Piper Saratoga trying to get out out FL before Milton loses engine

[LANCECASPER]

So you're trying to get your airplane out so it doesn't get damaged by the Hurricane . . . . 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hurricane-milton-plane-crash-tampa-b2626040.html

It looks like it was based at Albert Whitted (KSPG) - downtown St. Pete (N4044R)

https://archive.liveatc.net/kspg/KSPG3-Gnd-Twr-Oct-08-2024-1430Z.mp3      Starts @ 12:43, clear for T/O around 16:30      Tower looking for N4044R at 18:35, still calling out at 20:40 and beyond, 26:15 Coast Guard calls

 

[Shadrach]

1 hour ago, LANCECASPER said:

So you're trying to get your airplane out so it doesn't get damaged by the Hurricane . . . . 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hurricane-milton-plane-crash-tampa-b2626040.html

It looks like it was based at Albert Whitted (KSPG) - downtown St. Pete (N4044R)

https://archive.liveatc.net/kspg/KSPG3-Gnd-Twr-Oct-08-2024-1430Z.mp3      Starts @ 12:43, clear for T/O around 16:30      Tower looking for N4044R at 18:35, still calling out at 20:40 and beyond, 26:15 Coast Guard calls

 

It was a straight leg 1967 Cherokee 6, not a Saratoga. They didn’t even make a Saratoga in 1967.

[LANCECASPER]

It was a straight leg 1967 Cherokee 6, not a Saratoga. They didn’t even make a Saratoga in 1967.

Sorry I was just going by the info on Flight Aware

[Shadrach]

22 minutes ago, LANCECASPER said:

Sorry I was just going by the info on Flight Aware

No apologies. It does kind of change the ditching scenario though. I imagine wheel pants increase deceleration and the chances of nosing over.

[Vance Harral]

1 hour ago, Shadrach said:

I imagine wheel pants increase deceleration and the chances of nosing over.

The only serious look at this I've ever found, concluded that the configuration and position of landing gear in a ditching event has no statistical impact on survivability: http://www.equipped.org/ditchingmyths.htm.  High wing or low wing, gear up/down/welded, just doesn't influence what matters.  For those who don't want to read the whole article, the one-liner is, "How often does the airplane flip over because the gear caught in the water? We don't really know. But even if all the airplanes flipped--highly unlikely--the occupants still manage to egress safely. Conclusion: It may not matter much."

[Shadrach]

21 hours ago, Vance Harral said:

The only serious look at this I've ever found, concluded that the configuration and position of landing gear in a ditching event has no statistical impact on survivability: http://www.equipped.org/ditchingmyths.htm.  High wing or low wing, gear up/down/welded, just doesn't influence what matters.  For those who don't want to read the whole article, the one-liner is, "How often does the airplane flip over because the gear caught in the water? We don't really know. But even if all the airplanes flipped--highly unlikely--the occupants still manage to egress safely. Conclusion: It may not matter much."

Perhaps. I would think the sample size is pretty small to draw meaningful conclusions from the data.   Can anyone find images of folks standing on the wing of a highwing or a fixed gear AC waiting to be rescued?  There was a cirrus the ditched a few years ago and remain up right, but he parachuted in. We can certainly say that retracts stand a better chance of staying upright.

I leave you with one of the coolest movie stunt sequences by a GA aircraft since Fandango.

 

[Vance Harral]

3 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

I would think the sample size is pretty small to draw meaningful conclusions from the data.

Well, this is the problem with talking about this sort of stuff.  You've formed a reasonable opinion based on "common sense", nothing wrong with that.  But now you're rejecting an actual analysis based on jabbing at whatever insufficiency you can find in it, rather than finding or producing a better analysis that addresses your concern of sample size, or whatever your next objection is.  I'm sure your opinion isn't swayed by the article I posted, but I suspect your opinion wouldn't be swayed by any study no matter how good, because it defies a "common sense" perception of the risk you've already formed.  I get it, I'm sure I have the same biases about other stuff.

5 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

Can any one find images of folks standing on the wing of a highwing or a fixed gear AC waiting to be rescued?

Sure, here's a video of a Caravan going into the drink:

For those who don't care to watch, the airplane stayed upright and everyone got out.  The folks who got out hold onto the wing rather than standing on top of it, but I assume we're not so pedantic as to argue that's the critical part of the question.  The NTSB report says one person died, but the listed cause of death as "acute cardiac arrhythmia due to hyperventilation".  i.e. it wasn't the crash itself that did them in.

20 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

I leave you with one of the coolest movie stunt sequences by a GA aircraft since Fandango.

On that we agree!  I assume you're familiar with Michael Caine's quip about the film?  For those who aren't, it's "I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."

[Shadrach]

3 minutes ago, Vance Harral said:

Well, this is the problem with talking about this sort of stuff.  You've formed a reasonable opinion based on "common sense", nothing wrong with that.  But now you're rejecting an actual analysis based on jabbing at whatever insufficiency you can find in it, rather than finding or producing a better analysis that addresses your concern of sample size, or whatever your next objection is.  I'm sure your opinion isn't swayed by the article I posted, but I suspect your opinion wouldn't be swayed by any study no matter how good, because it defies a "common sense" perception of the risk you've already formed.  I get it, I'm sure I have the same biases about other stuff.

Sure, here's a video of a Caravan going into the drink:

For those who don't care to watch, the airplane stayed upright and everyone got out.  The folks who got out hold onto the wing rather than standing on top of it, but I assume we're not so pedantic as to argue that's the critical part of the question.  The NTSB report says one person died, but the listed cause of death as "acute cardiac arrhythmia due to hyperventilation".  i.e. it wasn't the crash itself that did them in.

On that we agree!  I assume you're familiar with Michael Caine's quip about the film?  For those who aren't, it's "I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."

Just to be clear, it's no so much "common sense" which is typically based on repeated experience as it is physics involved in the predictable initial reaction of the airframe to the gear impacting the water first.  There may be no statistical difference in survivability but there are clearly three high drag, protrusions sticking out of the bottom a fixed gear aircraft.    If I were forced to use a wheelbarrow as a toboggan, I would remove the the undercarriage. There may be no statistical difference in the outcome in terms of survival, but I don't need a statistical analysis to know the ride down would be better without the undercarriage.

[Vance Harral]

1 minute ago, Shadrach said:

as it is physics involved in the predictable initial reaction of the airframe to the gear impacting the water first

If the physics are so predictable, and your understanding of them so complete, why didn't the Caravan in the video flip over?

I'll look forward to your free body dynamics diagram which computes the rotational acceleration imparted by the landing gear impacting the water, showing it to be greater (or less) over the full 180 degrees of rotation, vs. the drag of the forward fuselage as it enters the water and resists the rotational force transferred from the landing gear.  Be sure to define your assumptions about speed and impact angle at the moment of touch down, as well as whether the water is smooth or rough and the subsequent effect on the co-efficients of friction.

[Shadrach]

18 minutes ago, Vance Harral said:

If the physics are so predictable, and your understanding of them so complete, why didn't the Caravan in the video flip over?

I'll look forward to your free body dynamics diagram which computes the rotational acceleration imparted by the landing gear impacting the water, showing it to be greater (or less) over the full 180 degrees of rotation, vs. the drag of the forward fuselage as it enters the water and resists the rotational force transferred from the landing gear.  Be sure to define your assumptions about speed and impact angle at the moment of touch down, as well as whether the water is smooth or rough and the subsequent effect on the co-efficients of friction.

I don't need to know any of that to know that my 8 year old son is more likely to go over the bars of his bike under hard breaking than I would on the same bike.  Can we agree that the drag profile of the gear vs the size of the aircraft vary by quite a bit?  That ratio is worth noting even if we don't know the exact numbers. The caravan is a relatively long, heavy bird with a MGW in excess of 9000lbs. but the drag generated by the gear is likely very similar to that of a Cherokee 150 (MGW 2150lbs) with wheel pants.  Also the PT6A on the front of that Caravan outweighs an O320 by just ~100lbs.  To be clear, I don't think an A320 would flip on it's nose with the gear down while ditching for the same reason. I can deduce this without calculating speed and impact angle at the moment of touch down or the co-efficient of friction of the water depending on conditions.  It would be quite a challenge to leave the house if this kind of granular analysis were needed to make decisions in all scenarios.  I hope you never need to ditch, but if you do, take it from me, leave the gear up...

[Vance Harral]

8 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

I don't need to know any of that to know that my 8 year old son is more likely to go over the bars of his bike under hard breaking than I would on the same bike.

In other words, you're not actually interested in physics, only your gut feel based on life experience.  I get it, none of us have time to run a free body analysis for every decision we make in our life.  I don't do it when I'm deciding how hard I can brake on a bike, or whether I can jump over a log.  But let's be honest: you don't really have any idea what happens to a Mooney in a given set of ditching circumstances.  You're just projecting other "stuff" onto a completely different scenario, and assuming it makes sense.  Often that strategy works, but sometimes it doesn't, and this is one of the latter cases.

19 minutes ago, Shadrach said:

I hope you never need to ditch, but if you do, take it from me, leave the gear up...

I hope so too, but if either of us need to ditch, does doing it with the gear up make us more likely to catch a wingtip on a swell and suffer a hard yaw that slams heads against side windows?  Maybe better to leave the gear down so all the impact force is in the direction the seatbelts are designed to restrain, right?  See, I can play the "what if" game too.

To repeat, the only serious study I can find says gear position doesn't make any difference in survivability (regardless of whether the airplane flips or not), so you should focus your energy on other things: touching down at minimum speed, having the correct size life jackets, etc.  If you've got a more in-depth look at it that says something different, I'm all ears.  But if all you've got is "gut feel", then meh.  For now, I remain convinced that the usual blather about landing gear, high wing vs. low wing, etc. is just noise.  It certainly isn't useful, and it possibly distracts people from understanding from what's really important about ditching.

[Shadrach]

Just now, Vance Harral said:

In other words, you're not actually interested in physics, only your gut feel based on life experience.  I get it, none of us have time to run a free body analysis for every decision we make in our life.  I don't do it when I'm deciding how hard I can brake on a bike, or whether I can jump over a log.  But let's be honest: you don't really have any idea what happens to a Mooney in a given set of ditching circumstances.  You're just projecting other "stuff" onto a completely different scenario, and assuming it makes sense.  Often that strategy works, but sometimes it doesn't, and this is one of the latter cases.

I hope so too, but if either of us need to ditch, does doing it with the gear up make us more likely to catch a wingtip on a swell and suffer a hard yaw that slams heads against side windows?  Maybe better to leave the gear down so all the impact force is in the direction the seatbelts are designed to restrain, right?  See, I can play the "what if" game too.

To repeat, the only serious study I can find says gear position doesn't make any difference in survivability (regardless of whether the airplane flips or not), so you should focus your energy on other things: touching down at minimum speed, having the correct size life jackets, etc.  If you've got a more in-depth look at it that says something different, I'm all ears.  But if all you've got is "gut feel", then meh.  For now, I remain convinced that the usual blather about landing gear, high wing vs. low wing, etc. is just noise.  It certainly isn't useful, and it possibly distracts people from understanding from what's really important about ditching.

Have a nice day Vance. You win whatever you thought this contest was by virtue of me not caring. You're right...you've deduced that I don't really care about physics and I have just as accurately deduced that you are likely the life of a party.  

[Pinecone]

23 hours ago, Shadrach said:

Perhaps. I would think the sample size is pretty small to draw meaningful conclusions from the data.   Can anyone find images of folks standing on the wing of a highwing or a fixed gear AC waiting to be rescued?  There was a cirrus the ditched a few years ago and remain up right, but he parachuted in. We can certainly say that retracts stand a better chance of staying upright.

I know of a case where a float plane flipped (Cessna 185) and the pilot opened the door, climbed out, climbed up to stand on the floats waiting for a boat to come get him.  Didn't even get his shoes wet.  And the airplane was saved (freshwater lake).

[MooneyMitch]

My comment is not directed at anyone in particular……. but, this discussion does remind me of a joke I heard………

Wife says to her friend…. I knew I’d marry Mr. Right….I just didn’t realize his first name would be Always !! 

[hais]

On 10/9/2024 at 10:46 AM, Vance Harral said:

To repeat, the only serious study I can find says gear position doesn't make any difference in survivability

Reminds me of this: someone remarked that they should change the safety video in airliners from "in the unlikely event of water landing..."  to "in the unlikely event you survive a water landing...."