RE: Some of the best
Firstly let me apologise again for this incident. I am deeply embarrassed by what happened, and am not looking for any credit for the save. Instinct is all the save can be attributed to, and ideally I would of course preferred that the plane never got close to that situation in the first place.
Now lets take some time to run through some things.
Firstly and most importantly, I was to breaking any rules. There was no minimum height limit at this event.
At the time, and throughout the weekend all of my flying ( Apart from one cross wind touch down) was on the far side of the centre line of the runway. if you look at the video you will see the entire wing is clear of the centre line.
We have no speed limits here in Europe but I can assure you that the model was well below 200 mph. The simple fact is that I made a mistake. I am very sorry for it, but it happened. I make mistakes in pretty much every flight. Some are obvious, some are not so obvious. This one was about the most obvious I have made to date, but given the amount of flying I do, I am pretty satisfied with my ratio of mistakes to flights.
I believe almost any flight we make as pilot is filled with an element of risk. Risk that something goes wrong with the model, risk that something goes wrong with the pilot. I try and manage the risks the best way I can. Believe me when I say that on every single flight I ever make I am always thinking in the back of my head " What if" What if the wing is to fail at this point? What if I stall here? What if I lose signal right there? Whee will the model end up? I kid you not, my thought process during a flight is filled with those types of thoughts.
This was not my first low pass of the event. I had made a few with the Epic on a previous flight, and run the thought through my head of what if I clip the grass. I never once thought it would veer around and face the crowd as it did. Again my mistake, for which I apologise for.
As I mentioned above. I think about risks while I am flying a hell of allot. I also think about risks in general a hell of allot. I see so many situations on my travels where I think to myself, damn! Thats so potentially dangerous, yet nothing is ever mentioned. I watch many cases at different events around the world where pilots who are maybe flying a plane well beyond their capabilities bumbling through a flight, semi in control always looking like they are seconds away from a crash.
I see pilots who have maybe not been flying for x amount of months suddenly decide that the weekend of a big event will be a good time to jump back on the sticks.
I witness pilots who have such a track record for crashing model aircraft ( of any type ) repeatedly welcomed back to public events where their poor flying skill of currency almost ensures a crash or a incident of some sort.
I see models ( Often huge great big models) That are so badly built, installed, maintained regularly flying at events.
The list could go on and on. What I am trying to say is that there is risk in almost every aspect of this hobby. The only way to ensure this does not happen is to ground every model.
Sure we can introduce a whole load more restrictions, but is that really going to eliminate the danger totally?
I know I am going to get jumped on for this incident, and I know there are a bunch of guys out there just desperate to take a chunk out of me. In some ways I guess I deserve it. But will it change the way I enjoy my hobby?? No!
I know in my head how much thought and attention I dedicate toward the safety of my flying, my models and what I do, and I sure as hell know that guys like me are not the ones that run the risk of hurting this hobby.
Regards Al