That didn't take long... v.Oshkosh

FlyingAccountant

FlyingAccountant

Well-Known Member
This year we didn't make it past the first day without a fatal crash.


View: https://youtu.be/ifWn5U7okZY?si=RoT28swopu6zibEp


Pilot had an interesting history to say the least. Looks like he binned a Baron back in 2012 after he ran it out of gas and then apparently lied to the NTSB about what had happened.

www.kathrynsreport.com

Beechcraft 95-B55 (T42A) Baron, N30WC: Accident occurred December 21, 2012 in Las Cruces, New Mexico

http://registry.faa.gov/N30WC NTSB Identification: CEN13LA110 14 CFR Part 91: General Aviation Accident occurred Friday, December 2...
www.kathrynsreport.com www.kathrynsreport.com
 
derg said:
The Lancair that crashed near Oshkosh, it appears one of the deceased is a Delta pilot named James Sullivan

abc7chicago.com

2 killed in plane crash near site of air show in Wisconsin identified

A Philadelphia man and a man from New York have been preliminarily identified as the victims of a fatal plane crash near the site of an airshow in eastern Wisconsin.
abc7chicago.com abc7chicago.com
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He was at my old shop, shot the chit with him a few times around the crew rooms. Always had a smile on his face, even during a 2am sort sit. Sad situation
 
Sort of tangentially related, I was reading the NTSB final report on the crash that happened last year at Oshkosh. It seems the root cause was the gyrocopter taking it upon himself to do a 360 degree turn in the pattern(!), presumably for spacing purposes. The gyro pilots had been specifically told to stop doing this in the morning briefings because it was creating sketchy situations and the accident pilot ignored that and did so anyway. He and his passenger survived while the two in the helicopter that they collided with didn't.

Humans going to human. I'm sure Oshkosh is a blast, but I have no desire to attend.

If I'm fortunate enough to make it to the majors, I think I'm going to give up gen av.
 
Back in '94 Aeroshell sponsored the Bearcat, they gave us some money and lots of 55 gallon barrels of oil. Part of the deal was the airplane would be displayed at Oshkosh. At that point we'd gotten the radios working well enough to be able to tune/transmit/receive on at least one frequency reliably. The visibility wasn't great with the chopped down canopy but it wasn't horrible. I think it cruised at about 300 knots and the approach and landing were flown at like 100-120 knots, in a taildragger. Lyle was still dealing with some issues and John Penney had been flying and racing the airplane for a couple of years so he was tasked with flying it back and forth. John was a combat veteran in the USAF flying A-7s in Viet Nam, an accomplished 121 captain and the guy most people would call as a DPI for anyone trying to get checked out in MiG fighters. I was not able to accompany the airplane on that trip but I did help prepare it. I wouldn't say he seemed apprehensive or nervous prior to the trip, he just seemed more concerned than he normally would be, I'd imagine the cruise portions or the fuel stops weren't the issue, it was flying into the maelstrom of airplanes that surrounds Oshkosh during the Worlds Largest Air Show in an airplane that was heavily modified to go really fast and gave no quarter to anything else. But he made it work, they went there and back without incident and the fans and Aeroshell were happy.

D1AA8AAA-3B30-4A7A-B4FA-0F2A45BFC184.jpeg


He might've ran into some weather, that was a brand new paint job when he left.
 
FlyingAccountant said:
Sort of tangentially related, I was reading the NTSB final report on the crash that happened last year at Oshkosh. It seems the root cause was the gyrocopter taking it upon himself to do a 360 degree turn in the pattern(!), presumably for spacing purposes. The gyro pilots had been specifically told to stop doing this in the morning briefings because it was creating sketchy situations and the accident pilot ignored that and did so anyway. He and his passenger survived while the two in the helicopter that they collided with didn't.

Humans going to human. I'm sure Oshkosh is a blast, but I have no desire to attend.

If I'm fortunate enough to make it to the majors, I think I'm going to give up gen av.
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A couple of things to note here. The ultralight/gyrocopter grass runway by the EAA museum is only about 1000 ft long (900 ft for landing) and uncontrolled. The traffic pattern altitude is 300 ft AGL! It’s a little bit surreal to walk around Airventure with ultralights buzzing overhead at 300 ft and knowing they’re not talking to tower.

The pattern and arrival procedure is on page 21 of the NOTAM:

IMG_2491.jpeg


Basically your normal rectangular traffic pattern is condensed into a weird square bounded by the highway, runway 36L/18R and runway 9/27.

Given all of those constraints, it is not uncommon at uncontrolled airports to need to take some action for spacing in the pattern, whether that’s slowing down, S-turns, or a 360 out of the downwind and then merge back in on a 45. I don’t know enough about the accident to know if the pilot was totally out of line, but on the surface doing a 360 for spacing at an uncontrolled field (under normal circumstances) isn’t unreasonable.
 
Traffic pattern accidents occur at every airport, whether it is a towered airport or non-towered. Now I don’t know anything about the accident airplane or pilot, and this is unrelated commentary - what makes OSH unique is that many of the attendees are rusty and don’t sharpen their skills or take the magnitude the event seriously resulting in incidents. The NOTAM spells it out clearly, yet people still blow it.

Happy to be reporting live from OSH, I cheated death once again by being in the pattern here without incident.

Picture for attention:
 

Attachments

Oshkosh isn't nearly as bad as some people make it out to be. I've been to local fly ins that were much worse.

  1. READ the NOTAM!!!
  2. Get in line
  3. Listen to the controllers at FISK
  4. head to either 9/27 or 18/36
  5. put your wheels on the dot they tell you to
  6. follow the flagmen
 
USMCmech said:
Oshkosh isn't nearly as bad as some people make it out to be. I've been to local fly ins that were much worse.

  1. READ the NOTAM!!!
  2. Get in line
  3. Listen to the controllers at FISK
  4. head to either 9/27 or 18/36
  5. put your wheels on the dot they tell you to
  6. follow the flagmen
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Just like driving on a busy highway, it’s not my skill level I’d be worried about, it’s all the other idiots. The amount of incidents proves it. No way no how for me and that goes for large local fly ins as well.
 
MikeD said:
OSH looks like it can be marketed as a yearly ARFF fire/rescue ops/training event.
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This is true.

However last year's helicopter/gyro midair was the first accident in years that was directly related to the density of operations. The rest are normal GA accidents that happen every week all over the country.

When a significant percentage of the GA fleet is concentrated in one highly visible site there are bound to be a good handful of incidents. Most of them are simple loss of control on landing runway exits.
 
USMCmech said:
This is true.

However last year's helicopter/gyro midair was the first accident in years that was directly related to the density of operations. The rest are normal GA accidents that happen every week all over the country.

When a significant percentage of the GA fleet is concentrated in one highly visible site there are bound to be a good handful of incidents. Most of them are simple loss of control on landing runway exits.
Click to expand...

Generally, in 10 years of ownership, I found the areas that had high concentrations of GA were very, very limited. The few that had traffic were either spots with a lot of training going on, or had a very specific time when traffic would come and go.

Everything and everywhere else it was just crickets. We one flew all the way from Florida to Wyoming and literally saw one other airplane moving under it's own power.
 
USMCmech said:
This is true.

However last year's helicopter/gyro midair was the first accident in years that was directly related to the density of operations. The rest are normal GA accidents that happen every week all over the country.

When a significant percentage of the GA fleet is concentrated in one highly visible site there are bound to be a good handful of incidents. Most of them are simple loss of control on landing runway exits.
Click to expand...

Which is a great selling point for getting some good ARFF operational work. C’mon over! Ha!
 
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