Follow up to the OSH Bonanza Incident

That is a pretty open and honest synopsis of what happened. It was also a good thing to read and review some of the links. That link to the plane that went down due to wake turb was a real eye opener. He is very fortunate.
 
That is a pretty open and honest synopsis of what happened. It was also a good thing to read and review some of the links. That link to the plane that went down due to wake turb was a real eye opener. He is very fortunate.

What he said. I just read the article and checked out the linked vid and pic. Wooooof.
 
I would not recommend that guy as an instructor.
This might be obvious to some, but can you clarify why not? Everyone makes mistakes.. seems like this guy learned a good lesson and his quick thinking and decision making basically saved his life and his plane
 
That link to the plane that went down due to wake turb was a real eye opener. He is very fortunate.
RIGHT?! I had no idea a slow lumbering bi-plane like an AN-2 would have such a destructive wake turbulence
 
This might be obvious to some, but can you clarify why not? Everyone makes mistakes.. seems like this guy learned a good lesson and his quick thinking and decision making basically saved his life and his plane

The mistake he made is what a CFI is supposed to alert to prevent.
 
The mistake he made is what a CFI is supposed to alert to prevent.
fair enough. I wonder if he was in the right seat instructing and there was a student left seat he would have told the student to go around and exercised better judgment..
 
Kudos for him writing up the event.

Not sure I like a couple of the comments in it, though.

“The reason for this cowboy approach is to keep you out of the way of the simultaneous landing operations that occur on runway 27. “

There’s nothing cowboy about it. I’m not going to go measure the distances but it’s fine, AND fully published — and one can be prepared for it.

The other comment was about the controllers “always jamming him up” at OSH. Frankly if you watch folks landing there and listen to the controllers they say the exact same stuff to everybody repetitively and nothing is intended to “jam” anyone. His assertion that the controller wanted a base turn “urgently” is because they say that to EVERY pilot because SOME keep going and wander into the 9/27 path.

If he wanted to fly that a little wider with a shallower turn in behind the tri-motor, as long as he was TURNING so the pink shirt knew he wasn’t one of the wandering souls headed for the 9/27 traffic, they wouldn’t care in the slightest.

How one can miss this after watching even a day of landings there, or reading the NOTAM, I don’t know. But it’s NOT an urgency based on turning tight. It’s an urgency based on making sure you ARE going to turn. There’s a lot of room there.

One Eyed Jack made the same complaint after be crashed his jet. And that’s all I’m saying about that.

I wouldn’t be “happy about the outcome”, that’s for sure. If it’s really an approach design or pink shirt problem, I’d be still mad. And I’d not be happy if it was me. Not ever. The outcome wasn’t what was planned and the excuse that the turn call sounded urgent just doesn’t fly with me. Not after watching lots and lots of people make that turn more shallow and wider out toward the north enough to make that landing.

I won’t say he wouldn’t have gotten into the wake of the tri-motor, even doing that. Or that you can’t be surprised by wakes. I have. It’s hairy. No doubt. And yes, I agree with his final analysis that he really should have gone around if possible. He got that right.

The complaints about the approach and the pink shirts bother me. They’re just not accurate. Not from a CFI. I’ve had many a CFI say, even when a controller really DID want an urgent turn... “That’s not going to work. Don’t turn in hard yet. Let him figure it out. If we have to go around, we’ll go around.” Pattern work and judgement is pretty much a staple of the CFI. That whole line of complaint just bugs me.
 
I've had Osh controllers drop me in cowboy style. It's all part of the game. You are fully allowed to say "unable" and go around, hope for better next time. That guy got caught hard in a bad situation. Happens now and again. I'm glad he escaped it with a slightly pranged airplane, could've been a lot worse. And good on him for talking about it, maybe save someone else from the same deal.
 
While in theory it’s a somewhat standard pattern it does have the misconception of being tight because you suddenly have boundaries. I had the same approach during my arrival and was instructed to turn well before reaching the blue dot. This really put me in a tight situation with my airplane. I rounded my downwind to final turn to minimize my bank angle knowing I would have to be slower than normal to make the assigned landing spot and subsequent rollout. Good write up by the pilot and seems 100% probable to be the cause to which I think he made good decisions there after.
 
The mistake he made is what a CFI is supposed to alert to prevent.
So it can be assumed you will only use CFI's that have never once made any kind of mistake in an airplane since the day they became a CFI. Good to know. I'm curious how you verify that though.
 
fair enough. I wonder if he was in the right seat instructing and there was a student left seat he would have told the student to go around and exercised better judgment..

As far as this event, one problem is the FAA’s wake turbulence recommendation of heavy, clean and slow can lure a pilot into these situations, but a CFI should know better. A video I show my ground school students for wake is a rather benign looking aircraft and a tragic result such as risk in this event.
 
So it can be assumed you will only use CFI's that have never once made any kind of mistake in an airplane since the day they became a CFI. Good to know. I'm curious how you verify that though.

The question is how many other risk factors does he have to learn the hard way instead gaining knowledge the easy way.
 
At one point I would have argued that a Tri-motor wouldn't make that much wake turbulence, until I had to do a 360 to let one of P&G's jets get in ahead of me (as my Skyhawk's approach speed was somewhat slower). I ran right into the wake, and banked over 45° before I got it straightened out. If this guy hadn't hit the wake, there'd be no accident. And wakes are invisible.
 
@Clip4 .. the pilot who wrote the article about his mishap so we could all benefit from his mistake included a link to that same video in his article.
 
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that was an eye opening video @ wake turbulence
 
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