Vance Breese Mentone 2020

I don't believe you are "sorry to press" and feel you lack integrity Phil.
Words have meaning and you appear to me to have trouble with that.
You have exceeded my tolerance for insults.
I am nothing like you Phil and am glad for it.

When you say integrity you likely mean sincerity? I didn't insult you and the word play is a sideshow and you and I may be the same, we may be polar opposite. I don't know you, nor do you know me and I don't pretend otherwise. I'm sure we can blame any mis-understanding on our respective school house masters, mine was a complete duffer. Although I do remember our schools production of Hamlet and something about protesting too much...

I've not been malicious is my postings and me giving you a tail tweek is for the most obvious of reasons. Yet there is a serious point to all this in a wider context and especially since I gather from postings elsewhere you and the PRA are potentially involved in a flight safety / revalidation initiative.

After all I might pitch up with a mates un-registered aircraft with me completely new to the type and prang it on landing. It might seem that before getting called out some are mindful to sweep it all under the carpet and hope nobody looked too hard.

Is that the integrity I lack or you lack?


No, the FAA agrees with you it was not a legal flight, as even though it was N#'ed but it had not completed the process. The DAR was fighting cancer and it delayed it by months.
He said many certified aircraft have found the pilot borrowing or rentals to be out of annual and it's about the same thing to them. It happens, if it's not directly the cause of the accident then they do nothing.

The FAA is really not our enemy as many think. They have since 1974 only helped me. His only thoughts were what do we need to teach the pilot not how to punish him.
He asked if Vance was making excuses for the accident after or now and I showed him a quote where Vance fell on the sword and is using it as a teaching example of a dumb human trick of being in a hurry to fave fun and not checking the paper work or the radio with his helmet before he flew her. I suspect that is why he never called Vance. That and they do not get involved in pilot vendettas.

Any official action by the FAA is less interesting to the action taken on the day and then subsequently which was pure cover up and misdirection over the circumstance. Given the people involved, PRA and THE most vocal flight instructor that is troubling [probably too strong a word but I'm too lazy to find a better one].

Forget pilot vendetta, which may have been the case with the guy who reported it all, but lets face it if he hadn't who would have known? Who could have learnt all the safety lessons that range from paperwork, impromptu flights, differences training, etc?

Still I suppose it provides a good war story for those annual revalidation candidates, oh and perhaps you'll need to tell Vance it was an illegal flight because so far he doesn't seem able to fall quite that far onto his sword.
 
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Any official action by the FAA is less interesting to the action taken on the day and then subsequently which was pure cover up and misdirection over the circumstance. Given the people involved, PRA and THE most vocal flight instructor that is troubling [probably too strong a word but I'm too lazy to find a better one].

Forget pilot vendetta, which may have been the case with the guy who reported it all, but lets face it if he hadn't who would have known? Who could have learnt all the safety lessons that range from paperwork, impromptu flights, differences training, etc?

Still I suppose it provides a good war story for those annual revalidation candidates, oh and perhaps you'll need to tell Vance it was an illegal flight because so far he doesn't seem able to fall quite that far onto his sword.
Hi Phil

I'm truly sorry you feel I or PRA covered up anything I'm not aware of the FAA reg that requires PRA to notify the FAA. I really believe we are only witnesses to the FAA. When they called I told them what I saw and knew.
We do not call them even when an accident that required a pilot to be taken to the hospital with a broken arm. If there is a regulation then you are right and we cover that one up too?

I'm truly confused and shocked to learn PRA is supposed to snitch out pilots.

If that is the case then I will have to resign. I thought the pilot was supposed to report it I really thought all the rest of us were only witnesses for the FAA.
 
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Crap, Actually we have covered up all the past accidents we have never called the FAA about any of them.
They have always called PRA.
 
Phil Vance Botch the landing and his mic was cutting in and out and he did not inspect the paperwork.
He is the first to tell how and why.
Consider what the FAA said that often the pilot's humiliation and shame after an accident like this. Is far more effective than any training the FAA can require.

I'm not sure he even knew Vance is a high time pilot. He never discussed Vance or ask who he was or anything of me. I assumed Greg had told him and he looked Vance up.

I agree with you Vance is a high-time pilot, CFI, and vocal. How much more embarrassing for Vance than for a low time nonvocal pilot.

I suspect that is what the FAA was talking about and you realize to only forgot about the embarrassment penitently???

I do not know why Vance did not report it. But if I had done it. I would not want to get Dennis in trouble just because I was stupid and it only being a hard landing I would not have report it either. Not for me but for my friend who only wanted to share the joy of his creation with me.
 
I think you miss my general point John, or rather actually I'm sure you do get my general point; you just choose to ignore it and distract attention with incidental points. Sorry is neither here nor there.

I don't think many really give two hoots if the FAA got involved to a greater or lesser degree and I imagine even fewer care if the involvement took a more official / legal / disciplinary route. Certainly not me.

When this accident was highlighted and where you become the effective representative of the organising club of the event and Vance commented on the stick and rudder issue that led to the grief not once was either the legality of the flight mentioned nor the airworthiness of the aircraft. Now we all might assume that the aircraft was airworthy but how is that established?

The N registration has been reserved but what has that got to do with registering the actual gyro in conjunction with its first Airworthiness Inspection by an FAA DAR, which then allows for 40 hours of local flight testing (Phase I), then legal public Phase II flight under an AW certificate?

So how far down that pathway had the [so I understand] 200hour gyro gone?

These are the real issues John, not that an experienced FI drilled it into the ground because he was unfamiliar [although that perhaps does highlight the many snags that he may have denied could exist prior to the prang and that the box ticking of an online system didn't catch] but why there such casualness around the aircraft even being in the air in the first place?

You all may remember a similar experienced FI kill himself and pax in a Cavalon recently because of casualness. Again it isn't about humiliation / shame or embarrassment it is about having an attitude to airmanship that is effective and that way gyroplanes get taken more seriously, less people hurt themselves and maybe that insurance rate that you guys are scrambling to reduce might take care of itself.

That the FAA haven't spoken to the pilot reflects poorly on the FAA. Not to make Vance pay for their Christmas lunch, or endorse his licence, restrict him but to learn the rational why he allowed himself to put his life in danger and over look fundamentals that he absolutely knew better not to overlook.

Or have I got that wrong? You're happy for people to share their creations without the proper paperwork and/or training? What part of my reflection is inaccurate John? Did the aircraft have an AW certificate?
 
I am not here to participate in the arguments, but to remind everybody of the availability of the ASRS.


If you screw up, submit a notice to that NASA (not FAA) site, and unless you were intentionally breaking regs, you get lots of insulation from FAA consequences. Your identity is held in confidence by NASA. The protections will apply even if somebody else "snitches" on you. You can tell FAA about your previously filed ASRS report if and when the FAA comes to you. Failing to confirm onboard documents, or date of annual inspection, etc., is well within the wide range of suitable materials for such a report.

By the way, an NTSB 830 report can be submitted even if you are in doubt about whether it is required. If they don't think it necessary, they won't do anything about it. My suggestion is to err on the side of over-reporting if the situation is at all unclear.

 
I think you miss my general point John, or rather actually I'm sure you do get my general point; you just choose to ignore it and distract attention with incidental points. Sorry is neither here nor there.

I don't think many really give two hoots if the FAA got involved to a greater or lesser degree and I imagine even fewer care if the involvement took a more official / legal / disciplinary route. Certainly not me.

When this accident was highlighted and where you become the effective representative of the organising club of the event and Vance commented on the stick and rudder issue that led to the grief not once was either the legality of the flight mentioned nor the airworthiness of the aircraft. Now we all might assume that the aircraft was airworthy but how is that established?

The N registration has been reserved but what has that got to do with registering the actual gyro in conjunction with its first Airworthiness Inspection by an FAA DAR, which then allows for 40 hours of local flight testing (Phase I), then legal public Phase II flight under an AW certificate?

So how far down that pathway had the [so I understand] 200hour gyro gone?

These are the real issues John, not that an experienced FI drilled it into the ground because he was unfamiliar [although that perhaps does highlight the many snags that he may have denied could exist prior to the prang and that the box ticking of an online system didn't catch] but why there such casualness around the aircraft even being in the air in the first place?

You all may remember a similar experienced FI kill himself and pax in a Cavalon recently because of casualness. Again it isn't about humiliation / shame or embarrassment it is about having an attitude to airmanship that is effective and that way gyroplanes get taken more seriously, less people hurt themselves and maybe that insurance rate that you guys are scrambling to reduce might take care of itself.

That the FAA haven't spoken to the pilot reflects poorly on the FAA. Not to make Vance pay for their Christmas lunch, or endorse his licence, restrict him but to learn the rational why he allowed himself to put his life in danger and over look fundamentals that he absolutely knew better not to overlook.

Or have I got that wrong? You're happy for people to share their creations without the proper paperwork and/or training? What part of my reflection is inaccurate John? Did the aircraft have an AW certificate?
Hi Phil SKIP my first two responses. By the 3rd reading, I think I figured it out. If not come back and read the next two posts.
I am, solution-oriented, I'm, really struggling to understand what you are recommending PRA specifically do in the future or what you would have expected PRA to do in this hard landing.
There is a thread, somewhere, that someone directly asked. Was the gyro legal. I posted "No, you can turn him in if you wish", is what I responded.

Other than to tell the truth. I do not know what I should do next time that would make you believe we are doing it your way. I'm mean a better way.
I would be glad to do it a better way as long as you don't turn me into Greg, and a snitch.
I would snitch out child molesters and abusers.

Can you provide a solution, as I really not sure of the problem you are pointing out and it impossible for me, to even think of a solution?
 
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I read it twice and still cannot understand what you want PRA specifically to do.
 
I am not here to participate in the arguments, but to remind everybody of the availability of the ASRS.


If you screw up, submit a notice to that NASA (not FAA) site, and unless you were intentionally breaking regs, you get lots of insulation from FAA consequences. Your identity is held in confidence by NASA. The protections will apply even if somebody else "snitches" on you. You can tell FAA about your previously filed ASRS report if and when the FAA comes to you. Failing to confirm onboard documents, or date of annual inspection, etc., is well within the wide range of suitable materials for such a report.

By the way, an NTSB 830 report can be submitted even if you are in doubt about whether it is required. If they don't think it necessary, they won't do anything about it. My suggestion is to err on the side of over-reporting if the situation is at all unclear.

This is a great program!!! I used it once, on my only screw-up.
 
Hi Phil, I read it a 3rd time and now I suspect you are recommending PRA find a full-time volunteer and inspect the paperwork. We are so understaffed, I don't know how we would implement that and we would be the only fly-in, in the USA, that does that.

Adventure doesn't inspect the paperwork either and they have 100's of volunteers.
I've had my paperwork inspected by the FAA before I've flown FW aerobatic at air shows. But this was only a few times in my 50 years of flying in them. I've never had any fly-in ask me for my paperwork EVER!

It's doesn't appeal to me to become the only fly-in, in the USA, that does that. Makes us more like the FAA and the government's role and a pilot's individual responsibility as it is at all fly-ins in the USA that I have ever been to.


The flight line has stopped gyro from flying they could see were not airworthy or even built incorrectly.
 
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PS:
The FAA is often at our fly-in's especially if we have an airshow we requested a NOTAM for. I don't remember them ever inspecting one gyro.
I'm often running around so much I may have missed it. But I hear almost everything that happens, many times as complaints, and I've never even heard of them inspecting ONE. I notice because I expected them to inspect many of them and all of those without N#'s. But so far they have only enjoyed the show/fly-in and inspected less gyro's than they have when I was a piper dealer putting on airshows, with Bob Hover in them, at our events way back when.
We always file NOTAM's for all of our fly-in's.
 
I may have learned why the FAA does not inspect at airshows. I received a phone call explaining they have a directive not to inspect at airshows.
If true, I suspect they don't want the reputation of they are out to get us??? That is pure speculation on my part.
 
Philbennett

I should keep my nose out of this topic but I love to jab my UK friends.
Much the same way you enjoy taking a jab at unfettered Americanisms.

In America the FAA is generally seen as a friend to the pilot
In the UK the regulators love endless rules to prevent people from flying.

So many of those people take up a different hobby such as Fox and Hounds
Which involves flying horses over hedges while chasing hounds who are chasing foxes.

Then some regulators feel this is not a polite thing to do to foxes.
So of course the nitpicking regulators are trying to stop that too.

 
Martin jab away. Feel free. I am happy to talk about anything and everything. Please do go ahead. As an Englishman you'll be unsurprised to learn that English is my first language but thank you for the education on fox hunting, nitpicking [although how you can be happy to overlook the question mark over an AW cert tells its own tale] and flying horses, a pegasus perhaps? In the meantime my hooter is firmly in the topic while I continue roasting some swan as the main to the grilled fox hors d'oeuvre. Thats French.

John - I've no idea how you currently run your event so how you can improve upon what you do is nothing I can comment upon but perhaps the PRA having an aircraft and events unfold as they have is less that ideal and there are measures to manage that risk? Or not? I mean after all what could possibly go wrong?

In the meantime with all the chit chat continuing to develop and the focus upon how mean, ill informed or only just wise after the fact, did the aircraft have an AW certificate?
 
John - I've no idea how you currently run your event so how you can improve upon what you do is nothing I can comment upon but perhaps the PRA having an aircraft and events unfold as they have is less that ideal and there are measures to manage that risk? Or not? I mean after all what could possibly go wrong?
Hi Phil
I'm not saying your mean. I just do not know what you expert PRA to have done in this specific hard landing. Sometimes I can be thick, as in this case.
But I'm desperatly trying to learn.

Could you tell me what you would have done that was any different than what I or PRA did?

What should have we done in this case?
 
Philbennett

I should keep my nose out of this topic but I love to jab my UK friends.
Much the same way you enjoy taking a jab at unfettered Americanisms.

In America the FAA is generally seen as a friend to the pilot
In the UK the regulators love endless rules to prevent people from flying.

So many of those people take up a different hobby such as Fox and Hounds
Which involves flying horses over hedges while chasing hounds who are chasing foxes.

Then some regulators feel this is not a polite thing to do to foxes.
So of course the nitpicking regulators are trying to stop that too.

How did you get so smart?
 
Maybe at the root of all of this is the 244 year old argument between the mindset of Subject vs. Citizen?
Worked with Brits plenty of times and they think differently from us.
Key to understanding Americans is "self-reliance".
I'm not sticking up for either side here, but as an outside observer it sure seems to be cultural in nature.
I can't imagine a scenario where AFTER making a mistake the best course of action is to bring in the regulators? Vance makes money teaching people, they could have easily suspended his certs or grounded him. John remember what happened after we landed at
Chino?
Phil, maybe things are done differently on your side of the pond but in general, we Americans have a basic deep-seated mis trust for gov't 3 letter groups. Part of the culture of freedom flying small light craft attracts is the "do it yourselfer" .
We are not ATP pilots hauling 200 butts around, we are people who appreciate the ability to be up in the air for its own sake. Some of us spending hundread thousand dollars to do so for no gain, some of us scrounging parts to get up there, but the freedom of flights is the siren song.
Maybe this piece of paperwork wasn't just so or that one.
Phil, if the situation was 100 percent exactly the same and the aircraft JUST HAPPENED to weigh less then 254 lbs. Would you have continued to persue this?
I dunno, maybe it does? Never saw the rig and I never seen anybody carry scales with them....
Just sayin.....
 
Yep maybe Ben. Regulation to the British is rather like regulation is to a motor racing team. You read the rules, and work within that framework, its not really that problematic. In the UK gyroplanes are not made here not because our rules are particularly tough but because the marketplace is tiny and becoming even more so with the way these things just seem to constantly bite in the most basic areas of the flight, i.e. take off and landing. Its a PR problem first and a scale problem second. You can buy a nice RAF2000 second hand in the UK for £10k, you can buy a new AV18 for around $25k [exchange rate willing] yet we still have less than a 100 active gyroplane pilots here. Would we get 100 more if the product was cheaper? Not really aviation in the UK is a declining hobby because the dream of people growing up in the 50's-1980's is not the same dream of people who grew up in the late 1990's-2000's. Who makes stuff anymore? Maybe China is the new fertile ground?

I hear you on the freedom of flight and I hear John and the romantic notion of the gift of allowing / seeing someone get airborne. Its great and who would stand in the way of any of that? It sounds high and mighty to critique the action of someone in their time of misfortune when its over the rules and regulations but in aviation they are for the most part written in the spirit of keeping people safe.

People err and make mistakes that is human but you gotta call what you see and from the UK I hear that the aircraft has circa 200hrs and yet isn't registered? I just don't figure how that happens. I mean - and anyone please guide me to an alternative view - how do you log that kind of hours when as I understand phase 1 flying is 40 hours local flying and then it gets an AW cert to allow public phase 2 flying - which I then guess means its registered concurrent to that process?

Now all of that might be utter rubbish and plainly false but I've asked the question often and I don't hear the alternative. Gyroplanes are a small group of people - maybe 100 active pilots in the UK - and broadly most folks know most folks. They know who the "characters" are and so on, so if the story of the aircraft is in the UK, it is a mystery in the home nation? and then we get riddle me this, riddle me that from those on the fringe? Is that how flight safety and the responsibility of regulatory freedoms work?

What matters is that people switch on to being mindful of the things that snag you, and in aviation you are lucky for the opportunity to get snagged twice. When people look at the Chris Lord accident and say "oh if it could happen to him, then it could happen to anyone" they look at Oshkosh YouTube PR of people claiming "come fly a gyro in 30G40knts we don't care about wind and you can learn it all in 10hrs and change" or on an internet forum with some guy who says "in my opinion I don't find students find XYZ that hard.. its not an issue for my guys..." Well welcome to things that snag and seldom are they complex engineering matters.
 
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Would we get 100 more if the product was cheaper? Not really aviation in the UK is a declining hobby because the dream of people growing up in the 50's-1980's is not the same dream of people who grew up in the late 1990's-2000's. Who makes stuff anymore? Maybe China is the new fertile ground?

I hear you on the freedom of flight and I hear John and the romantic notion of the gift of allowing / seeing someone get airborne. Its great and who would stand in the way of any of that? It sounds high and mighty to critique the action of someone in their time of misfortune when its over the rules and regulations but in aviation they are for the most part written in the spirit of keeping people safe.

...

What matters is that people switch on to being mindful of the things that snag you, and in aviation you are lucky for the opportunity to get snagged twice. When people look at the Chris Lord accident and say "oh if it could happen to him, then it could happen to anyone" they look at Oshkosh YouTube PR of people claiming "come fly a gyro in 30G40knts we don't care about wind and you can learn it all in 10hrs and change" or on an internet forum with some guy who says "in my opinion I don't find students find XYZ that hard.. its not an issue for my guys..." Well welcome to things that snag and seldom are they complex engineering matters.

The problem is first flying in general is becoming less and less desirable to younger generation which is really not a good thing. I remember breaking my mom's weed whackers and getting yelled at for doing it because I was taking the motors out and making my own model airplanes in mid 80's simply be reading specs of a WW-II airplane and researching in an "American Center" library growing up in Pakistan. Today I would be wasting time on video games and Tik-Tok.

Unfortunately Chris Lord's accident to me would be classified as overconfidence and bad judgment combined with short cutting certain processes while trying to sell an aircraft. You do enough of those and eventually it will get you. THis was not the first time Chris had taken chances. Before he got away with engine out on a problem laden unregistered Xenon machine and got away with it and I am sure there were more that I don't know of in his ELA era. ELA did not provide him the support he needed and he was left correcting the problems on his own. Eventually it did get him and it really sucked. May he rest in peace. You are right that accidents like his, give newcomers who don't know the inside stories great pause in even coming over to gyroplanes. We all need to play our part responsibly to elevate gyroplanes out of the red headed step child of aviation industry.
 
It's just Complacency and nothing more.
You're at a fly-in - Things fly
You fly and it bites you in the butt - Shit happens
Hind sight 2020 sets in and the snitches and ass holes come out of the woodwork. - Ego trips

Lots of "pilots" have all the so call minimum requirements on paper and still can't fly worth a bag of poop. (I'm being polite here)

Most of your play things don't impress me. 🤗 Try earning a living with one😘
 
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