Plane Crash In Bonita Springs, FL (1/22/18) (Daniel Bernath / aka danielabernath)

If'n y'all want the audio ...

N262WS

KFMY - 1630Z recording
http://archive-server.liveatc.net/kfmy/KFMY-Jan-22-2018-1630Z.mp3
  • 16:40 (to about 19:40) - first call to Tower err, ah Ground and exchange re flight following & IFR altitudes
  • 24:26 - ready for departure
  • 29:00 - cleared for takeoff
  • 30:25 - repeated calls to contact Departure (no pilot response)

KRSW (includes Ft. Meyers Departure) - 1700Z recording
http://archive-server.liveatc.net/krsw/KRSW-Jan-22-2018-1700Z.mp3
  • 1:35 - initial contact on freq (controller initiated)
  • 5:28 - given a heading
  • 14:00 - mayday call (no recorded response from Departure)
  • 16:00 - other aircraft sent over farmland to look for him
  • 18:00 - other aircraft reporting back on scrub brush
  • 18:29 - other aircraft circling and monitoring 121.5
 
JoeSelch said:
If'n y'all want the audio ...

N262WS

KFMY - 1630Z recording
http://archive-server.liveatc.net/kfmy/KFMY-Jan-22-2018-1630Z.mp3
  • 16:40 (to about 19:40) - first call to Tower err, ah Ground and exchange re flight following & IFR altitudes
  • 24:26 - ready for departure
  • 29:00 - cleared for takeoff
  • 30:25 - repeated calls to contact Departure (no pilot response)

KRSW (includes Ft. Meyers Departure) - 1700Z recording
http://archive-server.liveatc.net/krsw/KRSW-Jan-22-2018-1700Z.mp3
  • 1:35 - initial contact on freq (controller initiated)
  • 5:28 - given a heading
  • 14:00 - mayday call (no recorded response from Departure)
  • 16:00 - other aircraft sent over farmland to look for him
  • 18:00 - other aircraft reporting back on scrub brush
  • 18:29 - other aircraft circling and monitoring 121.5
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Man, that guy is a hot mess
 
Quote from the accident pilot:

Fear not. I shall never be mentioned in a NTSB report.
I am a very cautious pilot. I am like Tiger Woods. I am never satisfied with my performance and always strive to improve it.
Wish the FD had a stall horn. Maybe I can rig up the IPad gps to do one (although it is only one factor as to when I flare).
By the way, I also have a grey beard. Admiral Halsey earned his wings at 52. I earned mine at 62. (light sport)
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JoeSelch said:
If'n y'all want the audio ...

N262WS

KFMY - 1630Z recording
http://archive-server.liveatc.net/kfmy/KFMY-Jan-22-2018-1630Z.mp3
  • 16:40 (to about 19:40) - first call to Tower err, ah Ground and exchange re flight following & IFR altitudes
  • 24:26 - ready for departure
  • 29:00 - cleared for takeoff
  • 30:25 - repeated calls to contact Departure (no pilot response)

KRSW (includes Ft. Meyers Departure) - 1700Z recording
http://archive-server.liveatc.net/krsw/KRSW-Jan-22-2018-1700Z.mp3
  • 1:35 - initial contact on freq (controller initiated)
  • 5:28 - given a heading
  • 14:00 - mayday call (no recorded response from Departure)
  • 16:00 - other aircraft sent over farmland to look for him
  • 18:00 - other aircraft reporting back on scrub brush
  • 18:29 - other aircraft circling and monitoring 121.5
Click to expand...
His radio work was...**** poor. Sounded like his flying wasn't much better in my not so humble opinion.
 
Clark1961 said:
His radio work was...**** poor. Sounded like his flying wasn't much better in my not so humble opinion.
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Apart from the poor radio work, he didn't even understand VFR altitudes. And even if he had, 8000 for that flight in that plane is silly.
 
I remember the flare up here.

On the audio on the newsclip it sounds like the controller is kind of testy with him. "I don't have time to talk to you four times for control instructions because there's a lot going on..." I get that Bernath may have not been a nice guy, may have been a dangerous pilot, was argumentative...but I've got a feeling someone got an ass-chewing when people started listening to the audio.
 
Gerhardt said:
I remember the flare up here.

On the audio on the newsclip it sounds like the controller is kind of testy with him. "I don't have time to talk to you four times for control instructions because there's a lot going on..." I get that Bernath may have not been a nice guy, may have been a dangerous pilot, was argumentative...but that's not the kind of communication you want from a controller.
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What exactly do you want the controller to do? He could have terminated radar services but instead did his best to get the guy lined out.
 
Gerhardt said:
I remember the flare up here.

On the audio on the newsclip it sounds like the controller is kind of testy with him. "I don't have time to talk to you four times for control instructions because there's a lot going on..." I get that Bernath may have not been a nice guy, may have been a dangerous pilot, was argumentative...but I've got a feeling someone got an ass-chewing when people started listening to the audio.
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The guy asked for it, and he did come off as a little bit of a jerk on some of the first radio transmissions
 
hotprops said:
question, what is the gross weight of the average rv12?
Click to expand...

African or European? :)

There's *licensed* gross weight, and there's what pilots fly them at. All SLSAs and ELSAs should have a placarded gross weight of 1320 pounds or less. The placarded gross weight of Experimental Amateur-Built RV-12s is whatever the builder declares them to be, however, if they wish them to be Sport Pilot elligible, they should, again, be placarded at no more than 1320 pounds.

But, of course, no one is weighing these airplanes, fully-loaded. So we don't know what they're actually being flown at.

N262WS has an interesting certification history. The FAA records show a blank for the EditCertification category, so we don't know if it was SLSA, ELSA, or Experimental Amateur-Built. This isn't that rare...almost 10% of the aircraft in the US registry don't list the certification including ~6,000 probable homebuilts.

N262WS's serial number was 120262. This doesn't give us much help, as the RV-12s in the immediate range have a variety of certifications.

N262WS has a "Manufacturer/Model" Code of 0690009. Since each EAB is, technically, a unique airplane, each EAB RV-12 should have a unique Man/Model code. 385 RV-12s have that code....including, it must be admitted, eight EAB RV-12s. The majority of those with that model codes are licensed as an ELSA kit-built. So that's the best guess for N262WS. Which is a long way towards saying its legal gross weight was no more than 1320 pounds.

N262WS was added to the registry in 2011, best guess September, and was originally registered to Wesley Shierman of Everett, Washington. It was transferred to Bernath in 2014, though the registry shows it owned by a Nicole Bernath (with Oi-En-Wong as a trustee). Not sure who Ms. Bernath is...wife, daughter, or other. The fact that there's a trustee involved hints of someone underage, but Bernath was 58 years old...more likely any children were adults. The report of Bernath being convicted of stalking and violating a protective order does put an interesting fillip to this question. Ownership went to "World Adventure Series" in 2017. AFTER the protective order was issued. One might speculate of the existence of a community property issue.

Finally, the FAA web page showing this registry a pending N-Number change, to 183RV.

Ron Wanttaja
 
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Half Fast said:
Apart from the poor radio work, he didn't even understand VFR altitudes.
Click to expand...
My own interpretation is that he was extremely rusty.

Other than using a temporary tower at the Arlington Fly-In, I've spoken to ATC facilities maybe four times in the past 25 years. Never have used departure control, flight following, etc. As I listened, I heard the same sort of mistakes I would probably make if I made such a flight without brushing up in advance to re-familiarize myself with the process.

I didn't hear arrogance or aggression; I heard someone who was mentally about three miles behind the whole process and realized it.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
My own interpretation is that he was extremely rusty.

Other than using a temporary tower at the Arlington Fly-In, I've spoken to ATC facilities maybe four times in the past 25 years. Never have used departure control, flight following, etc. As I listened, I heard the same sort of mistakes I would probably make if I made such a flight without brushing up in advance to re-familiarize myself with the process.

I didn't hear arrogance or aggression; I heard someone who was mentally about three miles behind the whole process and realized it.

Ron Wanttaja
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Given your lack of experience would you call ground control and request flight following?
 
Lindberg said:
Well, please don't tell us what yow.
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the reason i have not repeated what i have been told is that I have a lot of respect for the NTSB, i have worked with them in the past. I know for a fact that the press has been reading these forums no reason to give the press any information to mis-quote and twist. one station here quoted a posts from the forums. lets just say the first part of the investigation is mapping the wreckage field, that may give them a good Idea where to look. what i have been told could be part of the cause or a result of the sequence, but I am leaning toward it not being Pilot error.
 
Half Fast said:
It appears the material on Kathryn's Report has been removed as well. WTH?!

http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2018/01/fatal-accident-occurred-january-22-2018.html
View attachment 59587
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Some of the audio was posted on a members only forum (unrelated to piloting where he'd made trouble before). If you have FlightAware, or flighttrackeer, app, and you sign up, you can see his track log and data. His plane was 262WS. There's a three year old flight on the public view, but once you log in, you can pull the track for his downed flight at noon on the 22nd.
 
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Even if it is something such as an inflight breakup, that doesn’t mean that the pilot didn’t do something to cause it.
 
SkyDog58 said:
Even if it is something such as an inflight breakup, that doesn’t mean that the pilot didn’t do something to cause it.
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Given that he'd just been sentenced to prison, the altitude of his short flight, and his demeanor, I have questioned whether this is/was an accident from the beginning.
 
The guy was operating out of a controlled airport, there's no excuse for being incompetent. If he couldn't deal with the radios he shouldn't have been there. Also right next door to RSW that has a lot of jet traffic. I really don't care to have some bozo jerking around in the sky when I'm on Southwest.
wanttaja said:
My own interpretation is that he was extremely rusty.

Other than using a temporary tower at the Arlington Fly-In, I've spoken to ATC facilities maybe four times in the past 25 years. Never have used departure control, flight following, etc. As I listened, I heard the same sort of mistakes I would probably make if I made such a flight without brushing up in advance to re-familiarize myself with the process.

I didn't hear arrogance or aggression; I heard someone who was mentally about three miles behind the whole process and realized it.

Ron Wanttaja
Click to expand...
 
kyleb said:
Given that he'd just been sentenced to prison, the altitude of his short flight, and his demeanor, I have questioned whether this is/was an accident from the beginning.
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I was thinking the same thing. He has a history of fabricating stories, cases, etc. If he wanted to take himself out, he'd do it in a way that looks like an accident, and would give his surviving family member another lawsuit. When I listened to his audio, I started thinking that maybe even the radio confusion was staged.
 
I’m sitting in our family room watching an NCIS rerun right now. Y’know, I could create a really good episode out of this story. Imagine the number of enemies this guy created over the years. Think about how many USN guys are PO’d about the “stolen valor” stuff. With his record in aviation, might a crash be quickly attributed to pilot error?

Where are Gibbs and Ducky and Abby when you need them?

I need to start typing up a script.....
 
Yikes..... From the article.

Several online pilot forums show he was under attack for his lack of flying expertise. Bernath was also under fire for claiming military honors he did not earn. Bernath himself admitted to having suicidal thoughts and taking prescription medications on these forums.
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Dude wasn't under attack. Dude absolutely refused to listen to well meant advice which addressed serious safety concerns driven by his misunderstanding or refusal to understand some fairly basic principles. Do that long enough and well meaning posters become frustrated because they look into the future and see a smoking hole in the ground that was completely avoidable.
 
Clark1961 said:
Given your lack of experience would you call ground control and request flight following?
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I wouldn't, because I've never used flight following and have never had any experience with it.

My guess is the guy *had* previously used it...years ago. And figured he could just pick up on it again.

I've done the same thing in a different context, and still blush at the memory of how fouled up I was. I'd been trained in it, had previously done it regularly, but had "lost the bubble" after ~15 years of not doing it. Never have posted about it. Never will. I'm guessing they still tell the story in the Boeing Field tower.

I certainly don't argue that the guy messed up. My only point is that some of the posts referring to the recorded communications seemed to imply that the arrogance and I-Know-Everything attitude the guy showed here were apparent in his communications. I didn't get that impression from the actual recording. Sounded to me like the guy had trouble dredging up how the whole thing worked. That he was in over his head, and knew it.

In any case, the communications difficulties probably had nothing to do with the accident itself.

The personality factors...such as the insistence that his fuel-exhaustion accident was a fault of the aircraft design, his claims of a high degree of aviation skills, and the apparent "stolen honor" situation...undoubtedly contributed to what happened that day. You can lean against the bar and sing songs of combat heroics, thousands of flight hours, and Mensa awards...but airplanes are tone-deaf. They don't care what you think you are, what you think you can do, or the way you think things work. Aviation skills are not self-awarded. Aircraft are not swayed by a glib tongue, and the ground has a Pk of 1.0.

There was an extraordinary article in Kitplanes magazine about 30 years ago, called "Anatomy of an Accident." It talked of the fatal first flight of a highly-modified small homebuilt airplane. The builder was loud and opinionated (despite having no formal training for construction and design), told other people what THEY were doing wrong, and aggressively stamped out an objections raised to his own workmanship or the changes he was doing to a relatively simple aircraft. Around today, he'd probably have been kicked off a number of forums, by now.

The most memorable part was a description of the man as he got into the cockpit for the first flight. The observer was (I believe) a dentist...quite used to seeing people in the grip of fear. And he saw raw, stark, terror on the face of the pilot. It was so tangible, the dentist went back to his own hangar and grabbed a medical kit.

Because the man was stuck. For years, he'd bragged about his building ability and how good his modified airplane was going to be. But he couldn't back down, now. His mouth had built him a coffin, and his ego laid a ladder up to the cockpit coaming.

This investigation is going to be interesting.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Clark1961 said:
Given your lack of experience would you call ground control and request flight following?
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I'm not familiar with the airport Clark, but nothing wrong with requesting FF with GC. GC then coordinates with approach for squawk, altitude, etc, or a Letter of Agreement allows the tower to issue the instructions. Now perhaps the airport had a CD on the field and he should have called them with his request.
 
Paulie said:
The guy was operating out of a controlled airport, there's no excuse for being incompetent. If he couldn't deal with the radios he shouldn't have been there. Also right next door to RSW that has a lot of jet traffic. I really don't care to have some bozo jerking around in the sky when I'm on Southwest.
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When I controlled, I heard a lot worse. Yes he was behind and ignorant with his altitude requests but from a controller standpoint he wasn't anything that couldn't be worked. The departure controller that came on was very short with him and that's understandable with the heavy amount of traffic he probably was working, and the fact he went to 2900' when assigned 2500'.
 
mscard88 said:
I'm not familiar with the airport Clark, but nothing wrong with requesting FF with GC. GC then coordinates with approach for squawk, altitude, etc, or a Letter of Agreement allows the tower to issue the instructions. Now perhaps the airport had a CD on the field and he should have called them with his request.
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If you listen to ATC recordings, he did call ground at his home field (Page Field - FMY), for flight following. Actually did it right at first (except he called ground asking for tower), even saying that he had the correct ATIS information. The controller got frustrated by his request for an IFR altitude and trouble reading back instructions, but eventually he got his flight following setup - at one point the controller forgot that pilot had identified correct ATIS information. I think the departure controllers' frustrations were related to his readbacks and phraseology deficiencies, their own workload, and his failure to comply with altitude restriction. Listening to all the broadcasts, I wasn't thinking "rusty pilot" as much as I was thinking "impaired or distracted pilot".

The accident itself seems at least temporally unrelated to all these events in any case, since it happened well after the issues with controllers (his last couple of readbacks were fine). Reading pilot's posts on Vans Air Force, he had an amazing number of threads where he was asking for advice with multiple issues with his RV-12.

He seemed immune to good advice: on one thread he was strongly advised at least twice to enlist the help of an A&P to get help with a flight control issue (detached stabilator cable) rather than try to fix the issue himself.
 
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Playing on FF a bit with his route gives a little insight to the radio comms. The pilot hears or misunderstands the heading from ATC as 120 rather than 170 a couple of times. 120 is close to a direct heading but would have gone through the innermost part of the RSW class C. 170 would probably have avoided it.

I suspect he might have punched direct to X01 into his gps and seen 120, and was then confused by hearing ATC tell him to fly 170.
 
mturnerb said:
If you listen to ATC recordings, he did call ground at his home field (Page Field - FMY), for flight following. Actually did it right at first (except he called ground asking for tower), even saying that he had the correct ATIS information. The controller got frustrated by his request for an IFR altitude and trouble reading back instructions, but eventually he got his flight following setup - at one point the controller forgot that pilot had identified correct ATIS information. I think the departure controllers' frustrations were related to his readbacks and phraseology deficiencies, their own workload, and his failure to comply with altitude restriction. Listening to all the broadcasts, I wasn't thinking "rusty pilot" as much as I was thinking "impaired or distracted pilot".QUOTE].
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Your first paragraph I pretty much said that, so I'm in agreement with you there. Hard to say if he was impaired, but he was certainly behind and possibly distracted, especially not realizing he was requesting IFR altitudes. But he did say he could go lower, and finally seemed to get through that mess. Controllers do get frustrated after repeated instructions have been issued, especially when busy.​
 
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Half Fast said:
Playing on FF a bit with his route gives a little insight to the radio comms. The pilot hears or misunderstands the heading from ATC as 120 rather than 170 a couple of times. 120 is close to a direct heading but would have gone through the innermost part of the RSW class C. 170 would probably have avoided it.

I suspect he might have punched direct to X01 into his gps and seen 120, and was then confused by hearing ATC tell him to fly 170.
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Good point on the heading, and it goes back to his initial request for an altitude of 8000 feet: not only did he ask for IFR altitude, he asked for even when it should have been odd. How could you possibly get a certificate without this being "muscle memory" type knowledge? It should be as engrained as basic aerial maneuvers.
 
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