Who Should be Able to Fly Airshows?

I want them to outlaw the use of modified WW2 machines. I want to go back to self-designed and engineered machines like in the 20's and 30's. I've stated before - my Aviation Wet Dream would be to have a homebuilt, non-warbird (engines are ok - Merlins, or Pratts or Wrights) and go win the unlimited event at Reno.

In 1929 Doug Davis showed up with the Travel Air Mystery Ship. This thing was designed and built quickly, and under-wraps. Showed up in Cleveland and kicked the ever loving out of the military machines and won the Thompson Trophy. That's what I want - to show up in a machine nobody has ever seen and completely kick the out of the (old) military machines. That, to me, is the fun of the air races. Sportsman Class has a little of this - but they are generally based on kits of Lancairs, Glasairs, etc. but it isn't the same. I want a homebuilt, new-design unlimited machine to beat the modified warbirds. That is my highest aviation dream.

That doesn't really do anything for safety though. Anyone who knows about the 1949 Cleveland races (Bill Odom's wreck in Beguine) or the Ramstein air show wreck, or the Sknyliv disaster has to understand that sometimes things happen. You assume a certain amount of risk just being there.
 
Seggy said:
So there is a lot of CRM going on at an Air Show. Now, an Air Race I am sure there are similar briefings and discussions. If you have a 'cowboy' as you said, isn't someone going to get hurt through their lack of competency in CRM Procedures? Yes I am sure he can fly circles around me. Fine. Whatever. I don't care how his aviation nut sack dropped. However, if one doesn't play well with others, that shows a lack of proficiency and competency in the overall pilot. Also I wasn't the first person to relate 'machismo' and 'aviation' together.
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CRM in what respect? And could you please clarify the bold text some more.


(My CRM knowledge is very minimal, just trying to pick up a few things here)
 
Seggy said:
So there is a lot of CRM going on at an Air Show. Now, an Air Race I am sure there are similar briefings and discussions. If you have a 'cowboy' as you said, isn't someone going to get hurt through their lack of competency in CRM Procedures? Yes I am sure he can fly circles around me. Fine. Whatever. I don't care how his aviation nut sack dropped. However, if one doesn't play well with others, that shows a lack of proficiency and competency in the overall pilot. Also I wasn't the first person to relate 'machismo' and 'aviation' together.
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It's not about nut sacks. It's about hard work, dedication, and excelling at whatever it is that really drives someone. A fighter pilot doesn't wake up in the morning thinking he/she is going to get their repective asses kicked. They wake up BELIEVING they will kick anyone's ass and a lunch shall be packed. Machismo? Hardly! An air racer doesn't wake up in the morning trying to figure out how to conform to every rule put in front of them. They wake up figuring out how to make the rules work for them. Our beloved Navy SEAls mantra, "If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin." Machismo?

There's a guy in the CAF with me who flew Tomcats. Retired as an O5 (that's sorta a big deal, in military world) Works for Alaska now. Flys warbirds, an Extra, and an L-39 because he needs to continue to kick someone's ass. It's what stokes him. He also has a shop in AZ restoring old A4's for ACM training. Cowboy? All day. Competitive, and driven. Type A. All those things. Great guy. Competent? You bet. Proficient? I would say so.

Jimmy played well with everyone. Outside of the way he operated The Ghost, nary a bad word has been said about him. I never met the man, but know enough people who have. He worked hard, played hard, competed to win, love his children fully, loved his wife completely and died doing what he loved. That he raced for 28 years should speak volumes about his commitment to excelling. And should speak about his competency and proficiency.

Not much CRM going on in a single pilot air racing machine. Something fails, there's only one piece o' ass on the line. And it's up to the pilot to save his bacon.

Why are you trying to make this an airline vs. GA thing? Also, I didn't just start flying an Airbus in the airline environment. I betcha it would surprise you what my first 'airliner' was.
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If you flew a Cub as your first airliner, I would still think you're out of touch, and not capable of relating to things outside of the 121 world. I would still think you need to be re-introduced to the area away from the TSA.

So you are saying this forum isn't the place to learn? Shouldn't we always be learning in aviation and continuing our aviation education?
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Yes. I am saying that there are better places to learn about aviation than this forum. Did you learn how to play football by playing Madden, or watching 10 hours of film? Learn how to fly an airplane sitting around talking about flying an airplane, or by actually flying it? That's my point. Advice is free, and cheap. Life affecting knowledge is priceless. Thinking you're going to get education worthy of being labeled "continued education" from a forum is ignorant at best.[/quote]
 
Are you speaking "Sprite Commercial" so I can relate? :)


Sent from my TRS-80
 
I clicked on this to learn about the dude the wrecked the L-39 and now feel like I watched a big floater spin around in the toilet for 8 pages. Awesome.

For the record, Seggy is dangerous and is not a pilot, just a programmer. He's also hairy and smells of an oxen's musk.
 
Casting Leeward as either an outlaw or a saint does nothing to either help explain him or any other race pilots out there. It's not a black and white world, dudes. Good people do dumb things and bad people can do great things. It doesn't help the conversation to try and draw a line and create sides. It is something people do for the convenience of understanding murky situations, but it does a massive disservice for the multitude of complex and conflicting aspects in a situation like this.

Leeward was a highly experienced, highly skilled warbird and race pilot, certainly at the very peak of the pyramid in both of those categories. Most importantly for this discussion, his in-flight skill, judgment, and decisionmaking -- all of which were more developed than any of us on this forum -- had zero to do with what happened out on the race course in 2011. The Galloping Ghost had a mechanical failure that put the airplane in a position that no human pilot would have been able to save.

The Reno crash, ultimately, had everything to do with maintenance and testing practices for the racing world, which GX alluded to in relating his conversation with Thom Richard (himself, BTW, a 'new' racer owner and pilot). It is a non-standardized and confusing process. It lives in an ill-defined area between FAA certifications (differing rules depending on type of experimental category) and regulations, the National Air Racing Group's bylaws, and the Reno Air Racing Association's entry and participation rules.

Let's take Thom's Precious Metal as an example. That is an airplane with a shady and checkered history. It is not a 'heavily modified P-51': it was completely scratch built in 1987/88 funded/designed by warbird owners and pilots (and lots of other things -- Indy racers, FBO owners, and convicted narcotics smugglers) Don and Bill Whittington down in Ft Lauderdale, and built by some of the guys they employed to work on their other warbirds.

It looks like a Mustang, but that's about it. It is a custom-built fuselage of custom design, sitting on a Mustang wing and a Mustang empennage bolted on aft of the production break. IMHO, it is twice as far 'off the farm' (deviation away from known, reliable design and engineering) than Leeward's Galloping Ghost ever was.

Here are some shots of it being built:

scan0018.jpg

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scan0007.jpg


You'll note that fuselage is not being built in a P-51 fuselage jig to keep everything true and to design spec....

The original guys who were involved in designing, constructing, and assembling that airframe did not make or leave any documentation or engineering products about it that can be referenced to do a "technical evaluation" of the airplane. If the standard now is to submit modifications for NAG and RARA's technical assessment and engineering approval, what are they going to do with this airplane?

The airplane crashed during it's first race outing in 1988, having a prop governor fail and the airplane bellied in Lemmon Valley waaaaaay off airport. What kind of rebuild was performed after this? Who signed it off? Does it matter, since it is 'experimental'? How are they going to go back and assess/approve the fixes and changes?

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The bottom line is this, guys. The warbird and air racing world is not the clear-cut, well understood and closely regulated world that many of us operate airplanes in. Applying our standards in trying to understand their standards is futile.
 
Seggy said:
So you are saying this forum isn't the place to learn? Shouldn't we always be learning in aviation and continuing our aviation education?
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This forum IS the place to learn. However, you must bring a genuine attitude of wanting to learn. In many of your posts, in this thread and others, there is an undercurrent that as an 121 airline pilot you are already an expert in all segments of aviation. Or that all other segments of aviation should meet the levels of safety and professionalism of a commercial airline pilot. Many of the pilots who are telling you that you don't know what you are talking about, have first hand personal knowledge of the operations in question.

Seggy, you are not alone in this area, and hardly the worst offender here. However operating in the 121 airline bubble it is very easy to overlook the other segments of this industry. Ag flying assumes an entirely different level of risk, and follow a different set of "procedures", but they have achieved a very good safety record given their mission. Flying freight is a "get it done" world where keeping the schedule is the priority, and passenger comfort is not even a consideration. Almost any flying in Alaska operates in an environment that amazes me. All of the pilots in all of these fields have safety as a priority, and have achieved an admirable safety record. But things are just different from 121 flying.

Also as a general rule I value the opinion of someone who has a wide breadth of experiences (MikeD) over someone who is an expert in a narrow field (ATN). Another factor is age. I don't assume that just because someone has lived a long time they know what they are talking about, or vice versa. But, generally the more years under your belt the better perspective you have about what is really important in life.

I hope you take this in the spirit it was intended.
 
GX said:
Not much CRM going on in a single pilot air racing machine. Something fails, there's only one piece o' ass on the line. And it's up to the pilot to save his bacon.
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Regrettably these two sentences show you have no idea what you are talking about. CRM has very little to do with how many people are sitting in the cockpit. It's been taught to single seat fighter guys, just as it's been taught to heavy crews. Helmreich, Kern and many others have been preaching this stuff for years and (thankfully) it has caught on. A pillar of CRM is good ADM and anybody who straps on wings needs good ADM.

USMCmech said:
. Or that all other segments of aviation should meet the levels of safety and professionalism of a commercial airline pilot.
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You really don't think that all parts of aviation should strive for professionalism and safety?
 
PeanuckleCRJ said:
I clicked on this to learn about the dude the wrecked the L-39 and now feel like I watched a big floater spin around in the toilet for 8 pages. Awesome.

For the record, Seggy is dangerous and is not a pilot, just a programmer. He's also hairy and smells of an oxen's musk.
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You're supposed to yell "FIRE IN THE HOLE!!", two second pause, and then overhand-lob the grenade! :)
 
BobDDuck said:
You really don't think that all parts of aviation should strive for professionalism and safety?
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That's not what he said; he said "levels...of a commercial airline pilot".

I agree with him that there are different levels for different aspects of aviation, and the standard for hauling people around for hire is different than the standard for zipping around pylons in a race.

The main difference being the acceptable risk levels between the two.
 
BobDDuck said:
You really don't think that all parts of aviation should strive for professionalism and safety?
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The level of safety expected of an airline flight is different than what is expected of an Ag pilot.

That's not to say that a crop duster is unsafe, But he is willingly operating closer to the edge than the airline pilot.
 
Hacker15e said:
The main difference being the acceptable risk levels between the two.
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That I completely agree with. However I disagree that an ag pilot or an airshow pilot or even an air racer for that matter should strive to be any less safe and any less professional than somebody flying around a 747.
 
Well, the real point of difference is the definition of "professionalism", which is a can I don't even wish to open at this time.

IMHO, they're different, and I'll leave it at that. What it means to be a professional 121 airline pilot is something different than what it means to be a professional ag pilot, et al.
 
BobDDuck said:
Regrettably these two sentences show you have no idea what you are talking about. CRM has very little to do with how many people are sitting in the cockpit. It's been taught to single seat fighter guys, just as it's been taught to heavy crews. Helmreich, Kern and many others have been preaching this stuff for years and (thankfully) it has caught on. A pillar of CRM is good ADM and anybody who straps on wings needs good ADM.



You really don't think that all parts of aviation should strive for professionalism and safety?
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I like the term "airmanship" better than CRM or ADM or whatever new title it may be. It's relatively easy for us to quantify what CRM / ADM is in our narrow box of experiences and apply it accordingly in an air show or air racing environment. The same machismo attitude that the FAA teaches is a negative thing is what kept many a pilots alive in war time (or at least to keep on fighting) or flying aircraft to the edge of an envelope during the early jet days.

A lot of ADM emphasized nowadays is simply risk aversion. It's safe sure... but is safety always first? I'm not a believer that it should be in every circumstance. Maybe when an airborne bus is hauling a bunch of families, but when men and machine are performing to the edge of a performance or tactical environment... perhaps not.
 
I prefer "airmanship", too, but I look at it essentially interchangeably with the FAA's "Aeronautical Decision Making" term.
 
I think many, many, many people would be surprised at the professionalism, quality control and the care in operation that Ag pilots exhibit.
 
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