Well, you sure sounded like you knew more than you were letting on!
Interesting point. I've plotted my homebuilt accident data vs. aircraft total time. Notice the jump at the 50 hour point.
Final report: "The NTSB added that the pilot’s subsequent aggressive use of the flight controls to turn back to the airport ultimately resulted in the airplane exceeding its critical angle of attack and entering an aerodynamic stall at an altitude from which a safe recovery by the pilot was not possible."
Remember this was a photo mission. The Bonanza was the photo ship. They probably wanted takeoff pictures, and they were going to fly formation anyway. That's the whole reason McSpadden was along.
That could be. I read it as that they weren't supposed to meet up for formation and shooting until after they were in the air, and 700 ft seemed like a weird separation for photos on takeoff from a 4k ft field, but I don't know anything about formation photo shooting.
Just goes to show that little planes can kill just like the big ones.
If he were flying, sure. And 4k feet is plenty of room for a cardinal to take off, twice even. But if he wasn't the one flying, and the pilot flying wasn't used to formation takeoffs, following 700' behind the other aircraft he might not notice a lack of takeoff performance the same way if he were looking at the end of the runway. He might not noticed a problem until the lead aircraft pulled away. Complete speculation.
Well, kind of! I don't have them fly any specific heading/speed/altitude, I have them match what we're doing and not look at anything but me! My experienced photo pilot keeps us safe and communicates things like turns (we're starting a left-hand turn in 3, 2, 1), etc. The most important thing we do is brief thoroughly before we fly so that nobody is surprised. There's a pretty cool video on my Briefing Page showing what we do.
From your perspective, I agree 100%.
If i owned a T-38, yes. Otherwise I’d go with hangar flying.
As someone who has done hundreds and hundreds of shoots for magazines, the answer to this should always be nothing. Nothing should ever be prioritized over safety. I've canceled several photoshoots because I wasn't happy with weather, the planes, or the pilots. Most magazines have backup stories, so even hard deadlines are really set in stone. If it's coverage of an event and something doesn't work out... oh well, we tried!
Not too far horizontally, maybe two plane widths away, but yes, they're almost always below me. As you can see in most of my photos, the subject plane is below and at about a 5:00 or 7:00 position.
