Mooney low over water... like... REALLY low

I like buzzing. Not this low, and not toward people, but I like buzzing. But buzzing is gay without a radial, big ham-standard prop, or perhaps a V-12. It isn't the danger of the buzz job that irritates me and it isn't the danger he placed people in that irritated me. It is the lameness of the airplane that irritates me. Had this been a Mullicoupe or a Waco or something - then yeah, it would be awesome.
 
Boris Badenov said:
I don't write the rules, I just *cracks knuckles*...enforce them. ;)
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You know, I thought that line was appropriate. It was even uttered...once...during my most recent simulator course, replacing "The Defense Department" with "BrandX Airlines" after a series of appropriately spectacular screwups. That evening was what we call a "learning experience." We all have our off days.

This incident, however, is not an "off" day, merely reckless behavior.

LoadMasterC141 said:
I do not "wish" harm on anyone at all. However, barring any good reasons the Eagle driver mentioned, flying that low is just stupid and dangerous beyond reproach. If someone like that were to tank it in and kill themselves, I would certainly never think, "Ahh gee that is too bad. That guy did not deserve that". If that makes me an evil arsehole in your book, so be it I guess. My initial reaction was a bit more emotional of course, more out of anger because people like that make a bad name for the rest of us, at the very least.
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NOBODY deserves to die in an airplane (no matter how "stupid" they are—this, or some of our recent, more deplorable lack of airmanship/professionalism accidents in the airline world, etc.), and you are an evil arsehole for thinking that anyone deserves to die in an airplane.

(I don't think you truly believe it.)

Certainly I would rather see them wadded up before the took someone with them. Just going off what I see in the video alone, this person looks as if he or she endangered more than just themselves.
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I'd rather see them be on the receiving end of an enforcement action than wadded up at all, thanks. Crashing an airplane, for a silly reason like this, is a waste of both life and property.
 
WacoFan said:
I like buzzing. Not this low, and not toward people, but I like buzzing. But buzzing is gay without a radial, big ham-standard prop, or perhaps a V-12. It isn't the danger of the buzz job that irritates me and it isn't the danger he placed people in that irritated me. It is the lameness of the airplane that irritates me. Had this been a Mullicoupe or a Waco or something - then yeah, it would be awesome.
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Hamilton Standard. When life gives you trouble, just feather it!
 
This little video has caused quite a stir here... good! I hope it helps people think twice and really think about stunts they are about to pull off.

If you really think that this is anything but that... a stunt... you must be crazy. I know some people like to play devil's advocate; I often find myself in that role. But in this particular case, I think it is pretty obvious that this is a crystal clear case of a hot dog pilot in his expensive toy showing off for either his buddies or some random people at a lake. These videos are not rare.

I get it. I see the fun in what the pilot did, both from his point of view and from a spectator's point of view. Would I LOVE to buzz a lake, gear up, throttle to the firewall? Hell. Freaking. Yes. Sounds like a BLAST. It would be a fantastically intense experience, having the waters rush beneath you and the shore racing up just a few feet under your seat. Or seeing a small dot turn into a roaring machine just a few feet above your head, the silence of the lake pierced suddenly by the airplane whooshing over your head. I get that.

But I also get that things like this can, and often do, end badly. Not only for the pilot, but for the spectators, as well. Potentially innocent folks. Unless this pilot has actually been specifically trained in extreme (yes, by all accounts, buzzing a ground at the top of the green arc is pretty extreme for your average GA pilot...) maneuvers, he has no business playing hot shot. He violated numerous FAA regulations. I think he should be held accountable for his actions. Now, I don't think he needs to lose his license or anything... but some clear motivation to keep him from pulling stunts like this would be good.

Why do I think that? Because GA already has a hard enough time staying in the air as it is. We have the possibility of usage fees staring at us. GA-focused airports are constantly being closed, with not many replacements opening up. Insurance is already expensive. Mass media coverage of GA accidents wakes up the rabble rousers who don't know a thing about GA, except for the fact that there are apparently thousands of little airplanes out there that aren't under FAA control with people who aren't smart enough to make sure they don't run out of gas. As someone who is getting ready to spend an awful lot of money getting into this gig, I see people like this guy threatening my ability to do so with my limited financial resources. The general public is not going to fight for GA freedoms when they see stuff like this.

/rant

Again... I see the fun in all of this. But I also see the darker side of this. The darker side that threatens the freedoms we currently have in GA.
 
WacoFan said:
I like buzzing. Not this low, and not toward people, but I like buzzing. But buzzing is gay without a radial, big ham-standard prop, or perhaps a V-12. It isn't the danger of the buzz job that irritates me and it isn't the danger he placed people in that irritated me. It is the lameness of the airplane that irritates me. Had this been a Mullicoupe or a Waco or something - then yeah, it would be awesome.
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You may be the only person out there who thinks a Mooney is lame. o_O
 
SteveCostello said:
The general public is not going to fight for GA freedoms when they see stuff like this..
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The general public isn't going to fight for GA anyway. They don't really care about GA, if they have no stake in it whatsoever. To the general public, GA planes are just rich guys flying around in airplanes that they themselves can't afford.
 
MikeD said:
The general public isn't going to fight for GA anyway. They don't really care about GA, if they have no stake in it whatsoever. To the general public, GA planes are just rich guys flying around in airplanes that they themselves can't afford.
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True. But if we can at least "fly under the radar," so to speak, then they won't be fighting to have our current situation, as fragile as it is, taken away.
 
SteveCostello said:
True. But if we can at least "fly under the radar," so to speak, then they won't be fighting to have our current situation, as fragile as it is, taken away.
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There's no way to do that though. Remember, these are the same people who move next to airports.....many which have been in the middle of nowhere and urban sprawl caught up to them.......and then complain about the incessant airport news that bothers them, and the safety of the low flying planes in the pattern.

There's no reasoning with many of these folks. At BEST, they're indifferent. Normally, they're against something that they feel is a rich man's toy hobby that they can't afford themselves.
 
Boris Badenov said:
Never? Maybe you mean "not always", in which case I agree. But showing a context-free clip pulled from the internet doesn't strike me as the sort of evidence I'd want to have before I started wailing and gnashing my teeth about how this dude "deserved to die", etc. As Hacker said, is it LIKELY to be some fool being foolish? Yes. Extremely likely, even. But I don't know, and neither do you. It's a peculiar facet of the Information Age that everyone feels on fire to have a strong, aggreived opinion about every single thing they see. And then get angry when that Holy Opinion is challenged in even the most nuanced, uncommitted, milquetoast way.
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I love nuance. I work in it daily.

But you know what living in the real world has taught me? If it looks like the job was done with a sledge hammer (at 200 knots and 10', it seems), then there's likely not very much nuance. I simply can't see the point from a practical aspect of dissecting the nuance of this clip, because I feel in large part there isn't any.

Or maybe said another way, I think there's a time and a place for nuance and playing devils advocate, and there's a time to look at something and say that, on its face, that was some really stupid crap.

I think that this was some really stupid crap, and as I've been saying for years on here, when we dive into this discussion of how this might have been ok on Mars in an alternate universe while you were performing an airshow for the Queen of France in the 1600's, we don't do ourselves any favors.
 
WacoFan said:
The "roar" of a horizontally opposed four-banger just doesn't blow my skirt up.
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You must not be listening to the right H4, then... ;)

Cosworth-Impreza-STI-CS400.jpg
 
jtrain609 said:
Or maybe said another way, I think there's a time and a place for nuance and playing devils advocate, and there's a time to look at something and say that, on its face, that was some really stupid crap.
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Yeah, everyone feels that way. That's the problem.
 
Boris Badenov said:
Never? Maybe you mean "not always", in which case I agree. But showing a context-free clip pulled from the internet doesn't strike me as the sort of evidence I'd want to have before I started wailing and gnashing my teeth about how this dude "deserved to die", etc. As Hacker said, is it LIKELY to be some fool being foolish? Yes. Extremely likely, even. But I don't know, and neither do you. It's a peculiar facet of the Information Age that everyone feels on fire to have a strong, aggreived opinion about every single thing they see. And then get angry when that Holy Opinion is challenged in even the most nuanced, uncommitted, milquetoast way.
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As a pile-on to this, I have personally been in a situation where a video of an event I participated in was seen -- without context -- by some people who interpreted the situation very incorrectly. That interpretation led to some serious consequences for me that it took a long time and a lot of money to sort out (fortunately, everybody gets their day in court in America)...and I may never recover socially/financially/career-wise from that knee-jerk opinion made in a vacuum. So, such hurling of death sentences after simply viewing a video clip without knowing any of the surrounding context puts a big burr under my saddle.

My comments certainly never implied the moral relativism that jtrain609 was suggesting. Quite to the contrary, I'm all for the peer-smear that should follow acts of idiocy by pilots -- that's how I was brought up in the military flying world, and it's a very effective means of keeping pilots operating safely and effectively.

Such public stonings, however, should take place only when the facts that led to the pilot's decisions are known and properly evaluated by peers with similar experiences and knowledge commensurate with the ability to evaluate that judgment.
 
Hacker15e said:
Such public stonings, however, should take place only when the facts that led to the pilot's decisions are known and properly evaluated by peers with similar experiences and knowledge commensurate with the ability to evaluate that judgment.
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Hey, hey, hey now. Never let common sense and a calm attitude get in the way of a good rabble-rousing! Sheesh.
 
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