Accident at the 5-21 Fly In

[ms80831]

PILOT WALKS AWAY !

YouTube - ‪movie.wmv‬‏ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uetLMb4RGuU)

[Vance]

I am glad he is ok.

It looked horrific.

Thank you, Vance

[jcarleto]

Ouch! Lucky he walked away. What was the issue? Some sort of control failure?

[phantom]

this is what happens when you take off with your wings not turning fast enough, however since his wings were not needing to turn I would think it was wind or a failure of some kind, it looked like he had lots of speed for a clean takeoff and the endine was running as it hit the ground, it is never good to see someone damage an aircraft but at least he is around to rebuild and fly another day.Glad he is ok.
Norm

[Heron]

Could not control the wing, probably stuck somehow . . .
Heron

[SideKick]

That is a terrible thing to see. Are F/W ultralights that sensative to wind or did he have a mechanical failure?

[Timchick]

Glad he's OK.

[ms80831]

The answer to all your questions is, I don't know.

The pilot had over 300 hours in this machine and ones like it.

The runway heading was 150, the wind was 230 to 270 at 15 gusting to 20. He had just adjusted his sail and was test flying it.

I have some suspicions, but nothing more than idle speculation.

Mark

[Resasi]

Glad he survived, and yes, blood curdling to watch someone go in with full power like that.

With the background you have given us it sounds like a possible control failure or sail miss-adjustment, but I am sure that the reason will come out.

[GyroRon]

Maybe he was sending his buddy a text message while flying and got distracted?

[lanichol]

Interesting. Put rotors on top and it looks like a mini MTO. Is this a standard kit or model.

[Joe Pires]

Wow that's tough to watch. Thank god he is ok.

[GyroDoug]

I talked to the Trike CFI that was there and although it was windy, he said the cross wind would have made it crab into the wind, not roll like it did. This was the guys first flight on a brand new wing and it is likely that he just didn't have it rigged right or ran into something different than he had experienced with the old wing and didn't have a feel for it yet, so he didn't handle it right. It was a very nice Trike and it is totaled but at least he walked away from it. A lot of pilots that crash from that kind of height, don't live to talk about it. He was lucky!

[automan1223]

Looked like he lost pitch and roll control. Something ran out of travel.

J

[billygyro]

I talked to the Trike CFI that was there and although it was windy, he said the cross wind would have made it crab into the wind, not roll like it did. This was the guys first flight on a brand new wing and it is likely that he just didn't have it rigged right or ran into something different than he had experienced with the old wing and didn't have a feel for it yet, so he didn't handle it right. It was a very nice Trike and it is totaled but at least he walked away from it. A lot of pilots that crash from that kind of height, don't live to talk about it. He was lucky!

I think you hit the nail on the head. I have had a few trikes in the past myself and yes i to have hit the ground almost like he did, That hurt for a few weeks as well as total of the aircraft.
Wings fly different and if he was use to his old wing and tried to fly this wing in the same manner this could have been the reason for lost of control. some wings fly slow and some wings fly fast, depends on a few differnt designs of the wings. Also the wing could have had a C/G block located to far forward or aft of the root tube, This to could have caused it to act out the way it did. I noticed after take off he put the wing in the no climb postion to build speed before clime out, this is routine for trikes and just after that it started to slightly bank to the right- This is where some wings require you to put only constant pressure in that direction of the turn and just as it Starts to correct you must release the pressure to neutral.if you wait to long it will be a over correction that can spin you right in on the same direction as the turn and then the nose will drop towards the turn. Go back and watch the video and pay attention to the pilots arms for movement and then watch the trike act out accordingly. I watch it over and over just to put it all togeather. after it starts to get away from him it all goes pretty quickly.

Not saying what happens here is what happend to me but I was use to flying a slow moveing wing on my saber trike. I sold the trike and got another one with a faster wing (doulbe surface,smaller cord,longer wing) long story short I balled it up in feild just off the runway after trying to get it under control. I was up and down and all around in the trike for 24 long min/ (uncontroable) I made 5 trips around the airport trying to get it lined up for a landing, Stall speed felt like 65 mph with this wing and my other wing was around 18 mph.all my inputs was just plan wrong a real deadly situation. This trike would just dive off and hard to the right almost stright down and with no to little input, I would just barely clear the ground as I pulled it out of the dive then climb like hell to get away from the ground so to get ready for the next one because I knew it was comming.I went in at 55 mph est and put a big hole in the ground. I am still to this day glad I had the time under my belt for flying trikes that I did . I might not be here today otherwise..

I hate to crash, Not fun at all...