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Now that the NTSB Preliminary report for the Plainville, MA accident has been published it's time we all faced the facts. First of all, Plainville Massachusetts is anything but a "densely populated area". The town border touches the extreme northeast corner of Rhode Island, The address of the house that was hit was 25 Bridle Path. A quick look at Google Maps shows that the Wentworth Hills Golf Club was just over 2,000 ft away from the crash site and some town land known as "Burnt Swamp" was just over a mile away. The population of the town in 2010 was just 8,264. We all fly over thousands of towns just like Plainville. The pilot was extremely unlucky to have hit a house in a town like Plainville. The NTSB report makes it sound as if the engine experienced a catastrophic failure. The pilot declared an emergency at 3,300 ft and "queried the controller about the nearest airport". When the pilot said, "we're losing engine" the controller provided vectors to a highway 2.5 miles away. The report says the pilot reported "we're gliding" at an altitude of 1,450 ft. and 40 seconds later the last radar return "showed the airplane in a right hand turn at an altitude of about 700 ft and a ground speed of 66 knots, about a 1/10 mile from the accident site." Of course a 1/10 mile is just 528 ft. Clearly the pilot didn't run out of gas. It's my opinion that pilots in this situation often try to reach the unreachable rather than prepare the aircraft for a controlled crash. Based on my experience of crashing an airplane in the middle of hard instrument conditions into a nondescript area, you must face facts ahead of time that death is a strong possibility, however you can tilt the odds into your favor by sticking to the basics. First of all, by the time you get down to 700 ft AGL you should not be in a turn. At that point you are in the early stage of the crash and you won't be gliding far. The best GPS or synthetic vision won't show you where the trees are. Secondly, the report says that the wx info from North Central Rhode Island Airport 8 miles away was that the wind was 010 at 9 knots. So the aircraft should have been headed at 010. ATC and pilots often ask about airports far away but don't ask for any wind information. Pilots should be checking wind direction just as they should check altimeter before an instrument approach. The NTSB report stated that the right flap actuator was in the position consistent with a retracted flap position, but that the left flap actuator had been consumed by fire. Obviously, if the flaps weren't in the down position at 700 ft the pilot was not prepared for a controlled crash. I understand that double-guessing a dead pilot can be a terrible thing, and in this case the flap position and heading and maintaining minimum controlled airspeed might have made no difference because of the house ahead in his flightpath hidden in the fog, but we should all do our best to reduce the final risk. Remember, crashing at twice the speed results in four times the force. If you crash into a forest at minimum speed, the trees tend to bend at first absorbing energy and you are surrounded by steel tubes, an aluminum cocoon, and a windmilling prop up front. You may pop out to the edge of a small field and if your gear is up the prop may dig in as it bends absorbing energy before you hit something at a slower speed. Those of us that fly single engine IFR have to face up to the fact that we all fly well beyond glide distance to airports over nondescript locations frequently. Personally, when I bought my Mooney I decided it was the right plane for me, not so much because it would fly fast, but because it could fly slow. The stall speed of a Mooney is significantly lower than an A36 like the one that crashed in Plainville. - My advice is to imagine the worst situations in your mind while relaxing at home and decide on your course of action if this terrible situation should ever happen to you. Imagine the best solution first, then imagine it doesn't work out,,,,and then what you will do?

What you said was just about right. - Once long ago I saw a brand new pilot greatly overload a Cherokee 140. He was fueling it up and I stopped him. I told him the plane might very well not get off the ground and not to put any more fuel in it. Two giggly young girls and a strong looking guy all got in with the pilot. I had told the pilot not to turn the plane if climbing became difficult. Several of us watched the plane try to take off and the stress was killing me. That Cherokee flew between the tops of a few trees and we never saw the plane make the left turn he needed to get to its destination. He was just too low. It was a rented plane and those kids had no clue. If I have a "next time" I'm going to say more because I don't care what they say to me.

Thanks guys for the "Well Done" remarks. Keep in mind that if you do have a fire in the engine that the vacuum pump and hoses are toast right away. I still had my turn coordinator and pitot static system and I knew my best glide airspeed. The anti-flame fuel hose saved my life because even though the fire was burning right at the pin hole in the hose, without air mixed with the fuel, the fuel won't burn. The main FAA investigator told me that he had two things to tell me; "First, the pilot should not be able to start a fire from inside the cockpit no matter what controls he pushes, twists or pulls. And second, the people on the ground have a right not to have burning airplanes flying over their heads."

Thanks for saying, "Well done" but in fact it was done poorly because it should never have been done at all. One thing I did learn however, is that if you land with wheels up on grass the plane stops in a very short distance as the prop still turns and digs big divots along the skid. - I told my dentist that people talk to me like I'm some kind of hero while in fact I was just trying my best to save my own rear end. Then the dentist said, "Mark I belong to that country club and over there you are no hero."

We go to church on Sunday and whenever we say "and lead us not into temptation" I always think of my airplane. On Oct. 15, 2004 I had a fire in my engine in hard IFR and managed to crash on the 6th fairway of the Hyannisport Golf Club during the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Golf Tournament. Guys from Boston Sports teams and all sorts of celebrities were there. The paper said they paid $10,000 a foursome to play. - I had a hot mag that morning and allowed a mechanic to work on it while I went to my office. The IA disconnected the fuel line to get at the left magneto and when he reinstalled the line he failed to reconnect the fuel pressure gauge. Fuel sprayed like perfume unto the engine and when the exhaust manifold was hot enough "POOF" there was the fire. I think I was stupid to fly in the fog just after work was done on the airplane, but once over land I turned the plane into the wind flew it slowly all the way to the ground and made a couple little adjustments when I could see where I was at 200 ft. As the years go by I'm getting more and more careful.

I flew my IO360 to 2,445 hours in my '83 Beech Sierra and at annual my IA found that an exhaust valve guide had worn beyond limits so I got an overhaul. It was a first run engine and I flew the plane five days a week on average. I live on an island surrounded with salt water. I stored the plane outdoors. In winter there was so much moisture in the engine that I often pulled up oily blobs of ice on the dip stick. I usually flew fifteen minutes in the morning and the same thing each evening to commute to work off-island. I changed the oil and filter at 40 to 45 hours and used AeroShell 15W50. I always cruised at 75% power. It's a total sample of just 1 airplane, but I have to believe the longevity resulted from frequent use.

Perhaps one problem is that Isreal builds housing on land that even Isreal agrees does not belong to Isreal. They call it "the occupied territories". Maybe those territories would be a good place for an airport. I also understand that just about half of all the Foreign Aid the United States gives to all the nations of the world goes to one country; Isreal. Maybe some of that foreign aid could build an airport. (only kidding)

My Beech Sierra had two doors up front you just slam to close with no locks, just three pins holding them in. Every year I'd have a door pop open once or twice. After a while you can practically ignore the occurance, but the passengers never do and it really stinks if it's in winter. No way to close 'em once you're in flight. It hasn't happend to me in my J yet through 1,200 hrs.

A while back there was a very accomplished pilot living next to an uncontrolled airport somewhere in the midwest. He owned two aircraft, a Pitts Special and an updated Aerostar. He always told everyone that he was the best pilot in the region and had all sorts of trophies and medals for aerobatics as well as the fastest plane around. Whenever the locals planned a picnic at the airport he would take up his Pitts and show off for the crowd doing the most amazing aerobatic stunts and barely recovering at the very lowest altitudes. One day there was a BBQ at the airport and as usual the pilot went up in the sky to show off. Then during one of the most death defying inverted stunts he suddenly lost the rudder control for just a second. The airplane came out of the stunt almost in time, but he just caught the ground during the recovery and the airplane rolled and crashed. The pilot broke both arms on the panel and ended upside down hanging from his seat belts as fuel poured all over him. Then he saw a group of men running out onto the field to help him. The big man in front was smoking a cigar with a bright red ash on the end of it. The pilot looked up to the sky through a wide crack in the floor and said out loud, "My God My God, why have you forsaken me?!" And then from the great clouds above came the Voice, "I don't know...but there's something about you that just ticks me off." - (A lesson for little Timmy)

Scott had his say... Like a four hour Castro speech. I'm going to bed.

I bought my Mooney for a different reason than most everyone else. I flew an "83 Beech Sierra for 15 years and it was a hell of a plane. Same engine, but it"s wing load was 20% greater than a Mooney and was smoother in turbulance. I had the six seat option so the wife and I could fly with three kids. Never a fuel leak and it had three doors instead of one. But one day in hard IFR I lost the engine over water and I had to glide back to land. That Beech glided like a brick. The Mooney will glide if that single engine ever gives out. The stall speed is slower so it can fly slower if you must land upwind into woods or poor terrain. My kids grew up and two moved away and have their own families now. Why the Mooney? The plane has to fit the mission. BTW, we made many flights to a college 334 N.miles away. We averaged 2 hours 6 minutes in the Mooney and 2 hrs 29 minutes in the Sierra. I never considered the speed difference a big deal.

I had my local IA patch my '89 J model a few times over six years and then had Paul at Weep No More do the whole job in 2011 and everything has been perfect since without a whiff of fuel. Before my J I flew an '83 Beech Sierra from 1989 until late 2004 and never gave fuel leaks a thought. The Sierra was six years older without bladders and I flew it up to over 3,000 hours. For more than ten years I kept the Beech tied down outside because I commutued with it nearly every day. So why can't Mooney figure out how to fix such a chronic problem over all those decades? Does anyone know if it's just the sealant? I thought I got a pretty good deal when I bought the Mooney, but I wasn't planning on the extra eight grande.

I personally believe that what today is accepted as "standard equipment" in each model has increased the cost of flying enough as to cut the demand for flying overall. I remember one would-be pilot comment, "If I could afford a G-1000 I would buy an airplane." Consider all the avionics in popular light-sport aircraft and the limitations of those planes. How many of us buy cars, cameras or GPS and really don't know how to use all the features we pay for? How many VFR pilots have bought airplanes with all sorts of equipment they don't know how to use, then avoid flying very often at all because of fuel costs? Any marketing executive will tell you that there are two words that sell even when those words are a lie,, the words are "New and Improved!".

I read on Aviation Consumer that the PA-34 has only three positions for fuel selection; on, off and crossover. Sometimes pilots make mistakes, sometimes the airplane fails. RIP

I have had the same problem and it turned out to be the engine through-bolts down low. It's not much, but that was what it was.

Scott, You don't have to be an expert to understand the "Financial Crisis". It was very simple and even you should understand it. Simply put, American social and economic policy under both Democratic and Republican Administrations was to expand access to home loan mortgages through Fanni Mae and Freddie Mac. Then many of the borrowers that barely qualified, (sub-prime borrowers) failed to pay their mortgages. That was the whole problem. So if you were an Insurance company like AIG who loaned out billions of dollars expecting to be paid back with interest, you suddenly found out that you would get back a small fraction of the money you indirectly loaned to mortgage payers. Now, we could refuse to refinance AIG and fail to pay people who bought life insurance from AIG when their spouse died, but instead the government made AIG whole and all the people kept their jobs at AIG and not a single insurer was left holding the bag. And then AIG paid back every dime with interest. Now it's true that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not make good and I understand your anger but don't blame Wall Street for selling the securities. If you want to blame someone blame Barney Frank. The problem was simple but huge. Bankers did the same as AIG. Individuals bought the securities and so did all sorts of financial corporations. The only good thing about it is the simple fact that hundreds of thousands of homes were built and they still stand. Inflation of housing prices has come to a pretty fast end.

The American economy is like a family with the biggest mortgage on the block. However, Daddy makes more money than anyone in town and the last home equity loan he took out was used to build the largest house in the state. What matters is not only the size of the debt vs. dad's income, but also the size of the house makes a difference too. Some people think our wealth is just on paper, but that's not true. This year corn production was over 14 billion bushels! Oil and gas production has overwelmed demand and the prices for energy are falling with new production still coming on. Today's debt, no matter how you slice it, is less than half of the debt we had at the end of WWII and yet somehow we grew out of that debt. This country isn't going to die anytime soon.

Now that I think about it, the reason I stopped watching this thread for weeks at a time was that the whole premise by Scott that his world view of monetary control is somehow connected to why his kid thinks people don't want to fly airplanes is ludicrous. It doesn't even bother me that he thinks he has "educated himself". What bothers me is how obnoxious he is and how convinced he is that he knows it all. I think he ought to run for office.

Flyboy, Sorry I didn't get back to you. The chart you show is great. However, It's not adjusted for available money supply. As a percentage of available money supply the chart shows the tilt starting earlier. Right now the value of the dollar is rising. It takes almost half as many dollars to buy an ounce of gold than it did a couple of years ago. Dollar power vs. total production counts. Because total production was rising during the mid-1980s we really built more homes, cars, harvested and exported more grain, etc. As I explained earlier, if you produce more stuff our Fed Reserve expands the money supply by allowing more money to be borrowed for home building and factory production. You can't have a fast growing population and fast growing production with a stagnant money supply as Scott thinks. His theories were completely discredited around the entire world by the end of the 1930's. - If we can produce our way out of this debt we will be in fine shape. On the other hand, debt slows the whole economy. Right now things are much better as business earnings are rising and tax collections are improving to hold our own with debt. BTW, Federal dedt is only half of the problem. High personal debt, including college debt counts too.

Just one thing Flyboy, It's clear that there is more than one way to state your case, and I really don't think there's a whole lot of mutual respect being shown by the posters of this thread, but when you point out that RR increased the National Debt to a new all time high you're missing a basic truth. The truth is that the National Debt under Reagan rose relative to the GDP at first, but starting in his third year, the National Debt fell as a percentage of the GDP. In fact, there were fundamental changes in the economy spurned by deregulation and a number of anti-union rules that allowed the economy to grow so much that the National Debt as a percentage of the GDP fell during all five of RR's last five years in office. As a matter of fact, the debt fell as a percentage of the GDP under the first President Bush as well, and the debt continued to fall under President Clinton as well, until the annual budget deficit was completely wiped out! Starting with RR the US economy grew from 1983 until March of 2000 without a single recessionary quarter. Then in Sept. 2001 we lived through 9/11. The next thing ya' know we had an expensive war on our hands and a whole new bureaucracy, the TSA. Things haven't been the same since.

Flyboy, I don't think we misunderstood each other. I think as regards regulation and deregulation we agree in full.

Flyboy, I was thinking about your comments on deregulation and of course those comments are well considered. I would like to say that I believe in deregulation when the result increases competition, but of course I don't believe in eliminating regulations such as bank reserve requirements, that's crazy. There are many other rules and regulations in this country that have been agreed upon by all sorts of people so that the regulations aren't right or wrong but rather reflect the will of the people. A good example would be zoning laws. Here on Martha's Vineyard off-islanders from out-of-state have often tried to build all sorts of fine homes in zones that have been voted as "Historical" with a ton of rules and regulations. On a number of occasions many of hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent to build houses in obvious violation of the local building zoning laws and after going to the state supreme court the house has been completely torn down! - In America some things are a matter of right and wrong, some things are a matter of opinion, and some things are a matter of the will of the people.

The uptick rule is a good idea that may be adjusted again. Personally, I think investors should be able to borrow stock and go short on a downtick, but only if they are long in the stock. So if you are covered and own a thousand shares of IBM, then you should be able to go short on 1,000 shares to hedge your investment. Right now the big problem is that super-speed computer trading with software programs, might all buy at the same time and go short together without owning any of the stock. This we call "running naked in the street". We call it that because if you are "uncovered" (don't own the stock) but you're going out to the street (Wall Street) to pay to borrow stock for a short time and sell hoping the stock will fall so that you can buy if back at a lower price and give it back to the owner and keep the difference. Clearly, micro second trading isn't about raising capital. In truth, micro second traders can lose money just like everyone else, and the reduction of the difference between the bid and asked price has been a small help to investors, but in my opinion any investor should be required to own a stock for at least one minute and if you're uncovered and don't hold the stock, you should be allowed to go short only on an uptick. - I hope this doesn't sound like techno- babble.

Scott, IF I am a moderate (and I guess your Highness must be the ultimate judge) Then that's exactly what I want to be. If you are conservative then I have done my best to inform you of what little I have learned in my life as a dedicated economist and dedicated Fiancial Advisor. Perhaps some of the facts and figures, but not my opinions, can assist you in becoming more sure of yourself and firmer in your own convictions. BTW, the total value of all qualified retirement accounts in the nation, such as IRA's and 401ks as of the end of 2013 was 23 Trillion dollars. Note that the amount is almost exactly double of the entire M2 money supply. In this case, the investors have decided to exchange their dollars for ownership in corporations of all types through stock and mutual funds as well as the promisary notes and bonds of companies promising to pay. Many times foreigners, through their own investment firms, also would rather have our investments rather than their currencies. Personally, I think world intertrading and investing helps the cause of peace. No one wants Putin to shut off the gas, but right now ideas are hatching everywhere how to get free of this relationship and put some competition into the picture.

Oh Yes I did. Sorry flyboy. Those non-conservative attacks made me jump too fast. I think I was a middle-moderate, but as the rest of the country moved to the left I felt like I was a reasonable conservative even though I never changed. Three way discussions are tough. I think we lost everyone else. There are many factors that take a long time to explain. There are always rules and laws that help regulate every kind of commerce and many go too far while others allow too much intervention. Even the most well educated and experienced economists in this world are still trying to get it right. Marx and Engles were brilliant men but they were just plain wrong. I believe that the last great crash was more the fault of Rep. Barney Frank than anyone else. Sometimes a politician has a very bad idea, but as long as the time bomb doesn't go off (such as government guaranteed loans that have yet to crash) everyone including Wall Street are happy to go along and sell the real crap into world markets all over the globe. A lot of "free market" guys are happy to go along. Many people learned all about the failures with 20/20 hind vision.