When It All Goes Wrong

This has already been discussed extensively without the long video. The general conclusion was the pilot had entered the 6th circle of dumbassery.
 
This has already been discussed extensively without the long video. The general conclusion was the pilot had entered the 6th circle of dumbassery.
As in, "let's build a jet-powered airplane, but not modify it so it'll be controllable on one engine"?
 
Burt warned them about rudder size being insufficient. They aren't dumbasses so it's surprising they made that error. Always interesting to hear the nasty Monday morning quarterbacking. I'd like to think I would have pulled power and put it down quickly but who knows?
I remember they practically had to beg Kevin to bail out of that Super Corsair at Reno. Thought he could save it....
 
Sometimes we're just too close to what we're doing to recognize the big picture, even if somebody shows it to us..."forest for the trees" kind of thing.

I can see the attitude that "We're just going to see if it'll fly, we're not going to do single-engine work" being a driving force in that decision. Kind of like the parachute decision...they weren't planning on going high enough for that to be an issue. Unfortunately, events don't always follow our plans.
 
Well flight didn't go as planned. Glad to see the pilot survived.
 
Test flying is risky enough. Test flying an experimental plane without fixing a known issue is how you end up luckily walking away from a destroyed plane.

The test pilot version of getthereitis
 
Hate to second guess the guy, but why fly in direct crosswinds? Seems like test flights in early a.m. or late p.m. would be more prudent. Wonder if they determined why the left engine quit.
 
Hate to second guess the guy, but why fly in direct crosswinds? Seems like test flights in early a.m. or late p.m. would be more prudent. Wonder if they determined why the left engine quit.
Watch the whole video. They had a problem with the left engine cutting out on the taxi test, and continued with two test flights anyway, without resolving the issue first. I also hate to second guess, but they seemed to be taking way too many needless risks.
 
"Left engine is out."
Anyone ever hear the phrase "Never turn towards the dead engine unless you want to join it."???

Armchair quarter backing, I know. But why turn left into the planes instead of right, into the desert?
 
"Left engine is out."
Anyone ever hear the phrase "Never turn towards the dead engine unless you want to join it."???

Armchair quarter backing, I know. But why turn left into the planes instead of right, into the desert?
I think the plane was flying him.
 
"Left engine is out."
Anyone ever hear the phrase "Never turn towards the dead engine unless you want to join it."???

Armchair quarter backing, I know. But why turn left into the planes instead of right, into the desert?
He didn't have enough rudder to counter the other engine's thrust. The couple of times he leveled out, it appeared to be because he reduced thrust on the right engine, but pushed it back up because he was descending. If he had made the decision to crash earlier, the damage might not have been as severe. (20/20 hindsight and all).
 
Did they ever fix the idle stop?

Looks like it got hit my the gust, maybe he slammed the throttles back, left engine out, turned toward it, lots of bank angles, etc.

I'd also be interested in how much time he had in a normal quickie before.

In the first part I couldn't help but notice he had his o2 hose under his shoulder belt, plus all the go pros, just seemed a little odd.
 
The way is sounded to me he had never flown a quickie.
 
Hate to second guess the guy, but why fly in direct crosswinds? Seems like test flights in early a.m. or late p.m. would be more prudent. Wonder if they determined why the left engine quit.
Unless they edited the first sequence of the crash to make it appear as though the engine quit after it actually did, it probably had to do with interruption of airflow into the engine when he got squirrely on the landing. That lower set of wings are in a great place relative to the intakes to do exactly that, which isn't so much a big deal if looking cool and futuristic is your aim; if, however, clean airflow into your engines (and thus remaining airborne) is a priority they may pose a problem, particularly with a rudder that doesn't have enough authority to overcome single engine asymmetric thrust.

At first glance that shot from the tail of the aircraft at the beginning makes it look like the left motor is canted up as well.
 
Unless they edited the first sequence of the crash to make it appear as though the engine quit after it actually did, it probably had to do with interruption of airflow into the engine when he got squirrely on the landing. That lower set of wings are in a great place relative to the intakes to do exactly that, which isn't so much a big deal if looking cool and futuristic is your aim; if, however, clean airflow into your engines (and thus remaining airborne) is a priority they may pose a problem, particularly with a rudder that doesn't have enough authority to overcome single engine asymmetric thrust.

At first glance that shot from the tail of the aircraft at the beginning makes it look like the left motor is canted up as well.

The mounting of those turbines seems odd to me too, not sure what would have to be done, but mounting them on the upper wing seems like it would be the logical choice
 
"Left engine is out."
Anyone ever hear the phrase "Never turn towards the dead engine unless you want to join it."???

Armchair quarter backing, I know. But why turn left into the planes instead of right, into the desert?

Heard it, but in anything aerodynamically tested, it's not an issue above blue line.

Judging by the discussion, not so much in whatever is in the video.

On iPhone I just get this. And the "skip to" link doesn't work, so I guess I won't be seeing it. LOL. Stupid RedBull web dudes.

4f3af9535208a2e98d18a762053175a2.jpg
 
Heard it, but in anything aerodynamically tested, it's not an issue above blue line.

Judging by the discussion, not so much in whatever is in the video.

On iPhone I just get this. And the "skip to" link doesn't work, so I guess I won't be seeing it. LOL. Stupid RedBull web dudes.

4f3af9535208a2e98d18a762053175a2.jpg
It works on my iPhone. You might try it again, it was a good video.
 
Wow. Chilling. I thought for sure he bought it and flew into one of those old airliners. Very fortunate he survived.

Currently reading "Red Eagles" about USAF and Navy pilots flying acquired Migs to learn their characteristics. Then regular fighter pilots would show up to practice fighting against the Migs. Very interesting so far.

As mentioned by someone earlier, one Navy test pilot flying one of the Migs departed controlled flight and his comrades feel he stuck with it too long trying to recover it as the jet was a very valuable American asset.
 
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This thread right here is probably why Elliot (a big-time FB poster) doesn't even mention this mishap. Wow, we have a lot of successful aeronautical engineer/test pilot/air racers on POA!
 
There's an easy way to not get a lot of attention to the stupid things you do......
 
This thread right here is probably why Elliot (a big-time FB poster) doesn't even mention this mishap. Wow, we have a lot of successful aeronautical engineer/test pilot/air racers on POA!

Im not sure it takes a 'successful aeronautical engineer / test pilot / air racer' to critique some of that flight.
 
Im not sure it takes a 'successful aeronautical engineer / test pilot / air racer' to critique some of that flight.
If Einstein added 2+2 = 5, you wouldn't be qualified to point out the error, because he's a genius.
 
Whenever you go into a test flight like that you're going to have some level of risk and risk mitigation that go on. When I was working for engine OEMs we had FMEAs before first test flights. Not everything was working 100% perfect at first flight, and we did sometimes have realms we knew we needed to stay out of during flight. But you also can't move forward on a lot of the design of an engine/powerplant without actually flying the thing, and at some point you need to do that to make steps forward on the program. Each company/group draws the lines in different locations. Where they drew the line is not unlike what I've seen from other groups in the past and I can't necessarily disagree with their decisions for flight, especially for not knowing or being familiar with the details. This also isn't different from the decision matrix for other high-risk flights, such as ferry flights for a mechanically uncertain aircraft or first flight after maintenance.

In the NTSB report it said that they knew they hadn't identified Vmca for this aircraft, which I would expect to be very high given the small rudder and what seemed to be high thrust for the size/weight of the aircraft. I don't know what they were planning for approach speeds, but my guess is that they were using approach speeds that were more typical of the Quickie with the piston engine, rather than what you'd typically see on a twin. Approach speeds on a twin are much higher, largely to be well above Vmca and at/above Vyse. People who aren't familiar with twins often note how much faster we're going when flying in the 414 with me - I don't like being below 120 KIAS until landing assured and am usually 130-140 in the pattern (gear speed is 143, white arc tops at 147). The mitigation for the unknown Vmca was that if they lost an engine they'd pull both back to idle and land ahead. The only real thing that I see out of this from a decision perspective is that he deviated from the mitigation plan, and it seems to me was quite clearly below Vmc when he had the engine failure. Now whether the decision he made was better or not, who knows, but he walked away.

Design wise, from my turbine experience I do question the location of the engines relative to the forward/lower wing. I have no idea what sort of testing they did with respect to determining when the engine will stall, but manufacturers do wind tests to determine crosswind envelopes for turbine engines (specifically turbofan/turbojet). I would have wanted to see some wind tunnel tests to see at what AOA the engine would stall. Certainly it's possible that the crosswind gust combined with that wing design could've caused a flameout.

Personally I don't see any issues with their first flight decision and I think would've made the same choice. I would've wanted to look into that idle shutoff issue before the crosswind envelope flight that they were on, but might have decided to do other tests instead, focusing on higher speed items like climb/cruise performance. One thing I noted is the NTSB showed he had >1,600 hours of total time, but <50 hours in multi-engine aircraft. To me, that's an extra risk.

It's easy to second guess decisions when someone ends up in a crash, but nobody second guesses it if things go well. I don't see much point in Monday morning quarterbacking or questioning his decision to be a test pilot as a new dad (other than for him to question it, since that's a decision he needs to make). I certainly have tamed what I do to some degree post-kids, but I still do things like the ferry flight in the 414 after it'd been sitting for 6 years. But there were mitigations for all the risks associated with that, and (luckily) everything went right. I don't ride motorcycles as much, though.
 
I agree, it is easy to Wednesday morning quarterback.

My thoughts as I watched the video for the first time was to chop both throttles and land.

But I wasn't there.

I can only imagine what his wife went through watching it happen...
 
Whenever you go into a test flight like that you're going to have some level of risk and risk mitigation that go on. When I was working for engine OEMs we had FMEAs before first test flights. Not everything was working 100% perfect at first flight, and we did sometimes have realms we knew we needed to stay out of during flight. But you also can't move forward on a lot of the design of an engine/powerplant without actually flying the thing, and at some point you need to do that to make steps forward on the program. Each company/group draws the lines in different locations. Where they drew the line is not unlike what I've seen from other groups in the past and I can't necessarily disagree with their decisions for flight, especially for not knowing or being familiar with the details. This also isn't different from the decision matrix for other high-risk flights, such as ferry flights for a mechanically uncertain aircraft or first flight after maintenance.

In the NTSB report it said that they knew they hadn't identified Vmca for this aircraft, which I would expect to be very high given the small rudder and what seemed to be high thrust for the size/weight of the aircraft. I don't know what they were planning for approach speeds, but my guess is that they were using approach speeds that were more typical of the Quickie with the piston engine, rather than what you'd typically see on a twin. Approach speeds on a twin are much higher, largely to be well above Vmca and at/above Vyse. People who aren't familiar with twins often note how much faster we're going when flying in the 414 with me - I don't like being below 120 KIAS until landing assured and am usually 130-140 in the pattern (gear speed is 143, white arc tops at 147). The mitigation for the unknown Vmca was that if they lost an engine they'd pull both back to idle and land ahead. The only real thing that I see out of this from a decision perspective is that he deviated from the mitigation plan, and it seems to me was quite clearly below Vmc when he had the engine failure. Now whether the decision he made was better or not, who knows, but he walked away.

Design wise, from my turbine experience I do question the location of the engines relative to the forward/lower wing. I have no idea what sort of testing they did with respect to determining when the engine will stall, but manufacturers do wind tests to determine crosswind envelopes for turbine engines (specifically turbofan/turbojet). I would have wanted to see some wind tunnel tests to see at what AOA the engine would stall. Certainly it's possible that the crosswind gust combined with that wing design could've caused a flameout.

Personally I don't see any issues with their first flight decision and I think would've made the same choice. I would've wanted to look into that idle shutoff issue before the crosswind envelope flight that they were on, but might have decided to do other tests instead, focusing on higher speed items like climb/cruise performance. One thing I noted is the NTSB showed he had >1,600 hours of total time, but <50 hours in multi-engine aircraft. To me, that's an extra risk.

It's easy to second guess decisions when someone ends up in a crash, but nobody second guesses it if things go well. I don't see much point in Monday morning quarterbacking or questioning his decision to be a test pilot as a new dad (other than for him to question it, since that's a decision he needs to make). I certainly have tamed what I do to some degree post-kids, but I still do things like the ferry flight in the 414 after it'd been sitting for 6 years. But there were mitigations for all the risks associated with that, and (luckily) everything went right. I don't ride motorcycles as much, though.


Looks to me not as much a design issue which caused that crash, but a lack of tailwheel/quickie experience.
 
I agree, it is easy to Wednesday morning quarterback.

My thoughts as I watched the video for the first time was to chop both throttles and land.

But I wasn't there.

I can only imagine what his wife went through watching it happen...

I thought the same. But you also have a lot of multi engine experience (as do I). I think that an experienced multi pilot is probably more likely to do that than a low time multi pilot. I find that as pilots gain more hours in twins, we become more keenly aware of the fact that there are regimes where we just have to pull them both back and land, and can probably make that decision quicker and accept what happens.

Looks to me not as much a design issue which caused that crash, but a lack of tailwheel/quickie experience.

And/or lack of multi engine experience.

However if the engine failed due to a design issue, it would be a link in the chain. Had both engines been working he would've been able to fly out of it and been fine. Certainly a lack of time in Quickies is another thing that I would consider relevant in the accident chain.
 
Whenever you go into a test flight like that you're going to have some level of risk and risk mitigation that go on. When I was working for engine OEMs we had FMEAs before first test flights. Not everything was working 100% perfect at first flight, and we did sometimes have realms we knew we needed to stay out of during flight. But you also can't move forward on a lot of the design of an engine/powerplant without actually flying the thing, and at some point you need to do that to make steps forward on the program. Each company/group draws the lines in different locations. Where they drew the line is not unlike what I've seen from other groups in the past and I can't necessarily disagree with their decisions for flight, especially for not knowing or being familiar with the details. This also isn't different from the decision matrix for other high-risk flights, such as ferry flights for a mechanically uncertain aircraft or first flight after maintenance.

In the NTSB report it said that they knew they hadn't identified Vmca for this aircraft, which I would expect to be very high given the small rudder and what seemed to be high thrust for the size/weight of the aircraft. I don't know what they were planning for approach speeds, but my guess is that they were using approach speeds that were more typical of the Quickie with the piston engine, rather than what you'd typically see on a twin. Approach speeds on a twin are much higher, largely to be well above Vmca and at/above Vyse. People who aren't familiar with twins often note how much faster we're going when flying in the 414 with me - I don't like being below 120 KIAS until landing assured and am usually 130-140 in the pattern (gear speed is 143, white arc tops at 147). The mitigation for the unknown Vmca was that if they lost an engine they'd pull both back to idle and land ahead. The only real thing that I see out of this from a decision perspective is that he deviated from the mitigation plan, and it seems to me was quite clearly below Vmc when he had the engine failure. Now whether the decision he made was better or not, who knows, but he walked away.

Design wise, from my turbine experience I do question the location of the engines relative to the forward/lower wing. I have no idea what sort of testing they did with respect to determining when the engine will stall, but manufacturers do wind tests to determine crosswind envelopes for turbine engines (specifically turbofan/turbojet). I would have wanted to see some wind tunnel tests to see at what AOA the engine would stall. Certainly it's possible that the crosswind gust combined with that wing design could've caused a flameout.

Personally I don't see any issues with their first flight decision and I think would've made the same choice. I would've wanted to look into that idle shutoff issue before the crosswind envelope flight that they were on, but might have decided to do other tests instead, focusing on higher speed items like climb/cruise performance. One thing I noted is the NTSB showed he had >1,600 hours of total time, but <50 hours in multi-engine aircraft. To me, that's an extra risk.

It's easy to second guess decisions when someone ends up in a crash, but nobody second guesses it if things go well. I don't see much point in Monday morning quarterbacking or questioning his decision to be a test pilot as a new dad (other than for him to question it, since that's a decision he needs to make). I certainly have tamed what I do to some degree post-kids, but I still do things like the ferry flight in the 414 after it'd been sitting for 6 years. But there were mitigations for all the risks associated with that, and (luckily) everything went right. I don't ride motorcycles as much, though.
I respect your expertise and experience, but in an aircraft known to have limited rudder capabilities, it seems like fixing your throttle set up so one engine doesn't die at idle (he stated flat out that he just needed to "not bring the throttle to idle so the left engine doesn't die") would be worth a few minutes of your time before you fly the plane. But I guess that's why I'm not a test pilot. :eek:
 
Looks to me not as much a design issue which caused that crash, but a lack of tailwheel/quickie experience.
That and the decision to land in a strong crosswind in a plane that is difficult to land in normal circumstances. I'd like to see if the winds were above their briefed limits.
 
Currently reading "Red Eagles" about USAF and Navy pilots flying acquired Migs to learn their characteristics. Then regular fighter pilots would show up to practice fighting against the Migs. Very interesting so far.

As mentioned by someone earlier, one Navy test pilot flying one of the Migs departed controlled flight and his comrades feel he stuck with it too long trying to recover it as the jet was a very valuable American asset.

Haven't read the book to know if it's in there, but L/Gen Bobby Bond was killed in a high speed ejection flying one of the MiG-23's.

Cheers
 
I respect your expertise and experience, but in an aircraft known to have limited rudder capabilities, it seems like fixing your throttle set up so one engine doesn't die at idle (he stated flat out that he just needed to "not bring the throttle to idle so the left engine doesn't die") would be worth a few minutes of your time before you fly the plane. But I guess that's why I'm not a test pilot. :eek:

I don't know enough about that engine to understand what is involved in the rigging to correct the issue. Rigging engines can quickly turn into a pandora's box and create a lot of issues and delays, too, so it's not necessarily just a few minutes or as simple of a proposition as you suggest. I've flown planes where you can't bring the engines all the way to idle for the same reason... it's not necessarily a big deal to just keep the power a bit higher. I would likely have made the same decision there.

Now, a few years back I flew a ferry flight on an old 310. The plane hadn't been flown in about 10 years (I forget the exact number). When I got to the plane, the right prop cable wouldn't budge. I said that needed to get fixed before flight. Turns out it just needed some lubrication and after that worked fine, so it was a few minute fix. If it had been more complicated I would have scrubbed the flight until it was fixed. Two hours into flight the right engine ran out of oil due to a leak (a whole 'nother issue) and oil pressure started going down. I was able to feather the prop to shut it down and had an uneventful single-engine landing.

Performing higher risk flights is not for everyone, but neither is flying in general.
 
I don't know enough about that engine to understand what is involved in the rigging to correct the issue. Rigging engines can quickly turn into a pandora's box and create a lot of issues and delays, too, so it's not necessarily just a few minutes or as simple of a proposition as you suggest. I've flown planes where you can't bring the engines all the way to idle for the same reason... it's not necessarily a big deal to just keep the power a bit higher. I would likely have made the same decision there.

Now, a few years back I flew a ferry flight on an old 310. The plane hadn't been flown in about 10 years (I forget the exact number). When I got to the plane, the right prop cable wouldn't budge. I said that needed to get fixed before flight. Turns out it just needed some lubrication and after that worked fine, so it was a few minute fix. If it had been more complicated I would have scrubbed the flight until it was fixed. Two hours into flight the right engine ran out of oil due to a leak (a whole 'nother issue) and oil pressure started going down. I was able to feather the prop to shut it down and had an uneventful single-engine landing.

Performing higher risk flights is not for everyone, but neither is flying in general.
I'm probably being ignorant here, but wasn't the engines the only thing "newly" experimental here? These planes have flown plenty of times before. I just don't understand why you wouldn't fix a problem like that with the system you are supposedly experimenting with to perfect and prove viable. It should not have been that difficult; and especially considering that it was the main focus of the aircraft. It's not like they had to take the wing off and build a new one. Maybe I fundamentally don't understand the point.
 
I'm probably being ignorant here, but wasn't the engines the only thing "newly" experimental here? These planes have flown plenty of times before. I just don't understand why you wouldn't fix a problem like that with the system you are supposedly experimenting with to perfect and prove viable. It should not have been that difficult; and especially considering that it was the main focus of the aircraft. It's not like they had to take the wing off and build a new one. Maybe I fundamentally don't understand the point.

The engines themselves are used in RC aircraft. What was different was putting the engines on the Quickie aircraft vs. the piston engine the Quickie normally had. And again, the thought as they understood it was that if you don't pull it back all the way to idle, it won't quit. That's a pretty simple limitation - not different from a placard that most of us have on our aircraft.

My point is unless you know these engines well, I don't think you're qualified to say how much work it might have been to re-rig it (and neither am I). Plus there can be other reasons one might want to do a test flight on a particular day, such as favorable weather, etc. We don't know from this video what other program goals may have existed schedule wise. If they were building this with the intent of racing then they were likely converging on a race date, and so understanding the aircraft performance would become a big deal within that time frame, and need to be worked in parallel with other issues. I will tell you that getting new aircraft to Oshkosh (or any big show...) tends to result in a mad rush and having to accept certain risks that have to get mitigated for the flight over. This is a small one.
 
I have experience with those engines in RC aircraft. With factory support it would have been insanely trivial. Frankly, I would not have flown my RC aircraft before fixing that problem (in a twin engine craft), just due to the expense and possible danger to bystanders, let alone gotten in the plane myself.

Can you explain the justification for not fixing the problem first? What could the opportunity costs been that weren't far overshadowed by total destruction of the craft, and a lucky escape with his life?
 
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