Mid Air !!!
 

This weekend just gone I lost my Seagull Extra 260 to a Mid Air collision I really hate boomerang trainers now!!!!http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/atta...mentid=1972075R.I.P

Somehow I,ll bet the guy that was flying the Boomer really hates Extras now :rolleyes:

Please allow me to offer a little bit of my take on midairs. I certainly have been through a lot of them expecially in various forms of pylon racing, it kind of comes with the territory;

I quietly consider every single mid air to be 100% my fault regarless of circumstances. This is especially so when it involes someone "who is flying as a student on a trainer or anyone who is the "weaker flyer" for any reason or when I am flying the "hotrod airplanes" You see as the stronger flyer or the one flying the maneuverable airplane I an certainly better equipped to avoid the midair.

If you subscribe to this and take care to always consider who it is thay you are flying with you will find the chances of midairs is almost nil.

John:)

John's right. Always keep a space of sky between yourself and the other plane. You'll never hit anybody if you do.

John,

A very sly way of patting yourself on the back....but i caught it.

Kurt

yes true but happened so quick came in to land banked right powered off and next sec I had one wing gone !

If you try and hit each other it's almost impossible. So consider it an act of god.
There is no way to get satisfaction here. The guy that was out of the pattern is at fault etc etc etc.
sounds like you were out of the pattern if you came in to land and suddenly banked right. You are so such faster and manuverable than a trainer.
Sorry for the loss. They all hurt

Yes I always consider every single midair I was ever involved with to be my fault and there have been plenty and by doing so its amazing how they just seem to stop. Now I am not going to try to anylize this especially since someone accused me of "patting myself on the back" but its a simple concept and it works.

Now the most important part of my post is the last sentence and its so simple. If everyone stops just for a moment when they are getting ready to startup to simply look up and make a choice. Based on the question, Do I want to fly with this particular mix of aircraft types and do I want to fly with the experience levels up at that moment. I teach this to all my students and it works very well,


John

Yep I agree there are lots of times when I sit back down and wait for a few to land

ooooo.. the dreaded 'Wing Off' light...

it's odd, I've had a grand total of three mid air's in my entire life... and if I close my eyes I can still SEE them.

pieces fluttering... ooooh not fun.

sorry for your loss, Izzy!

This is what keeps me grounded and my planes in one piece. At a club setting it is basically a free for all, in who flies when. I too am selective in whom I will share airspace with. My spotter will inform me if some undesirable is starting up his plane and I will immediately land, and I do as well for him. I have even been on the runway when someone decided to fire one up and taxied back to the Pitts. This is the simplest way to keep ones sanity, ones plane, and not develop a disliking for other fliers. And there are those that are well above me in ability that I will yield the blue skies to just as quickly. Staying on the ground hurts nothing versus the consequences.

yes I agree on all what you say I was the first to put up my plane and everyone new that it was only its third or fourth flight ten minutes into the flight there was around 6 to 8 planes up I thought the traffic was getting to thick so I decided to bring her in yelled out landing then brought my plane down in lower as I was banking to come in that's when the other plane came striate threw my wing wost thing is I was trying to be careful I should of just kept flying and not worried about all the traffic well anyways I have another Extra on its way so that makes the pain ease a bit lol ...

OK here are a couple of my more interesting mid air stories. This first was because of its rather spectacular nature.

This one involved my first Quad Cadet with four .25's which was about fifteen years ago and it was only around three months old with 39 flights in the book. The airplane was proving to be one of my most successful bashes and I was getting quite proficient with her. Yes she was a lady. Well I wont bore you with a lot of details and like I said I consider every one my fault regardless but the collision occurred at stage center at a good height with spectacular results and engines (all mine still running in errant nacelles scattered to the ends of the runway in both directions and our runway is almost a thousand feet long:) Need less to say about all that was left from my ship was the tail feathers. Anyway that was such a great ship the tail feathers were grafted right on to #2 which has been a wonderful airplane wearing out two sets of engines now and there is a number #3 now flying which I built for a local fellow.

The other airplane was a giant scale profile of some sort with a G62 I think and he was able to land with minor damage. Well a week latter he was flying it and something went wrong resulting in a crash with heavy damage. And now for the 'Rest of the Story' several years later he said hay John ya want this stuff and not really knowing what he was talking about said yes of course. It turned out to that same wreaked profile! Well heck here seveal years later I found myself testing this profile I just rebuilt for myself and it of course was that 'other airplane' :cool:

Now for midair story #2: This one does not involve me but was so interesting I must relate it: Agine no blame is implied for any involved. Now this one is a little different as it is a competitive organized pylon race. I was participating in one of the old SWRA warbird pylon races some time back and these were the long running but now defunct racing events and epicenter of that was at the unique field near phoenix AZ called Speedworld and what a world it was.

These races involve three classes of warbird racers and all the starts at that time were via pace plane and not the countdown starts that are used today. The pace plane crews used Q-500 racers as pace ships and numbered four to five planes with an equal number of pilots, This to insure ready supply to keep the races going at a steady and rapid clip.

Now what they did back in those days was to run a "Beginner class" which usually was trainers or a simple sport airplane and it was just a single round race run just like the warbirds just before the warbird rounds started. Of course its purpose was to get folks interested in the racing who may be too timid to start with a warbird.

These races were always interesting to watch and usually with the fellows quite high and pretty much all over the place. Well on this occasion the pace plane was up and flying low and as slow as possible for the assembly laps and on the run in to the starting line one fellow who actually was in a perfect position perhaps twenty feet behind the pace plane 'except' he was quite high at maybe 300 feet but when that pace plane crossed the line down low at maybe 15 feet and that truck horn blew? That trainer up there pitched over in perhaps a 45 degree dive and was so focused with tunnel vision smacked that Quickee dead center. OK I gotta confess to being entertained by that one and heck Thats why the always had a bunch of quickees on hand for spares!

Aw sorry for digressing now and I'll just hush up.:o

John

C'mon John, I know you follow my logic as technical as you are (all in fun!):

The better pilot is always responsible for the mid-airs.
I was always responsible for the mid-airs.
The subtle conclusion (pat, pat, pat): I was always the better pilot.

Surely you can laugh with me on this one.

Kurt

Lol should have my new extra 260 this week decided not to fly it on club days not until I have got my moneys worth out of the plane I only live ten mins away from the field so I will go down when field is empty and quite.

Sounds like a good plan Izzy and sometimes when you replace an airplane they seem even better the second time around:cool:

John

All good Izzy, so are you going to do a build review on this one?

KiwiBob got my plane 3 days ago finished build today everything went well on the build so a review on step by step build is a bit to late.

Well I did post that 4 days ago now (lol) ..... still, be good to see the pic's of how she came out! ;)

Well that isn't a problem I can do That .

Sorry not sure really how to upload pictures on phone.

Looks like you managed it ok!
She looks great, though I am wondering if we ever had herd about that yellow & black SU26 that's standing up against the cabinet behind the Extra?

The Su26M I am running Hitec 5945 on all surfaces engine is a DA50 with a K.S tune pipe just waiting on a canopy from Goldwing in Hong Kong .