| Buehler445 |
01-26-2020 07:19 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
(Post 14752493)
My firm had a plane for a couple of years. About a half-dozen of us were getting pilots licenses, etc...
I was a solo trip and a few solo landings from qualifying when a friend of a partner crashed his plane and barely survived. After some discussion we all came to the same conclusion - it isn't really 'if', it's 'when' and how badly. We sold it and all parties walked away.
In a lot of ways I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often. You wanna know why flying cars aren't a thing that's likely to happen in several lifetimes? There's your answer.
Flying is a constant fight against physics and it takes so very little for tragedy to strike. If you're lucky you walk away but more often than not you don't.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
(Post 14752562)
Exactly.
It takes maybe a dozen flight hours to be able to fly in ideal conditions. Even landings aren't that tough (and take-offs are a day 2 thing).
But so many private pilots just aren't prepared for adversity. And really, the difference between redundancies on commercial craft vs. private are so enormous.
Flight's simple - lift + velocity. Wings and a motor = flying. Flight surfaces are laughably rudimentary; just redirecting air to steer. So stuff like ultralights are as simple (in many ways more simple) than an economy car.
Commercial craft have the long-term viability chuck hundreds of thousands of dollars in redundancy into and they easily pay for themselves. But to make a commercially viable private aircraft that has those kinds of backup systems is prohibitively expensive for most.
And frankly on a helicopter it's just borderline impossible. Think of how many of those tend to go down in war due to mechanical difficulties. They're just so damn complicated that any kind of system failure is borderline catastrophic.
Like I said - I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often more than anything. It's an inherently dangerous activity.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
(Post 14752576)
Ours was a 172 w/ an engine conversion to give it the guts of a 182. And yeah, built in the late 60s, early 70s.
I never felt unsafe on it; we didn't **** around with safety or maintenance. Any flight that might encounter weather was just scrubbed and the hearing continued. But I had an instructor who put us through some adversity paces and do shit like surreptitiously kill the motor without telling us. And that rattled the hell out of me.
It wasn't hard to convince me to walk away because as comfortable as I am w/ vehicles, I knew I was lying to myself when I'd say I was ready for real adversity. The 'carb heater' trick and the like would just rattle me more than I'd expect.
We wasted all the flight training and took a bath on the sale, but nobody really cared at that point. Someone was going to be killed or seriously injured at some point so it was the right decision. I haven't been on a light aircraft since and really don't expect that I will be again.
Juice just isn't worth the squeeze.
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There is a lot right with what you've posted here, but also some wrong.
It takes work and hours, but I think the average guy could get competent enough with a small airplane to reasonably remove catastrophic pilot error from all but the most extreme outliers of situations. And let's be real here - a vast majority of terrestrial vehicle operators have not achieved this competency. Sure, the stakes are lower, but one can certainly get dead in a terrestrial vehicle.
Dad's got a 182 my grandpa bought and we've had some pretty in depth discussions about safety. Similarly some friends of mine (who happen to exist in a different universe financially than I do) love to fly and lent their plane to a friend who crashed it. I think there was a thread about it here. Anyway, they've dedicated themselves to safety, education and mitigating risk. I really think you can get there, but yeah, the fresh faced newly licensed pilot isn't there. Small planes catch a bad rap, but I'll repeat, I think the average small plane pilot can get competent enough to reasonably remove catastrophic pilot error from all but the most extreme outliers of situations.
Those friends of mine have a ton of hours in a simulator that they simulate crazy shit happening. Dad also took some aerobatics training that he said really helped to potentially prepare him for weird shit happening. Largely though, the go/no go decision framed with an objective analysis of your competencies as a pilot contribute the most to preventing bad shit.
I'm not a pilot but I love to fly in small planes. Grandpa built 3 different planes and I've got quite a few trips - mostly in the county in them, and I'm fairly comfortable that I've only been in one situation that could get hairy. It was a front that moved in and it was windy as ****. Our grass strip at the farm had an impediment that wrecked the aerodynamics in the wind. Dad had good presence of mind to identify what was happening and take another lap. I guess another time we flew into some ice, but that didn't take anything other than the decision to turn around. |
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