CHEETAH VS BO; MOONEY WATCHES IN HORROR...

[DCarlton]

Mayhem on the North ramp today at KCRQ.  Bonanza is parked a couple of spaces down from me.  The Grumman missed me and took out the Bo.  An hour or two later, an Arrow gear upped at nearby KOKB closing the airport.  Pilots are hard on airplanes...  

[dzeleski]

I just landed here a few hours ago…. This stuff isn’t helping our insurance rates

[kortopates]

Any idea what happened to cause the CRQ incident?


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[DCarlton]

22 minutes ago, kortopates said:

Any idea what happened to cause the CRQ incident?


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I didn’t get it first hand, but I believe the Cheetah had a brake issue on the taxiway.  

[Bolter]

2 hours ago, DCarlton said:

I didn’t get it first hand, but I believe the Cheetah had a brake issue on the taxiway.  

They have free-castering nose wheel, so no brakes...no steer.

[exM20K]

Hangars protect a plane from more than just the environment. I can’t imagine what a hangar costs or how long the waiting list is in Sandy Eggo, though.

-dan

[kortopates]

Hangars protect a plane from more than just the environment. I can’t imagine what a hangar costs or how long the waiting list is in Sandy Eggo, though.
-dan

There are virtually NO hangars at CRQ for the piston GA crowd. The few there are for jet operators. Folks that want a hangar go elsewhere, like nearby Oceanside with many cons or much further away. CRQ is a nice airport to fly in and out of us but IMO a terrible place to be based.


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[TheAv8r]

2 hours ago, bluehighwayflyer said:

That’s right.  The Cheetah uses differential braking and a free-castering nose wheel for steering doesn’t it?  Ouch.  I’m glad that ours are steerable.    

Yes, it does. You lose brakes, it becomes much harder to steer. That said... first step when you lose brakes? Kill the engine. The wing damage definitely shows it was chopped up by a running prop, so why was the engine still running? 

[PT20J]

Years ago, I was working at Pacific Piper in San Jose. I came to work one day and it looked like a demolition derby. A Warrior had hit the wing of an Archer and then it's prop made 4 or 5 slices through the tail of a Navajo before stopping. New line kid was told to take the Warrior to the wash rack and wash it. No one told him how to taxi an airplane and he didn't ask. Started with half throttle and then didn't know how the brakes worked. Two pedals, left one must be the brake. Steered into the other planes. Cracked the spar carry through on the Archer. That was in the mid-1980's and these were all pretty new airplanes.

[Pinecone]

7 hours ago, bluehighwayflyer said:

That’s right.  The Cheetah uses differential braking and a free-castering nose wheel for steering doesn’t it?  Ouch.  I’m glad that ours are steerable.    

Once you get used to it, it is quite nice.  And you can make VERY tight turns.  Which no Mooney pilot EVER said.

 

[DCarlton]

11 hours ago, kortopates said:

There are virtually NO hangars at CRQ for the piston GA crowd. The few there are for jet operators. Folks that want a hangar go elsewhere, like nearby Oceanside with many cons or much further away. CRQ is a nice airport to fly in and out of us but IMO a terrible place to be based.


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Yep.  I miss the old CRQ with the second story restaurant and downstairs pilot shop.  I learned to fly at Flight International back in the late '80s before it became Western Flight.  I stay here becuase my house is five minutes from the tie down space; just a quick dash down El Camino Real.  I do envy my friend that has a hangar at KSEE; and I enjoy the restaurant and all the unique GA aircraft at KSEE.  

[Pinecone]

I did my Private in Grumman Tigers. So got very used to castering nose wheel.

[Mooneymite]

2 hours ago, Pinecone said:

I did my Private in Grumman Tigers. So got very used to castering nose wheel.

I have zero Gruman Tiger/Traveler experience.  Do you think the pilot could have overcome the loss of brakes with hard rudder and a blast of power?  A blast of power with a loss of brakes would be a gutsy move, but could that have possibly turned the Gruman away from the parked planes?  

[TheAv8r]

1 hour ago, Mooneymite said:

I have zero Gruman Tiger/Traveler experience.  Do you think the pilot could have overcome the loss of brakes with hard rudder and a blast of power?  A blast of power with a loss of brakes would be a gutsy move, but could that have possibly turned the Gruman away from the parked planes?  

I've got 250+ hrs in Cheetahs & Tigers. Think of the free castering nosewheel like taxiing a shopping cart. Those front 2 wheels on the cart just turn the way they're going to turn and the cart starts going that way unless you manually pull it straight again. Same concept. You can jam hard rudder in and it's not going to do much, you'd have to get enough power in to get enough airflow over the elevators for the rudder to become effective. Even on the takeoff roll this took a second, sometimes you had to jab a little bit of brake in to keep the nosewheel centered until you got enough airspeed. When taxiing, it wouldn't be enough, and even then, you're just adding energy to the airplane you have no way of dissipating. 

[A64Pilot]

4 hours ago, Mooneymite said:

I have zero Gruman Tiger/Traveler experience.  Do you think the pilot could have overcome the loss of brakes with hard rudder and a blast of power?  A blast of power with a loss of brakes would be a gutsy move, but could that have possibly turned the Gruman away from the parked planes?  

Wasn’t there and can’t do anything but speculate but at taxi speeds if you lose a brake, locking up the other one pretty much makes you pivot around that gear and brings you to a stop pretty fast, at least on non steerable tail wheel airplanes anyway, which I think all bigger tailwheels are that way.

Most people don’t consider that and if they haven’t table talked what to do in a brake failure often pretty much lock up and don’t do anything but crash straight ahead.

Completely different thing sort of but years ago there was an outcry about the “Killer Prius”.

An off duty California Police officer driving a borrowed car, turned out it was a Lexus but don’t let that get in the way of the Prius hate crowd. Anyway the gas pedal got trapped between the two floor mats, the owner just put the all weather mats on top of the normal fabric ones. This stuck the gas pedal. This guy tried pushing the start button to no avail and even made a 911 call, eventually he burnt the brakes so bad they caught fire and he crashed killing him and his his family I believe, car caught fire from the brakes I think in the crash.

As I had a Prius I looked into this as it was a concern. Pressing the start / stop button will kill the engine but it has to be held for a sec that's intentional so you don’t accidentally kill the engine by brushing your hand across that big button.

But if you put the car in neutral, the computer retards the engine speed to idle even with the pedal held to the floor and you can stop normally of course and have full control.

If you try to put the car in park, the computer won’t, instead it goes into neutral and you guessed it, engine to idle and you can stop the car normally.

Same thing if you attempt to put the car in reverse, I was a little nervous trying that but thought surely Toyota’s Engineer's are smarter and they were.

I hate to speak I’ll of the dead, but this guy had time to make a 911 call and talk to the operator, but never did anything except hold the brakes down until the highway eventually came to and end. If you have time to make a phone call, who wouldn’t at least try to take it out of gear?

https://www.nbcsandiego.com/local/chp-officer-family-killed-in-crash/1859153/

So if this California CHP Officer whom I believe has training in high speed driving never thought to take it out of gear, or read his owners manual where it tells that the start / stop button has to be held for a second or so, well anything is possible.

Oh, Toyota recalled millions of their cars and cut off about a half inch from the bottom of the gas pedals, and quit selling all weather floor mats, at least on the Prius anyway.

I guess there was a lawsuit.

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2010-mar-03-la-fi-toyota-saylor3-2010mar03-story.html

Seems it grew “legs” millions recalled, thousands suddenly complained about sudden acceleration, Congress fines Toyota over 16 Million dollars.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/business/19autos.html

Toyota settles case for 10 Million dollars 

https://jalopnik.com/toyota-settles-for-10-million-in-deadly-san-diego-cras-5717045

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by A64Pilot

[cliffy]

Old Aero Commanders were the same way

Hawthorne CA  HHR  used to be a great small GA airplane airport

Biggest thing there was a C-46 

[EricJ]

5 hours ago, cliffy said:

Old Aero Commanders were the same way

And B-25s. 

[A64Pilot]

8 hours ago, EricJ said:

And B-25s. 

I’ve flown one but didn’t do any taxiing, their nose wheel casters?

I’m pretty sure the smaller Aero Commanders have nose wheel steering, so I guess the Twin doesn’t?

Brake only steering a tailwheel takes a little getting used to, but you quickly get used to it and on the T/O roll the rudder pretty quickly becomes effective so you don’t use the brakes at all, but that’s likely because the tailwheel is locked now that I think about it.

None of the old tailwheels were steerable, in fact the steerable tailwheel was a Maule invention, he started production in 1941 I think, before that none were steerable, and older aircraft didn’t even have brakes. I guess it was point it into the wind, shower down on the throttle and hope it went straight?

BD was an inventor, invented the “hummer” some kind of spring mechanical aircraft starter, built his first airplane when he was in the Army and taught himself to fly. Also built and sold crank up TV antennas because I guess it’s tough to make a living building airplane stuff.

Built and supposedly flew an Ornithopter, the family I believe has film of it flying.

[cliffy]

A B-25 was my "runable" project in A&P school! 1966

Hadn't been fired up in 8 yeas and I got it running with electric inertia starters and all

[Pinecone]

AFAIK the Aero Commander twins had hydraulic nose wheel steering.  But it was not just the rudder pedels.  A hallmark of Ted Smith was some strange way to contol the nosewheel steering.

 

As flor locking one brake and spinning around, that may work, but due to Murphy, the brake you will lose will be the one that spins you away from parked planes.  In the OP picture, it seems the left brake failed, so if the pilot had noticed early enough and locked the right brake, the Cheetah would have pivoted to the right and may have missed the Bo.  Or may not have.

[Hank]

6 minutes ago, Pinecone said:

In the OP picture, it seems the left brake failed, so if the pilot had noticed early enough and locked the right brake, the Cheetah would have pivoted to the right and may have missed the Bo.  Or may not have.

Or may have hit the watching Mooney instead . . . .

[A64Pilot]

Or if it had been timed right, hit nothing at all, in which case we wouldn’t be discussing it.

99% of the time it’s only when things go bad that we find out about it, most of the time brakes don’t go from working perfectly to not at all. I’d bet lunch in this case there was some warning. Or just maybe the brakes are fine and this is similar to a few rare gear ups, where it’s pure human screw up.

But it does in my opinion bring up that any aircraft ought not be completely reliant on brakes for steering, yes castoring nose wheels are cheaper, but I think less safe. The lack of it is one of the things that surprise me about a Cirrus, yet I’m sure they market it as some kind of advantage

Edited July 26, 2023 by A64Pilot

[MisfitSELF]

I guess it's a good time for the Bo owner to upgrade his wing tip lights to LEDs.