Red Bull crash in Perth

PittsDriver

PittsDriver

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PittsDriver
here's amature video of the crash here:

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=1040260

And the tail mounted camera video here:

http://www.redbullairrace.com/cs/Sat...ed&refmodpos=3

Watch as he rounds the 2nd pylon. He banks beyond knife edge (90 degrees) and hit the water before he knew what happened. He mentions in an interview from the hospital that he'll have to look at the video to figure out himself what happened.

It's interesting what follows in the second video link above. They had just gone through some training on getting out of the plane in the water.
 
Looks like an accelerated stall. I know very little about aerobatics. It seems to me this can happen in a knife edge bank, not just pulling out of a dive. Glad the pilot is ok.
 
That local news treatement is pathetic...

"Terrifying spiral"? :skeptical:

He barely had time to try to get the wings level, let alone enter a "spiral" of any kind. :rolleyes:

I'm also guessing "accelerated stall", but it sort of looks like he was recovering nicely... might have worked if he wasn't already down on the deck! :eek:

It really is something to see this in person... they are flying very low, very fast...and really pushing it with the maneuvers!
 
I saw some slow motion of the onboard video, and you could see the wings buffeting as he was pulling around the pylon in knife-edge attitude while descending toward the water. Looks like he unloaded it just in time to roll wings level just before he hit the water. Amazing outcome. Very fortunate.
 
I was able to watch the tailcamera video this morning. I'm having trouble understanding what exactly went wrong here (other than the obvious hitting the water).

Did the plane stall? As one other poster noted, there are two separate instances of the camera bouncing around, possibly corresponding to pre-stall wing buffet.

Anyway, back to the clip. He's past knife-edge around the pylon. Probably 100 degrees bank. He then rolls (back to) level for a second or two before impacting the water. I would have thought that releasing the loading would have adverted the stall. The nose doesn't appear to drop, so it is certainly not a full stall.

Maybe he just had too much downward velocity and didn't crank back on the stick soon enough?

Thoughts from POA ?
 
nyoung said:
I was able to watch the tailcamera video this morning. I'm having trouble understanding what exactly went wrong here (other than the obvious hitting the water).

Did the plane stall? As one other poster noted, there are two separate instances of the camera bouncing around, possibly corresponding to pre-stall wing buffet.

Anyway, back to the clip. He's past knife-edge around the pylon. Probably 100 degrees bank. He then rolls (back to) level for a second or two before impacting the water. I would have thought that releasing the loading would have adverted the stall. The nose doesn't appear to drop, so it is certainly not a full stall.

Maybe he just had too much downward velocity and didn't crank back on the stick soon enough?

Thoughts from POA ?
Click to expand...
Just because there is no full break with a nose drop doesn't mean the wing is producing enough lift to stop the descent, even if there's some aileron authority.
But then again, maybe he let the nose drop a hair too much after leveling the wings, then hesitated a fraction of a second too long before pulling back ... but put any pilot in there at that moment, and it's unlikely they'd do any better. He was flying very fast, and very low. It's amazing he managed to avoid sticking one wing in the water; that would've been a lot worse.
 
in the outside video, it looks like a buffet right before the nose dropped and the plane rolled a little farther. Looks like an accelerated stall.

I went to the monument valley one, and was talking to some of the pilots. They said they were right at stall almost every turn..especially at the density altitude of monument valley
 
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