to be true does not make it so...........
Enuff bashing of the poor guy already.
Hmm, High speed loop; just look at the impact splash, Easy one to figure out... Now if you are flying the whole flight with a deflected flap for the entire flight this can cause huge loading on a servo and I have no idea of what servos he is using, but I have had 8611's fail with huge loads before. Just ask the 3D guys why they put 4 servos on there rudders. In my 10 years of fly turbine jets I never used my flaps but only to land or take off, or to use in a speed break configuration but never have used them for more than a minute or so at low speeds. It appears the flaps had been deployed in the whole flight. If he comes back on it would be interesting to see if that servo failed or a linkage. If you look at the second video as they bring the jet back the flap is still down but that may just been from the crash. There is still a lot of unanswered questions that need to be answered but other than that all we can do is speculate. I too have lost a few jets so I feel his pain...