Hard Landing???

... or Crash?

  • Hard Landing

    Votes: 2 3.5%

  • Crash

    Votes: 50 87.7%

  • I mean any landing you can walk away from....

    Votes: 5 8.8%
  • Total voters
    57
"During the evenings a cold breeze comes down from the mountains..."

Um, those are called catabatic winds. I wonder what he'll discover next.
 
3393RP said:
"During the evenings a cold breeze comes down from the mountains..."

Um, those are called catabatic winds. I wonder what he'll discover next.
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Spelling :D ??

(I've always seen it spelled katabatic)
 
Vance Breese said:
In my limited fixed wing training I was taught that angle of attack was what caused a wing to stall.

I was taught to get the nose down to address a stall.

This appears to me to be at odds with the opinions of the pilot in the video.

Was I taught incorrectly?

What would the correct procedure be for recovery from a stall at low altitude?

Thank you.
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No you were taught correctly and it should be instinctual for all pilots. You can add all the power you want, but if you don't unstall the wing bad things can happen, especially close to the ground. I think this guy got a lesson in P factor and torque, applying full power, stalled, with high angle of attack.

The correct procedure is to unstall the wing and get power in at the same time. But it feels unnatural to lower the nose when the ground is coming up quickly in a stall, but you have to do it. If you stall too low you might not be able to recover, which is why it's important not to get yourself into that situation in the first place.
 
To be honest, I think the guy was hosed either way. I doubt the situation was at all recoverable, most stalls from low altitude aren't. Yeah, his response was incorrect but I doubt it mattered even in the slightest. Good thing is he and his tony girlfriend escaped unscathed. The airplane is just a thing, the occupants not so much.
 
PaulS said:
No you were taught correctly and it should be instinctual for all pilots. You can add all the power you want, but if you don't unstall the wing bad things can happen, especially close to the ground. I think this guy got a lesson in P factor and torque, applying full power, stalled, with high angle of attack.

The correct procedure is to unstall the wing and get power in at the same time. But it feels unnatural to lower the nose when the ground is coming up quickly in a stall, but you have to do it. If you stall too low you might not be able to recover, which is why it's important not to get yourself into that situation in the first place.
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Thank you PaulS. I am often confused by the differences between flying rotorcraft and fixed wing aircraft.

Many of my clients are fixed wing aircraft pilots and it is common for them to imagine that more power will make the gyroplane go faster and I wondered where that came from. This young man appears to feel that way.
 
Geosync said:
Like the Draco dude, lucky to be alive.
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I can't believe his worshipers didn't jump all over you! This guy really had some people drinking the koolaid. He was whining one day that he couldn't get a $1M policy on his plane, then balled it up a few days later taking off in winds gusting to 38 mph.
 
PaulS said:
I watched the first 2 minutes 45 seconds, I'll probably watch the rest eventually, but when he said "the left wing stalled, and he added power immediately" I stopped watching.
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I’m about to crash, let me add more energy to the situation!
 
Ok, I watched the whole thing. He says he stalled, I'm not so sure that was the problem.

His wife, said everything was going great, he was just about to touch down when it went hay wire.

He said he let the airspeed decay, he apparently has been teaching his wife to fly. He put a clip of that in of him telling her repeatedly to not let the airspeed get below 60 on an approach.

He also said that it was getting late, the strip is 1,000 feet, he was being lazy and was landing with a tailwind. Then he said later that it was "breezy", I interpreted that as possibly a quartering tailwind.

He said the "left wing stalled". Not sure how one wing stalled before the other unless he was uncoordinated. He thinks the funny "breeze" might have stalled one wing not the other.

Here is my armchair quarterback analysis. I think he had a quartering tailwind. I think a puff of wind from the right rear lifted the right wing and probably weather vaned the airplane. Maybe it happened as he was about to flare. But whatever. He thought it was a stall, so his first reaction was to firewall the throttle, not a proper first reaction for that in my book.

Problem was he was out of control, with no attempt, at least no attempt he describes, to lift the wing and straighten out and unstall the airplane. Firewalling the throttle added torque and p factor into the equation which probably destroyed any chance to salvage it.

That's my theory anyway. I don't mean to rag on the guy, but I like to make sense out of stuff like this and I don't think he knows what happened.

His wife is convinced he is a great pilot, but apparently he is just a ppl teaching her to fly, including landing. Not too bright in my book. I'm an ok pilot and I would not try to teach someone to fly beyond taking the stick in straight and level and maybe a few turns.

The youtube comments range from hilarious to brutally honest. This guy had an incident earlier this year and apparently regularly makes questionable decisions. That may be good for youtube views, but not good for GA if the comments are true. Watching these guys skim water or land in places where they probably shouldn't does nothing for me so I tend not to watch them.

This is avocation we take up is very unforgiving of mistakes. These guys seem to forget that.
 
AGLyme said:
I don't follow this guy or the other guys from the flying cowboys or whatever you call them... However... I believe they are doing a good service for general aviation and in a small way stemming the tide of the decline in GA. ... That's not a bad thing.
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I'm with you and watch a LOT of the aviation youtubers. I subscribe a bunch and hit the like button to help them out UNLESS it's a total crap commercial pushing video. I understand they have to push product, but lets keep it short and subtle. Years ago I used a lot of the small time videos to get "the lay of the land" for approaches to Fullerton, Catalina, Telluride and many other places I had never landed as a pre-flight planning method. It's great to have these videos and be able to view them prior to flying into Johnson creek, or viewing the Statue of Liberty flights (still need to complete those).
 
danhagan said:
watch a LOT of the aviation youtubers. I subscribe a bunch and hit the like button to help them out UNLESS it's a total crap commercial pushing video. I understand they have to push product, but lets keep it short and subtle
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I agree... and when I re-entered GA, after a gajillion year break (couldn't afford the time or treasure), I watched a ton of Youtube vids on navigation, tower work, cross wind landings, what I learned from that, etc... there are some high quality youtubers out there... I am not a big fan of the vids where I have to listen to snappy music and a piece on what the Youtuber and friends ate for lunch... but, it is my choice to watch and my choice to turn it off... again, I think those guys provide a good service and God bless 'em if they make a few bucks on the side to cover their hobby... I tend to gravitate towards more educational vs more promotional... but again, its a free country and the more people who fly the better...
 
Vance Breese said:
Thank you PaulS. I am often confused by the differences between flying rotorcraft and fixed wing aircraft.
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That was the hardest muscle-memory reaction to overcome during chopper transition training. "Wait... You want me to do what when it stalls?" :p
 
I get the impression that his basic stick and rudder skills are pretty good, they have to be to pull off the kind of bush landings he does, but his judgement and technical knowledge... not so much. He definitely goofed here. And when your poor judgement says it's OK to land a very light plane in a gusty quartering tailwind, the best stick and rudder skills in the world may not save you.

But it's also a very different world of flying than what most pilots here are used to, not like a Cessna or Bonanza or Cirrus at all. At the lighter end (bush flying, ultralights, and smaller/slower homebuilts), pilots push the limits a bit more, and break airplanes more. It's just the way it is, you accept that level of risk vs. reward, and as he said, "ship happens." The low energy of that kind of plane and the typical kind of accidents they see means the accidents are usually survivable or even involve no injury at all. And the aircraft didn't cost as much and is usually repairable, probably inexpensively by the owner because it's experimental.
 
Dana said:
I get the impression that his basic stick and rudder skills are pretty good, they have to be to pull off the kind of bush landings he does, but his judgement and technical knowledge... not so much. He definitely goofed here. And when your poor judgement says it's OK to land a very light plane in a gusty quartering tailwind, the best stick and rudder skills in the world may not save you.

But it's also a very different world of flying than what most pilots here are used to, not like a Cessna or Bonanza or Cirrus at all. At the lighter end (bush flying, ultralights, and smaller/slower homebuilts), pilots push the limits a bit more, and break airplanes more. It's just the way it is, you accept that level of risk vs. reward, and as he said, "ship happens." The low energy of that kind of plane and the typical kind of accidents they see means the accidents are usually survivable or even involve no injury at all. And the aircraft didn't cost as much and is usually repairable, probably inexpensively by the owner because it's experimental.
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I'm pretty much ok with most of what you post, although a good stick would have said "I tried to unstall the wing and added power."

But if you want to accept that level of risk, don't bring your unsuspecting, totally convinced you are the best pilot in the world wife/gf with you. Leave her at home or don't take the risk while she is with you.
 
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