nharney
Filing Flight Plan
- Joined
- May 7, 2006
- Messages
- 22
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Display name:
NHarney
I checked to see who now owns my 1978 Grumman AA-5B Tiger.
The fellow I sold it to in 2007 went down a few hundred yards offshore from his home airport on the coast of Florence, Oregon. His 15 year old grandson, who wanted to be a pilot, was with him and his body was never found.
That hit me like a a kick to the chest. I really liked the guy. I spent 3 days with him going over the plane and showing him how it liked to be flown. I delivered it to him from SoCal and spent the night at his house, too.
I don't know how every other pilot feels, but my greatest fear has always been taking down passengers. If I die because of this love of flying it's one thing. I can only imagine how it felt to him in those last seconds knowing that his grandson's life was ending, at his hands.
The plane was arguably one of the very best performing Grumman Tigers in the world when he bought it. I bought it from David Fletcher in Houston. Grumman owners know him well. The Fletcher family has been in the Grumman piston-engine planes business since the 1970's. N28718 was David's Mom's plane. Their asking price was over-the-top, but I wanted to use it for flights north of the Arctic Circle and the Bahamas. On top of that I put $24k to upgrade the panel. Those long flights were accomplished without so much as a hic-up from the aircraft. The engine and prop, with advanced head work, powerflow exhaust, and a new prop, had less than 400 hrs when he bought it. TTAF was about 2300 hrs.
From reading the NTSB report, it appears it was a low ceiling approach with breakout just a few hundred feet above the ocean. The only eye-witness was not a pilot. Was he in over his head? Was his aspiring-to-be-a-pilot grandson at the controls? I'll never know. The NTSB said the devastation was so complete that there were no parts large enough to bother to recover other than the engine and prop.
It's difficult to explain how hard this news hit me. My dream airplane, that I was finally able to buy, upgrade to modern, and make lifelong flying dreams come true... and then pass it on to another guy who wants to make his dreams come true, and it ends in needless death and destruction.
Sorry. I just needed to express my sorrow and it's one of those things that only other pilots might understand.
The fellow I sold it to in 2007 went down a few hundred yards offshore from his home airport on the coast of Florence, Oregon. His 15 year old grandson, who wanted to be a pilot, was with him and his body was never found.
That hit me like a a kick to the chest. I really liked the guy. I spent 3 days with him going over the plane and showing him how it liked to be flown. I delivered it to him from SoCal and spent the night at his house, too.
I don't know how every other pilot feels, but my greatest fear has always been taking down passengers. If I die because of this love of flying it's one thing. I can only imagine how it felt to him in those last seconds knowing that his grandson's life was ending, at his hands.
The plane was arguably one of the very best performing Grumman Tigers in the world when he bought it. I bought it from David Fletcher in Houston. Grumman owners know him well. The Fletcher family has been in the Grumman piston-engine planes business since the 1970's. N28718 was David's Mom's plane. Their asking price was over-the-top, but I wanted to use it for flights north of the Arctic Circle and the Bahamas. On top of that I put $24k to upgrade the panel. Those long flights were accomplished without so much as a hic-up from the aircraft. The engine and prop, with advanced head work, powerflow exhaust, and a new prop, had less than 400 hrs when he bought it. TTAF was about 2300 hrs.
From reading the NTSB report, it appears it was a low ceiling approach with breakout just a few hundred feet above the ocean. The only eye-witness was not a pilot. Was he in over his head? Was his aspiring-to-be-a-pilot grandson at the controls? I'll never know. The NTSB said the devastation was so complete that there were no parts large enough to bother to recover other than the engine and prop.
It's difficult to explain how hard this news hit me. My dream airplane, that I was finally able to buy, upgrade to modern, and make lifelong flying dreams come true... and then pass it on to another guy who wants to make his dreams come true, and it ends in needless death and destruction.
Sorry. I just needed to express my sorrow and it's one of those things that only other pilots might understand.
