A lesson from Lompoc

[Vance]

I was reminded of one of the reasons why I love flying gyroplanes.

On December 10 we had a fatal Cessna 172 wire strike in Lompoc. They just posted it today on the NTSB web page.

On final at LPC there is often a wind shear near the highway just as you pass over the power lines. It is tricky because the lines are less than ¼ mile from the approach end of 25 so a fixed wing tends to be low so they can touch down near the threshold. These are the main transmission lines on tall trusses like Ed is always taking picture of. It is almost always windy and the hangers do some funny things to the wind at different places on the runway.

It is my understanding that this Cessna 172 was based at Lompoc so the pilot was familiar with the wires and the wind. They found a piece of cable wrapped around the left main landing gear.

With the Predator I can wait until I am well past the wires to drop down and still land near the threshold. I usually take my time and land near the taxiway. The winds are usually less unstable at the taxiway because it is past the hangers.

Our ability to descend quickly and our freedom from stalls gives us a lot more choices for clearance and a safe landing.

I was up flying when this happened and it was on the local news so Ed was pleased when she got my Spot OK message.

It is a vivid reminder how quickly things can go wrong when flying.

Fly safe, Vance

[gyroplanes]

I once stayed at the New Old Lompoc House. Don't let the Posey fool ya!

[Vance]

I learned a little more about the Lompoc fatality today.

His name is James Foley.

His is 71 years old and played Santa Clause every year.

He will be missed.

Thank you, Vance

[Hognose]

A very good point, Lance.

Each aviation mishap fatality represents an incalculable lose to surviving friends and families. Our lives, in a sense, are not our own to dispose of recklessly; they belong to those who await us on the ground.

I have been studying aviation accidents and trying to understand them since I was twelve years old. Sometimes the lost lives have been friends; more often, strangers who might have been friends had we met. They are, after all, our brothers and sisters in flight.

Much writing on aviation accidents is in a righteous, judgmental tone. I have been guilty of this myself, and I was thinking about it because of a particularly repellent example of the genre that's in the current Vanity Fair. It's repellent not because it's badly written, but the converse: the writer uses his mastery of his art in the service of some very small, immature and hard-hearted emotions.

The facts are: flying and the machines and people that do it are an immeasurable boon to the world, making the civilization we know possible, and bringing joy and knowlegde to multitudes. No one designs a machine expecting it to be flawed; no mechanic goes to his bench, no pilot sits in his seat with any expectation, let alone intention, of making a fatal error.

Yet almost every mishap is preventable, when we examine and reconstruct in the leisure of the day after. Accidents where nothing any person could reasonably have done would have prevented them are exceedingly rare.

So let's keep preventing them. And when someone makes a mistake that ends his time among us, let's always remember that he was our brother, and not blend the man with the mistake in our minds.

cheers

-=K=-

[reelmule]

Kevin,
Very well put.