Which POA member was hanging upside down?

All I can think of - after the initial "Glad he's okay" stuff - is now "how can the owner manage this situation so the cub comes down in one piece?"

I can see a power company brainiac decide to simply cut that wire to end the problem.

This is a case where the owner needs to step in quickly and manage the removal if he wants that plane to fly another day.
 
One of my flying nightmares ends with me being stuck in the wires in a C-152 over a high mountain pass in California. Why a C-152, a mountain pass, and California? I have no idea.

The big issue is that in my dream, I'm hundreds of feet up.
 
Shakopee-1.jpg
 
Geez, goes to show how much tension is placed on these wires. Amazing it doesn’t snap.
 
He's freaking lucky to survive. Most people encountering wires don't.
Many years ago I lost a couple of friends in a Cub on Christmas Day afternoon when they went for a short sightseeing ride and hit wires in the flat light.
 
So did he lose an engine or what? They make like he was just flying along minding his own business when wires jumped up and snagged him.
 
Velocity173 said:
So did he lose an engine or what? They make like he was just flying along minding his own business when wires jumped up and snagged him.
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Piper Cub. "Low and slow". I suspect in this case a bit too low...
 
The wire he caught is the static wire, which runs well above the energized power wires. Its purpose is to intercept lightning strikes, and carry them to ground at the nearest pole. They are high tensile wire, and stronger physically than the power conductors. Since they are much thinner, he may have thought he was clear, when he was actually only seeing the power wires.

That could have turned out much worse, either if the wire snapped, or if he had gone into the power wires while the were still energized. The rescuers also went by the right rules, or they would have been injured. They MUST call the power company and have the circuit locked out before approaching the conductors to do a rescue.

One of the local events of that type was a parachutist in a 69,000 volt transmission line, at the substation. He was badly burned, and the volunteer firemen rescued him with an un insulated ladder truck. Fortunately, when the automatic re closing relay at the source end of the feeder re energized the feeder, the local breaker did not close, so the dispatcher opened both ends and sent a mobile operator to find out what was wrong. The Auto close control switch was in the OFF position, by error....A week earlier, I had left it off inadvertently. That saved both the parachutist and at least 2 firemen. Normally, such an error in restoring a circuit results in a letter in the personnel file, but the subject never came up. I only made that error once in 40 years........... Good luck comes at the strangest times.
 
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Oh, good grief, who's next................ That poor bird on that there wire is not a "Cub". I thought I was around a bunch of real pilots here? Guess not? Sheesh.
 
PA 12, 235 Continental engine engine.

Probably an old Navy pilot, caught the wrong arresting wire.
 
geezer said:
The wire he caught is the static wire
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I know **** about hi-lines so don't think I'm challenging you - I'm not.
I just like to learn about elek-city!

Is it true that being in contact with the static cable, the airplane must have been able to completely clear the power-carrying ones? Otherwise kaboom? Even if fabric and wood?
So a wing is not resting on a power cable in the photo, and somehow it flopped over, missing the power cables?
 
Pilawt said:
They were discussing the MDA when the conversation suddenly became moot ...
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I wonder which one of them had been right :D

That would be something of a definitive "I told you so".
 
So the headline says "...leaves pilot dead" and the body of the article says he walked away with no injuries...

Is he a member of the Walking Dead?
 
I don't think it counts as a landing until it touches down on the ground. Heck, he could have logged PIC time hanging there until he actually got out of the plane when he was no longer operating the controls. Maybe he should leave that log entry open until they get it down.
 
There is a question about whether there was contact with the power carrying wires in the topic event.

It is possible that no such contact occurred, but unlikely. The metal extension of the wooden pole is tall, and bent over enough, that he plane may to be out of contact. In the dynamics of the event, the lane almost certainly swung into the power wires, resulting in the line protection ground detection relays tripping the breaker feeding the line, and then swung free. The relays and breaker trips for ground faults are very fast, and the damage to the plane might be trivial, or severe, depending on which portion of the plane came in contact first. The plane seems to be in contact with one of the high voltage power cables, in addition to the grounded static wire, so the feeder relays should have re-tripped, and locked out the feeder.

If the feeder was re-closed, with the plane out of contact, it would stay energized, providing a trap for any one trying to get the pilot down, unless they called the power company and arranged for the power to be turned off.

By contrast, if a plane comes down on two conductors, not a ground, the relays that trip the breaker are set 10 to 100 times as high as the ground relays, and substantial damage is sure to result.

Regardless, the wise pilot remains seat belted in place until rescuers are there, with proper equipment to get him down.

A Ripley's "Believe it or not" that happened at our power company many years ago, a plane made a sliding contact with a 230,000 volt line, leaving visible paint on the conductor, and causing a ground fault trip. The plane was red and white. The surrounding area was searched, first on the ground, then from the air, and no sign of a wrecked plane was found. No plane was reported missing, and no one reported damage to their plane. We have no idea how that plane completed a circuit from the line to ground, passed enough current to trip the line, and was still flyable. The paint seemed most likely to have come from a wing, as the surface the paint came from was smooth. Somebody was amazing lucky.
 
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