ELA07S accident in Ireland

I'm just glad you are able to tell us about it instead of being in an obituary.
Hi Querist,
Thank you! Many times I have read about accidents here on the forum. Unfortunately, many, if not most of these accidents were fatal and contributors can only speculate as to the causes and decision-making of the unfortunate pilots. My passenger escaped without a scratch and I was lucky to walk away from my accident. I am happy to elaborate as frankly as I can as to what my mindset was and what my thoughts were as to the whys, etc.

I am grateful to those who took the time and effort to review and analyze what I have posted and offered positive advice and reasoning concerning my accident. I am hoping that this thread proves useful to other gyro pilots on the forum as it has for me. Sometimes nature shows her power and we pay a high price to learn where our limits lie.

All I can say is get loads of training, fly often and learn from the mistakes of others. There is a great book called "The Killing Zone, How and why pilots die" by Paul A. Craig. I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that what I learned from reading this book saved my birdbrain a*s a few years back. :)
 
John: Who decides that 12' width in that grass strip?
Who mows it?
Wondering why it couldn't be widened beyond 12', to say, 20' or 25'.
Doing so would allow more room for maneuvering instead of suddenly being in deep grass.
 
Hi Kevin,
The runway is roughly 1600ft long and 73ft wide at it's narrowest point. In the summertime, the airfield owner cuts silage on the runway so we have a nice clean solid grass runway for the full area available. In the summertime, when the silage is not harvested, and at all other times, we maintain a mown area of the length of the runway by 12 to 15ft wide max. The rest of the area is taller grass used for harvesting silage. The centerline strip gets the most traffic and is more solid than the "higher" grassy area on either side of the centerline strip. This higher grass and softer ground in wet conditions can cause the gyro to go off course due to extra drag. Keeping center-line alignment is important. The Gyros we use have a typical landing gear width of approx 6ft. So 12 to 15 feet width of usable center line strip is plenty adequate for safe takeoffs and landings. We always walk the runway to verify if it is solid enough for use, especially after rain.
 
Hi Querist,

All I can say is get loads of training, fly often and learn from the mistakes of others. There is a great book called "The Killing Zone, How and why pilots die" by Paul A. Craig. I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that what I learned from reading this book saved my birdbrain a*s a few years back. :)
I just bought that book on my Kindle based on your recommendation.
 
Hi Brian, Hi Querist,
I was training to fly gyros in the UK several years ago and my CFI gave me a loan of his copy of "The Killing Zone, How and why pilots die" by Paul A. Craig as good background reading. When I returned home to Ireland, I bought the latest edition straight away. It can be heavy on stats, but there are some great lessons in this book which came at the expense of many pilots' lives. The sections on inadvertent flight from VFR into IFR conditions have proved to be very useful. The sections on ADM are also very relevant. Let me know if you enjoyed the read.
 
Hi Brian, Hi Querist,
I was training to fly gyros in the UK several years ago and my CFI gave me a loan of his copy of "The Killing Zone, How and why pilots die" by Paul A. Craig as good background reading. When I returned home to Ireland, I bought the latest edition straight away. It can be heavy on stats, but there are some great lessons in this book which came at the expense of many pilots' lives. The sections on inadvertent flight from VFR into IFR conditions have proved to be very useful. The sections on ADM are also very relevant. Let me know if you enjoyed the read.
I will, and thanks for the recommend.
 
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