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It's Raining Planes :-(


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Please be careful up there, towers or no towers!

 

Small-plane-down-homestead-jpg.jpg

 

HOMESTEAD, FL

 

A small plane went down on Southwest 168th Street and 214th Avenue Thursday morning but the pilot and passenger got out safely.

 

The flight instructor said the plane had an engine malfunction, forcing them to land on Southwest 168th Street, where the plane came to a stop in some trees. The plane could be seen sitting on the side of a dirt road.. The right wing was damaged.

 

An air rescue helicopter landed at the scene, but the pilot and passenger refused treatment, police say.

 

This is the latest in a recent wave of aircraft crashes and emergency landings in South Florida. On Wednesday afternoon, two people were killed when a helicopter crashed just after it left Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport.

 

On Tuesday, a small plane made an emergency landing on U.S. 27.

 

On March 17, a pilot landed his single-engine Cessna on US-27 near Griffin Road after a mechanical problem.

 

On March 16, three people were killed when a Piper PA-31T (Cheyenne) crashed shortly after take off from Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport.

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Living in South Florida all I can say is please be careful. Always do a thorough pre-flight and after any maintenance......  really check everything!! Here at Pompano, we are keeping our tower but all you Boca and Hollywood pilots be vigilant.

Its a great idea to review and practice emergency procedures with a safety pilot  or instructor.

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It really has been raining planes here lately, and it's very unnerving. It seems plane crashes were reserved for the Sunday 11:00 news, now there's one incident for the Six O'Clock news every day.

 

Boca tower got a temporary reprieve until the middle of May. I suspect with all of the kerosene burners that fly in there all day that a more permanent solution will be found. I'd hate to see the guys in the tower get furloughed, they are a part of the local flying scene and stop by the hangar often just to shoot the breeze.

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  • 2 months later...

Early morning T.O., as the sun was coming up, by a 75 year old pilot in a plane that's new to him, going to get it serviced. Several risk factors, I'd say. He's one lucky guy.

 

<<<POMPANO BEACH, Florida - 21 June 2013:

 

A small plane crashed into a neighborhood Friday morning moments after take off but remarkably the pilot walked away and nobody on the ground was hurt.

 

The single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza took off from Pompano Beach Airpark shortly after 6:30 a.m. when the plane clipped some power lines and crashed in an alley behind several homes in the 2100 block of Northeast 3rd Avenue.

 

"I saw the airplane coming too low to the floor and I said 'What's that?'" one resident told Local 10. People living in the neighborhood just west of Dixie Highway off Copans Road said they were startled out of bed when the plane hit the ground and a transformer exploded. "We didn't know what it was at first, just a loud boom," said a man who identified himself as Corey.

 

The pilot, Jimmy Smith, 75, emerged from the plane with only a small scratch on his finger. He told Lohse he was headed to Tampa to get his new plane serviced but the power lines cut his trip short. "I just taxied to the runway, took off and just didn't get enough speed up for some reason or another," he said.

 

Smith estimated he was about 60 feet in the air when the plane dropped to the ground. Witnesses were stunned to see him climb out of the wreckage. "People walk down the street, trip, fall and bump their head and die. This guy crashes a plane and not a scratch on him," said neighbor Quincy Jones.

 

The fire department doused the plane with foam to prevent the 70 gallons of fuel on board from igniting. Florida Power & Light also shut down power to the neighborhood as a precaution. The company said roughly 1,750 customers were affected. Power was restored to the neighborhood by 10 a.m.

 

Smith said he has more than 30 years of flying experience but despite his skills, he can't take credit for where the plane landed. Residents said they know who to thank. "Couple yards this way and who knows what could have happened, so like I say, you gotta thank God," Jones said.

 

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the crash.>>>

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  • 7 months later...

Nope, ran into the wing over the past month sitting outside and a fuel cap that can be latched down while cocked.

 

The owner flew NC direct to MLB with it, over water and all, Navy guys :),  and we flew it a bit before gassing up and finding it.  Check those fuel caps they only will latch down while sitting flat in the wing. if not, tighten the center stem until it does.

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Update:

 

<<<<WELLINGTON, Fla. - The fatal plane crash in Wellington last week may be traced to a sputtering engine, according to a preliminary report issued by the National Transportation Safety Board. The report says that just before 1 p.m. on on Feb. 17, veteran pilot Leonard W. McGarity, 58, took off from the Wellington Aero Club in his experimental, amateur-built plane.

 

Witnesses told investigators that the engine backfired and began to sputter.

 

The plane then made a steep 180-degree left turn back toward the airport and went nose down into a nearby pond, according to the preliminary report. The NTSB says that witnesses attempted to help the pilot and called 911.

 

McGarity died at the scene of the crash.

 

NTSB investigators say there were no signs of mechanical problems on the plane engine.>>>>

 

Guys, this is an Airline pilot with tens of thousands of hours, living in a flying community and living for aviation. It can happen to anyone of us....today. Practice, practice, practice. Fewer gizmos and GPS's; more investment in flying with a good Mooney savy CFI.

 

Rant over.....for now!

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Impossible turn. People need to quit trying those.

 

Unfortunately, sometimes the impossible turn turns out okay, so people keep trying it.

 

Repeat after me:  "The engine has quit, the airplane now belongs to the insurance company".

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Unfortunately, sometimes the impossible turn turns out okay, so people keep trying it.

Repeat after me: "The engine has quit, the airplane now belongs to the insurance company".

.....and if I try something dumb, My ass is grass!

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Questions that come to mind.

All pilots have been trained... Land straight ahead. Nose down, gentle banks.

What makes the pilot's brain want to do something different, or think that it can do this...? What is being forgotten in the moment?

This is more of a brain challenge than distraction is...

For those of you who have landed in the trees or field in front (congratulations!)... How did you over come the urge to turn?

I agree that the plane immediately belongs to the insurance company. But, I need to get out of it alive first...

How does AOA help this challenge?

The immediate stress of the situation would make memory of stall speeds and angles challenging at best...

Of course, NO practicing power off turns at low altitudes to demonstrate a point....

Best regards,

-a-

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There was a thread a few months ago where an M20J met its' end trying this in Kansas City. And quite a few threads raging over on Beechtalk as well. It's simple, really. Land somewhere forward, under control, don't stop shorter than ~33 feet and live. Get online and buy a nicer airplane with the insurance proceeds. Or bet everything on a maneuver that is rarely practiced and quite hazardous. Also, a low altitude aggravated stall is nothing like pilots practice for training.

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All pilots have been trained... Land straight ahead. Nose down, gentle banks.

What makes the pilot's brain want to do something different, or think that it can do this...? What is being forgotten in the moment?

 

Nothing is forgotten. Just like stepping into the airplane at the beginning of the flight, it is a calculated risk based on info at hand. Unfortunately, the majority of the world's airports don't have empty roads, farmer's fields and golf courses at the end of each runway. Things like apartment complexes, freeways full of cars, a forest of trees, rocky terrain and chopping oceans full of ice cold water make pilots consider the safety of smooth concrete behind them in relation to a very uncertain outcome in front of them. Let's face it, nobody ever says they're a below average pilot and it's just a simple descending turn, right? So given that info, they go for it.

 

Turns out, many of us are below average. That and the turn back to the airport takes above average skills with a bit of luck.

 

I personally think AoA indicators will help, if people actually use them. That might be a challenge. I suspect that what actually happens is in the excitement the pilot focuses outside the airplane on the landing zone and blocks out instruments, visual clues and what the airplane is actually doing. Think about it, people safely do descending turns in the middle of clouds all the time with no visual clues, but in the heat of the moment in a real emergency, will they switch to an instrument?

 

In the end, it's tough place to be and I hope I'm never there. I'm just not in a place where I can judge those that have tried and failed.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's also raining sky divers ;)

 

Both a pilot and a sky diver were able to walk away nearly unscathed after a potentially deadly collision in Polk County Saturday morning, deputies said. According to deputies, 87-year-old (impressive!) pilot, Shannon L. Trembley, was practicing landings in his single-engine Cessna in Mulberry about 11 a.m.

 

At the same time, John Frost, a 49-year-old sky diver from Gainesville, was landing in the same area. The wings of Trembley's plane became tangled in the lines of Frost's parachute. The lines were cut sending Frost flying and Trembley's plane into a nose dive to the ground.

 

Trembley is an experienced pilot and has been flying recreationally since 1946, his wife, Dorothy Trembley, said Saturday evening. A tourist visiting from Ohio captured shocking photos of the collision, which left both men hospitalized with only minor injures. The pilot had trouble speaking after cracking his trachea. He also had several scrapes and five stitches on his chin. Doctors decided to hold Trembley overnight for observation. He is expected to be released from Lakeland Regional Medical Center Sunday. Frost was released from the hospital Saturday.

 

"The plane can be taken care of," Dorothy said from her husband's hospital room. "We're feeling great that he's OK. The diver is OK. That's fine with us."

 

After a morning of practice landings at South Lakeland Airport off Coronet Road near Mullberry, Dorothy said her husband was on his last landing trial. "He was coming in for a landing and the sky diver came down on the runway," Dorothy Trembly said. "He was afraid he was going to hit the sky diver."

 

Trembley tried to steer the plane away from Frost to avoid a head-on collision but the passenger-side wing still clipped the lines of Frost's red, black and white parachute. The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration are investigating the incident to determine what led to the collision.

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