Sonex Incident - Detached Canopy

So did the canopy coming off screw up the aerodynamics so much it wouldn’t climb anymore or did they intentionally crash it?


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Well, they claim at the end that a "parachute effect" made them crash. Weird pseudo-scientific nomenclature aside, that sounds believable to me. That thing pretty obviously did not have a huge surfeit of power to start with, and I didn't hear any power reduction.
 
Boris Badenov said:
Well, they claim at the end that a "parachute effect" made them crash. Weird pseudo-scientific nomenclature aside, that sounds believable to me. That thing pretty obviously did not have a huge surfeit of power to start with, and I didn't hear any power reduction.
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Yeah, seeing two grown ass adults in that thing under normal circumstances just seems sketchy power wise.
 
Inverted25 said:
So did the canopy coming off screw up the aerodynamics so much it wouldn’t climb anymore or did they intentionally crash it?
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More than most the fuselage is shaped like a wing. Just guessing?

My question is; WTF is the camera mounted to?

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Sonex aircraft are powered anywhere from 80-120hp, it's plenty for two adults, some even have turbos. This one's FAA entry does not specify the engine. Many sonei have LSA airworthiness restrictions
 
Sonex is a fairly proven design and there's a lot of them out there. For the money, they get fairly impressive performance. There's one at my home field that had a prop decide to leave the airplane and pursue its own future while the airplane was still in the pattern. The pilot glided it just fine back to the runway (reason #647 why we fly tight patterns, students.)
 
NovemberEcho said:
basically a selfie stick that the software edits out automatically
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Yeah, it's a software feature on the newer GoPros. I've seen a few videos like that. I thought you needed two cameras for that to work but I might be wrong about that and I'm too lazy to look it up.

I mean, I wanted to look it up. I thought about it. And then I decided to go on with my life.
 
Damn! Assuming they had nowhere to go but down, nice job slowing it way down before impact with obviously not much ground roll available before the treeline.
 
At 30:00 you can see him closing the canopy, and it seems like it takes a few seconds to do. Not sure how they latch, though.
 
Timmy Tucker said:
Is it just me, or did he have a tailstrike on the landing at 25:00?
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Murdoughnut said:
Sure looks like it - if you watch the mains they seem to come down quickly before touching - hard to say, but good catch.
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Looks to me like it is an optical illusion created by the camera lens. If you watch the whole video there are times when the angle is zoomed out so far, I believe the camera in use is one of those 360 degree cameras. Zoomed in the curvature of that lens makes the airplane's angles look more extreme than they actually are.

Edit: Another video on this channel's title indicates the camera in use as a GoPro Max 360.
 
Best to secure a flimsy homebuilt canopy before you release brakes. I don't buy the "parachute effect" claim. Had a friend die after the canopy of his RV-4 [edit: Lancair] popped open on take-off. Distraction, FOD in cockpit, and drugs in his system were factors.
 
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Murdoughnut said:
Well this will keep you up at night. Skip to 31:00 for the incident.

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1. Always ensure your canopy is properly secured.

2. You really should never crash because of a lost canopy. Then again, the Sonex is not a part 23 or part 25 aircraft, so I guess its mileage may vary.
 
“So you say you had a GoPro attached to the part that broke? Interesting.”
 
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