September 2011 Archives

I don't have a picture for the prang I'm about to tell you about, but if I had to guess what it might have looked like just before impact, I'd use this one from Russia...

See what you think.

The NTSB yesterday put up a preliminary report about a bizarre accident in Monmouth, Maine on 18 August. Details are typically given about the aircraft at the top of the report, but in this case, aircraft make and model are listed as "unknown, unknown" and registration tail number, "none". We do know the unlicensed "pilot", who you will see later is either a wily rascal or evil villain or both, was not injured.

Here's what went down, as told by the hapless neighbor who fate descended upon, so to speak.

"A witness stated he was mowing his grass when the airplane crashed in his front yard," the NTSB says. "The pilot exited the airplane and instructed him not to notify the police".

"The pilot departed and returned a short time later with another individual and a forklift."

The gentlemen apparently took the airplane to a storage facility, "without authorization from law enforcement, Federal Aviation Administration, or the Safety Board".

Later, an FAA inspector went to said storage facility, and voila, no airplane!

The pilot too has disappeared, or as NTSB formally puts it, "attempts to locate the pilot have been unsuccessful."

Three things impress me about 40-year-old agricultural helo pilot Brandon Adeal of Turlock, California.

One - Adeal received only minor injuries in an early morning crash on 21 August as he sprayed a cantaloupe field near Los Banos.

According to Adeal and the NTSB preliminary report, the main rotor of his Soloy turbine-powered Bell 47G-4 (N948DS) "struck a set of wooden power poles at the 20-foot-level." Adeal says he never knew what happened. One minute he was spraying; the next he was lying upside in the crashed helo.

Two - That in the same paragraph were he'd written "aircraft destroyed" as part of the NTSB accident notification, he ended with "1/4 acre of cantaloupes destroyed".

And Three, that he had gazoonkas to state what is getting harder and harder to admit in the risk averse society that we live in - that despite the fatigue of having flown 5-10hr days for the preceding two weeks without a day off, that he, the pilot-in-command was ultimately responsible.

In the section at the bottom of the report, where the pilot or operator is asked how to avoid such accidents in the future, Adeal admits:

Russian aerodynamicists at the Central Aerohydrodynamic Institute (TsAGI) are studying an unusual design concept that they say can cut fuel burn by as much as 10%. 

Judging by the pictures and explanation of the aftermath of his 5 August crash, 71 year-old Lynn Nelsen of Frostproof, Florida must be one tough, lucky cookie.

Nelsen was trying to takeoff that day from a grass strip at the Lake Clinch Airpark in N13LN, an Arion Lightning low-wing, single-engine light sport aircraft when he apparently took off at too low an airspeed. 

"As I passed my normal rotation position, I rotated the aircraft without checking the airspeed. It started a left roll as it cleared the runway, and my corrections seemed to have no effect," Nelsen told the NTSB.

"As I looked ahead I saw I was about to hit a light pole head on. I attempted another correction, and said "OH S---" as I closed my eyes. This had taken about 2 or 3 seconds after lift off. WHAM! I opened my eyes and I was upside down still strapped in the airplane."

The FAA reports that Scaled Composites' Model 151 Ares (N151SC) landed gear-up at the company's home base in Mojave, California yesterday (7 September), though the pilot was not injured and damage is listed as "minor". No other information or pictures are available as of yet.

The more interesting question is - what is Scaled, now owned by Northrop Grumman, doing with the Warthog-like experimentally certified demonstrator?

Flightglobal most recently wrote about the aircraft in 2008, when Graham Warwick noted: 

"Model 151 Ares, designed in the late 1980s to meet a US Army request for a low-cost attack aircraft, has been spotted on the move again at Mojave airport in California. First flown in 1990, and powered by a single Pratt & Whitney Canada JT15D turbofan, the Ares was designed around its 25mm gatling gun and has an unusual asymmetric configuration with the inlet on the left side. Scaled, which is now owned by Northrop Grumman, appears to be using the all-composite Ares as a research testbed. The aircraft, seen with a dorsal radome, open side panel and large underwing box fairings.

August 1 marked the first crash of an in-service Cessna C162 Skycatcher, and from all indications, it's the pilot's fault and not the design of the demure two-seat light sport aircraft that Cessna builds in China.