Mac Hodges crashed his giant B-29 today!
- Thread starter bicyclemonkey
- Start date
rcspaceflight
creator of virtual planes
The video made me sad. ... Until I saw the word "injurded". Then I laughed. I'm really glad no one was injurded.
Now I'm sad again because it was an epic plane.
Now I'm sad again because it was an epic plane.
Edit: I would never put my thoughts about a real aviation accident on the net so decided it might not be appropriate on an RC accident that had so much potential for injury. Glad no one was hurt and sorry to see such a beautiful aircraft destroyed like that.
Shawn
Shawn
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MT Alex
Senior Member
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Those aren't Jatos. That's exaust form the Gas motors. . . and I think you're looking in the right direction -- it doesn't look like his left wing was pulling like it should.
If you look at the control surfaces, he was fighting it's drift and roll from the start of roll-out, and it simply wasn't responding to the surface inputs. Something was wrong with the motors, and after it drifted off centerline, if he had aborted it would have gone into the crowd.
My sympathy to the Mac for the damage, Kudos to him for doing everything right that he could, and praise to God nobody got hurt.
If you look at the control surfaces, he was fighting it's drift and roll from the start of roll-out, and it simply wasn't responding to the surface inputs. Something was wrong with the motors, and after it drifted off centerline, if he had aborted it would have gone into the crowd.
My sympathy to the Mac for the damage, Kudos to him for doing everything right that he could, and praise to God nobody got hurt.
He's crashed it two or three times before. I'm sure he'll rebuild.
Wow, it was A LOT closer than I thought from the other video, Ryan! I think I'd have hit the deck for sure.
SnowRocker88
Amateur pilot and builder
THIS! Wow. Good job by him for carrying it off as far as he could. Looking forward to seeing it rebuilt and back up.
That smoke was from the smoke oil system on the right outer engine. As you can see, the left outer engine isn't spinning as fast as the others and he's giving it full right aileron as the plane passes the camera. I know it's hindsight and it's easy for us spectators to comment, but when he saw it veering towards the pits prematurely, he should have aborted the takeoff instead of pulling back on the elevator without proper speed and therefore stalling it.
I hope this doesn't affect the FAA issues at the moment!
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I dunno about that . . .
I appreciate what he's saying and the pressure we're all under, but the conversations going back-and-forth are a vital part of self-policing. What did he do wrong? right? what should have been done? what should happen in the future?
Yeah there's a lot of facts we simply don't know -- as facts come out, the informed will self-correct ignorance -- but without healthy discussions of the events (instead of closed-door reviews with the AMA), how is this better than a closed door review from the FAA in getting the community to collectively do the right thing for the right reasons?
I say if we're to continue to effectively self-police, we need to continue to do the things that make self-policing work. To stop doing these things out of fear of embarassment abdicates our abitliy to self-police to the people who are trying to take it away. rule-making and incident reviews in secret will only breed contempt for the rules, not informed adoption of best practices at the pilot level.
I appreciate what he's saying and the pressure we're all under, but the conversations going back-and-forth are a vital part of self-policing. What did he do wrong? right? what should have been done? what should happen in the future?
Yeah there's a lot of facts we simply don't know -- as facts come out, the informed will self-correct ignorance -- but without healthy discussions of the events (instead of closed-door reviews with the AMA), how is this better than a closed door review from the FAA in getting the community to collectively do the right thing for the right reasons?
I say if we're to continue to effectively self-police, we need to continue to do the things that make self-policing work. To stop doing these things out of fear of embarassment abdicates our abitliy to self-police to the people who are trying to take it away. rule-making and incident reviews in secret will only breed contempt for the rules, not informed adoption of best practices at the pilot level.
That email will be used against them imo. They couldn't have phrased it worse. Where is the critical tone of the setup and safe distance of the crowd? Instead they send out a letter asking us to do our best to hide what happened? That plane crash could have been a disaster for someone on the ground. As much as I hated seeing it broken up the bigger picture should be safety not coverup.
The plane was already going pretty fast by the time it started veering toward the crowd. I'm not convinced chopping the throttle would have stopped it in time. At least this way, he cleared the flight line. Maybe if he chopped, he would have been able to steer with the wheels. Dunno.
I mean, if this was a real airshow, would we be saying, "Heroic pilot experiences catastrophic engine failure and manages to avoid crashing into the crowd."
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There's an orange safety fence in place that's there for this reason.
The way WOD sets up the flight line is with a staging area. All of the ez-ups it flew over are visiting pilots. This was actually only over the pits area. No spectators. I've been there a few times for this event and its sad to see. but given the situation I think he did as best he could.
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