Cozy III accident at Islip, NY

[John Slade]

Interesting perspective on flying techniques, Jim. I'd like to read more stuff like this. Maybe we need a section for flying experiences (Jon?).

 

As for fuel, Rich says he had about 5 gals left in the left tank and switched to the right tank (with 15 gals) about 15 miles out. He didnt touch the fuel selector again until after touchdown when he turned it to off. The left tank ruptured on impact.

[Rui]

I just finished my flight training and the procedure that I was taught was that as soon as the power came under 1700 RPM the carb heat went on, no matter what the weather conditions.

[Steve Davies]

Murphy states that your toast will hit the deck on the butter and marmalade side.

 

Which is exactly why I'm here... Education. I haven't got a liscense yet, but thats only a matter of time.

 

I will fly, I will make mistakes, but I'll be damned if I'll let poor maintainance ruin me, my family or my plane...

 

Lots of possibilities, no hard facts

 

If anyone has any of the pilot's testimony, or knows where to find it, lemme know. The investigation could only reveal so much, I'd love to hear what the pilot himself says. Might not be possible tho, if ivestigation is pending.

[No4]

Hi Steve,

I didn't mean to be rude to you.

Best of luck learning to fly. It's a great buzz to be up there ripping along at 150 mph watching the world go by.

You've chosen a great plane to build, and if you get it right, I don't think there is one better.

 

There are no hard facts about this crash, and lots of possibilities. However every time a plane goes down I think it is very important to discuss what may have happened, simply so we can prevent it happening again. If we can't learn from our mistakes, we cease to learn. In fact just about every plane crash across the world will be being discussed on a website somewhere.

 

From my limited study of aircraft incidents, the most common denominator is what i call "Swiss Cheese". It is often not one simple factor that causes a crash, but a train of errors that eventualy lead to disaster.

 

I hope I am proved wrong on this accident, and hope that the pilot is well and back flying soon too. But from what I hear I think I may be right.

 

Jim has made a good description of flying a canard (something which i am yet to do). They are very slippery, so you must slow down and warm your engine. Coming down from 10,000 at 200 mph you can see how easy it would be to suddenly arrive at 1,000 feet and then nothing happens when you push the loud lever.

 

All the best

Adam

[Jim Sower]

Originally posted by Rui

I just finished my flight training and the procedure that I was taught was that as soon as the power came under 1700 RPM the carb heat went on, no matter what the weather conditions.

No doubt. If you have a carburated engine. Fuel injected engines don't HAVE carb heat because they don't need them. The reason they call it "carb ice" is because it happens in carbs. Discussions of "throttle body ice" are less common.

 

<... I think it is very important to discuss what may have happened, simply so we can prevent it happening again...>

Preventing it from happening again is, after all, the object of the exercise. For the purpose of training ourselves (nobody told me that canards in a descent could vent fuel lines) I would suggest that discussing what might have happened is as valuable as discussing what did happen. I do a lot of things that are not taught and not [widely] published. I have seen more than enough of my friends die from not knowing stuff that I came up with from playing "what if" on those long drives across Texas. What might have happened to Rich could end up helping more people than what did happen.

 

Speculation on causes of accidents almost invariably deteriorate into harsh criticisms of the poor slob that busted his airplane (and his ass?) based on thin evidence. S--t happens. In this case, I believe it's all in a good cause (sticks and stones ....) if someone gets something valuable out of the process.

 

<...It is often not one simple factor that causes a crash, but a train of errors ...>

I would suggest that it's never a single failure. The purpose of all of my studying and cogitating and gaming (what if ...) is not to prevent failures, because that is impossible. It is to maximize the number of failures that must be strung together to cause a FAILURE. Would you feel more comfortable with a 1/1,000,000 failure mode that would kill you, or four 1/100 failure modes that have to be strung together?

 

... it doesn't matter what you do, so long as you recover well ...

[Joe Patterson]

Originally posted by Rui

I just finished my flight training and the procedure that I was taught was that as soon as the power came under 1700 RPM the carb heat went on, no matter what the weather conditions.

 

Just a small difference in Instructors, but let me share with you what my Instructor taught me, and WHY>

 

Before[/b} pulling the power below the green arc....Pull carb heat(2200rpm, in my C172).........This allows warm air to the carb, before the heat is gone.

 

If you , HAVE CARB_ICING,and you then PULL THE POWER, there may not be enough heat to melt the Icing, once you pull the carb/heat.............(REMEMBER DECENTS CAN COOL AN ENGINE SIGNIFICANTLY)............... the ice will build..

All the while you are getting closer to the Earth......

With what could be NO ENGINE ( Inthat there will not be enough power for a go around, Leaving you with a MUST LAND SCENERIO

 

So, when we flew today.........we talked a lot about this,(Me and my flight buddy.) She was taught by a different Insrtuctor, than I, and she had flown a Fuel Injected Plane.

[John Slade]

>I would suggest that it's never a single failure.

There are plenty of single failures that'll spoil you're day. Catastrophic engine failure, prop failure, structural failure etc. But, there are usually additional factors that make it worse.

 

I think of this as the three things rule. It usually takes three things to go wrong together to hurt you. e.g. Lets say prop failure occurs. If you're on the ball, have some height and have a field picked out, then you'll probably be ok. (sound familiar?)

 

If you were buzzing a friends house at the time (error 2) and not really thinking about relief landing fields (error 3) you could be in big trouble. Almost every accident takes three things

[No4]

A couple of interesting sites

http://www.planecrashinfo.com/$index.htm

 

http://www.airdisaster.com/index.shtml

 

http://aviation-safety.net/index.shtml

 

My "favourite" is the Hydro Air Cargo 747 freighter which crashed at Lagos, Nigeria recently. Tower cleared them for the ILS on 29R (at night), despite the captain questioning ATC 3 times that he had a NOTAM saying 29R was closed for construction. Guess what happened? The 747 hit a ditch, then a bulldozer, ripped off some main gear and almost lost an engine before halting in a ditch. ATC went AWOL, and was found at home two days later by the police.

 

 

http://aviation-safety.net/pubs/BCG-Lagos.pdf

[John Slade]

In the RAF we had a monthly internal periodical with a centerfold "Accident of the month". Excellent reading.

My instructor was featured three months in a row.

[No4]

Funny you should say that John, as I read your post I was opening my mail, in which was the bi monthly NZ CAA newsletter magazine, which has all the latest accident reports.

This issue we had 13 crashes. 3 Helicopters, 3 Agricultural fixed wings, 3 Microlights, 3 Fixed wing, and one glider.

 

One rescue Helicopter hit a tree at night in marginal VMC, one was spraying gorse and crashed due to pilot error, the last lost power and had a heavy landing. After studying Principles of Flight I'll never get in another helicopter.

 

Of the Ag planes (they call the pilots "temporary New Zealanders" here), one's wheel fell off on take off, one hit a power cable, and one's engine mount failed.

 

The microlights (which I will DEFINITELY never get in again), one idiot was doing a fast fly past sideways in a gyrocopter, at a very dangerous airstrip in the mountains, rolled 90' and crashed, the second hit a tree practising forced landings, and the third was taxi testing became airborne and ended up in the trees.

 

A glider pilot misjudged a X-wind forced landing in a paddock and hit a fence post.

 

Finaly the fixed wings. The first was a student in a Piper Tomahawk (another plane I will not go flying in, shivers) which spun on approach during solo circuits, a Pitts Special hit a fence in a misjudged cross wind landing, and a homebuilt Murphy Rebel nosed over in the snow.

 

This is a pretty common trend here, Helicopters, Microlights, and Ag planes are much more likely to crash, and my advice is to keep away from the lot of them.

 

You can see that there were 10 pilot errors, 2 mechanical failures, and one that could go either way. Of the fixed wing non ag planes, all were pilot error.

[Dan Tomlinson]

No4:

 

As a comment to your accident report reading - you're possibly skimming and acting as a press reporter (who condenses to the point where the information is useless and misleading) and giving aviation a bad name. This is the problem with brevity in reporting!

 

Look MUCH closer.

 

IF you are reading accident reports, get the full reports - not the summary list of events, and ANALYZE each one.

 

Look at the "chain" of errors - there is ALWAYS a chain of events and factors in almost every accident. AND there are usually at least three separate events where if a different decision or action was taken, the accident would not have occured.

 

The same happens with car accidents, and IF you saw a listing like this, you would never go near a car again!

 

The investigation reports go MUCH deeper and will usually highlight the chain of problems.

 

ALL aircraft types have an accident rate that is "statistically safe", or no-one would ever fly again.

 

Homebuilts have a first-flight "crash" record according to press summary reports that is "so bad" that they should be banned. Realistically, IF the reports are analyzed properly, homebuilts are slightly safer than the aging production GA fleet.

 

Then again, if you really wanted to, you could show that the most dangerous time for flight is right after it has been repaired by a certified mechanic. But again, that is the "first" step in the chain where IF the flight test pilot is doing his job properly, it will be returned as a snag before flight and no accident occurs - IF (s)he's not distracted by outside events; and even if missed there, experience in handling of the problem in flight can and usually does result in a "successful" flight. Because the chain was broken and the problem realized!

 

I have had the opportunity to fly with several amazing stick & rudder men ever to fly up here. I'm not in that category - but it's a goal! However he was lax with procedures, and a hot-dog pilot who could fly all the edges of the aircraft's envelope, and regularly did! He finally was on the wrong side of an overweight heli-lift load and didn't make it after 8,000+ hours. I wouldn't fly with him after a few hairy flights in fixed-wing because he was always too close to the edge for my taste when there was no real need for it! Cavalier style and pushing the limits will eventually get to you!

[No4]

Hello Dan,

I'm not entirely sure of your point. I thought it might be of interest to give a synopsis of the accidents which occured here. The 13 accidents mentioned have complete reports, yet it would have taken me hours to copy the lot to this site, and frankly I couldn't be bothered, and this site is an innappropriate place either way.

I have spent many hours reading full accident reports, and often download recordings of the "black box" cockpit flight recorders.

 

Perhaps I should have listed all the succesful flights which took place inside the same time period, so our readers could realise just how safe it is to fly?

 

I never stated homebuilts were in anyway more dangerous than manufactured aircraft, and I disagree that the most dangerous time for flight is after repair by a certified mechanic. It is almost certainly when the aircraft has NOT seen a certified mechanic for a long time. If you were to study the accident reports from the african continent you would see that most have seriously dubious maintenance.

 

Either way, I will never get in another Tomahawk, helicopter or microlight (note microlight, not homebuilt) again, and your last paragraph only reassures my opinion.

 

Cheers

Adam

[Dan Tomlinson]

Sorry, but my point is that we should not be coming down on how bad aviation could look, and re-inforcing the uninformed opinion that all aircraft are immenently going to fall out of the sky should anything happen, especially with the engine.

 

"Flying is not inherently dangerous, but even more than the sea it is unforgiving of inattention or carelessness, or lack of respect" - aviation safety letter quote

 

If nothing else, a number of quality hours in a Traumahawk will greatly improve the skill and attention span of most pilots, as their characteristics are "abrupt" when hitting the edge of their envelope! As will a helicopter! Both are recoverable given altitude!

 

Of course, envelope testing should only be done with recovery altitude available below you - and they are FUN aircraft to fly!

 

Microlights? I don't have experience with them, so I won't venture on them.

[No4]

Cheers Dan,

I'm sure you can see why I took offense to your words that my post was useless and misleading, and that I was giving aviation a bad name. This is after all a thread about accidents.

Perhaps I should clarify that my opinion is not based on reading one article in one magazine.

 

I consider myself lucky that having myself and an instructor in a Tomahawk makes us unable to upload any fuel, due to weight, and thus I learn't to fly in a Cherokee and Cessna 172. I have seen a video of the tail plane during stalling practice, and that was enough for me. Tomahawk pilots are usualy very good, because they have learn't in a difficult machine. But their propensity to spin, and poor stall characteristics are enough for me. The wing is so poorly designed it requires a strip attached to the leading edge, to make the stall less dangerous. Heaven knows how awful it would be without it.

 

I spent several years in the British army, and had quite a few hours as a passenger in various helicopters. Low level at over 100 mph along fire breaks in a pine forest, slipping under power cables, at night, holding a box full of high explosives, is not something I want to repeat. Here the Robinson's used for training fall out of the sky on a regular basis, and from my research almost all helicopter pilots have horror stories to tell. The physics of a helicopter, imho, show that it is trying to twist and vibrate itself to death.

 

Two flights in microlights were enough for me. Apart from being very uncomfortable, the flimsy nature of their construction, I find worrisome. Soaring over Victoria Falls, observing crocodiles sun bathing on the Zambezi river bank was made rather less than enjoyable when I looked up to see a single bolt connecting me to a thin sheet of nylon.

 

Fixed wings on the whole I find much more pleasant, and I'm sure they are much safer than automobile travel. In fact there is no place I'd rather be than in a Boeing 747, hopefuly one day up the front, on the left.

 

Best Regards

Adam

 

[Blackhawk D]

OK No4, I need to throw in my two cents worth here.

 

I can't speak for the Brits, but I have thousands of hours in Army helicopters and I'm not sure how the theory of flight studies would dissuade you from flying rotary wing aircraft. The laws of physics apply just as well to an airfoil making its lift via rotational velocity as well as those that are fixed to the aircraft. No problems; just train and know what you're doing and all is well. It goes without saying that maintenance is king.

 

In 20+ years of flying VMC, IMC, Nap of the earth (NOE), aided and unaided night tactical operations in both lift and attack units, I have seen most everything that can go wrong in a helicopter go wrong. Engine, drivetrain, electronic and hydraulic failures of most every sort and still, here I am with all my limbs and most of my senses still intact. So IMHO, helicopters are plenty safe, just make sure you have an ex US Army Warrant Officer running the show!

 

BTW, I got my fixed wing ticket many years ago in a Piper Tomahawk. Survived that one too!

 

Have fun with it - Darrell

[No4]

Cheers Darrell,

I was guessing you might be a helo pilot by your handle, AND a Tomahawk pilot to boot eh?

 

"I have seen most everything that can go wrong in a helicopter go wrong. Engine, drivetrain, electronic and hydraulic failures of most every sort"

 

Well it's good to hear your still with us,

 

Each to their own I suppose, I get the same reaction from my chopper pilot friends. Different breed I guess. I must be a girl's blouse. Still won't get me back in one though.

[Jon Matcho]

If anyone has any of the pilot's testimony, or knows where to find it, lemme know. The investigation could only reveal so much, I'd love to hear what the pilot himself says.

I spoke with Rich at the Cozy Dinner 2005 in Oshkosh. We discussed his accident a bit, particularly the frustration he had when dealing with the NTSB. He did get a minor injury, but he explained to me the response from the community hurt him the most. This was clear from Rich's emotions as he told me of the details.

 

The discussion with Rich definitely made an impression on me for when/if the next canard-related accident occurs -- I was not there, I was not hurt myself, and I need to LISTEN to ALL of the information before I make any sort of conclusion. Finally, my 'conclusion' will just be an opinion, and an opinion that should probably be best kept to myself.

 

Sure, there's something to be learned from every less-than-perfect landing and awkward event, but not at the expense of the community. Since Rich's accident, he has picked up another Cozy III and flew it to Oshkosh 2005. Credit goes to Rich for bouncing back, and from surviving both the accident (he walked away from it) and the critique from those that were less informed.

 

Welcome back Rich.