Poor judgement, as in not learning how to fly instruments?         I'm not sure I'm following you here.  

"Poor judgement" as it relates to Aviation, is just one of those blanket statements, like "pilot error".  

It doesn't say much.    

Flying is dangerous enough even if you diligently try to prepare for anything.      

It's safe to say that every single pilot who ever crashed, exercised "Bad Judgement".        Sometimes, just getting out of bed and reporting for work is "bad judgement"

don't stereotype so fast, some Docs are damn good pilots.

Actually it says a lot.  Poor judgment or pilot error are the main causes for general aviation accidents and thus should be nearly 100% preventable.

FIFY



 

There is a Trio brand autopilot that apparently uses solid state gyros and not vacuum.    Had I ever screwed up and entered IMC (clouds) and could not do a 360 to get back to visual conditions, I would have used that autopilot to maintain level wings and power, trip, pitch autopilot to get through the clouds.  That is a last resort option with not entering clouds primary and diverting to visual conditions a far better option than descending through clouds.

Dotted line is what your body tells you that you are doing. Solid line is what is actually happening.


Partial panel is no joke

Or you could go really old school!
Dual redundant Venturi for the win!

I would of got the  gear down first. Helps keep the speed down if it gets away.
Big ?  What was the ceiling and viz underneath?

Wet vacuum pumps can last quite a while.

It's the dry vacuum pumps that will break the carbon vanes if you look at them wrong.

But nobody wants wet pumps, anymore, because they are more expensive and contribute to the oil streaks on the belly.


ETA:  The topic of how much weight could be saved by switching to full glass (on a plane that doesn't have pneumatic deice boots), has been brought up at work.  No vacuum pumps, no vacuum regulators, pull out the plumbing....

Had a manifold vacuum backup in a Mooney. Worked good, simple only drawback was need to reduce mp for it to work.
Flatland it was gtg. Always wanted a electric AI  for backup.

Many of the instruments in the instrument panel on a small aircraft are operated by vacuum - either from a pump or provided by a venturi out in the airstream.   Lose the vacuum - lose those instruments.

Or one of these ...

Ice could take them both out.  Then you're flying a plane with failed vacuum gyros and ice building up on the leading edges.

This right here.

Way too many 'unexplained' in-flight separation events in v-tail Bonanzas.  They have been reworked, strengthened, etc. over the years and it still happens.

If it was a v-tail and he was indeed going 268 (!!!) then no surprise there was a catastrophic event.

The standard tail configuration Bonanzas have been MUCH safer but the flight controls still feel screwy.


At least we know he wasn't a dummy.  You don't get multi and IFR by being a dummy.

Wow, that sucks, the guy had twin and IFR training. makes for a good case to get one of those electric back up artificial horizons or to Ditch the steam gauges and go glass.

Quite the contrary. Since the AD's for beefing up the tail's leading edges was issued in 1987 there has only been one tail failure. It's a very safe airplane. Not to mention beautiful.

One of the discussions at work was along the lines of getting a Cessna 310 with no deice boots, weighing it, upgrading it to IO550s, switching the panel to full glass, ripping out the vacuum systems, ripping out the oil pressure and manifold pressure lines (since the glass panel would be using transducers at the firewalls or on the engines)...  then weighing it again.

If only the company owner was as interested in our hotrodding ideas as we are.  

I'd love to see how something like that would climb.

This gets you back to judgment.   Don't fly in possible icing conditions if the plane is not equipped for it.

Sometimes, the plane can be too well equipped, leading the pilot to think he can handle a potential situation that is beyond his training/experience.

Saw that in the 1980s, with student pilots that had the money to buy planes that had autopilots and were set up for IFR.  One Lance owner (and student pilot) seemed to think that zero visibility due to morning fog was no big deal, since you could just turn on the autopilot after takeoff, then climb above it.  Then an annual inspection found a broken engine mount, when he was getting ready for his check ride.  Not wanting to wait for his plane to be fixed, he got checked out in a rental Cherokee and scheduled his check ride.

His instructor made the mistake of signing him off, the day before, for his cross country to the airport where he was going to do the check ride.  Morning of the check ride, the airport was foggy, but his exploits with his Lance's equipment told him that a little fog was no big deal, so he took off on his cross country.

The fog went all the way to the clouds (solid overcast, so essentially IFR visibility from the ground to the tops of the clouds).  He got to the point that he could see a small circle of ground underneath him, and nothing else, so he stopped climbing.  Couldn't find his way back to the airport, so he apparently thought he would just circle around for a while, waiting for the fog to clear (it didn't).  Then he called UNICOM at the airport he had departed, and explained the situation.  At one point, he was headed toward mountains, and was told to turn back to the west.  Eventually, ATC shifted traffic to other frequencies, so a controller could have an entire frequency to deal with the problem of locating the student on radar and talking him into Nashville (where there was no fog and the feds were waiting to have a talk with him, then they had a long talk with his instructor).

Fuckin' lol

LOL.  At least he was smart enough to realize he was pooched.  



I grew up in and around boats.  I am now a professional computer guy.  To this day I hate trusting everything to a piece of computer equipment.  Check GPS, check heading indicator, check chart, utilize the VORs.  It's not like you really don't have anything better to do on a cross country.



A student took his checkride a week or two before mine that did pretty good, right up until the examiner asked him to fly to an airport to practice landings.  The pilot entered the airport code on the Garmin 430, hit go-to and off he went.  Right to the wrong airport.  



On my checkride the examiner made me fly the entire return to the airport, up to short final, under the hood.  That god for that little 430.    Funny start about the story above is weather for my checkride was shit too.  Scattered rain storms all over, my flight plan when to crap as soon as I took off, but managed to get where I was going, safely and legally.  



 

So what was built instead? Please don't say the X-32.

It was either non functional or he wasn't thinking. Until you get in the soup... You have no idea what it's like.

That sounds familiar.

From around 2001 to 2003, I saw a series of ideas shot down.

We did evaluation flights (with a shoestring budget) on a King Air 100 and King Air 200 with winglets.  Got enough data to show the performance gains near the ceiling, and opinions of two flight crews on the improvement in how the plane 'felt' in the pattern.  Then the idea had to go upstairs, for approval to go ahead with starting the process of applying for an STC.  "If there was a market for it, somebody would already be doing it."  Two or three years later, we heard that Boundary Layer had announced they were getting an STC for King Air winglets.

The suggestion for a special edition Panther Navajo didn't even go that far.  The idea was to completely refurbish a Navajo, getting the airframe as close as possible to new/overhauled condition, do the Panther upgrades, and give it some catchy name to distinguish it from the plain old Panther Navajo.  The company salesman laughed when he heard the suggestion, and declared that for what it would cost to do all that work, you'd never find a buyer willing to pay that much for a Navajo.  A couple years later, a customer showed up with a relatively low time Navajo and a list of what he wanted done to it.  The shop manager thought the guy was nuts and was throwing money away, but he was paying the bill, so...  The customer sold that Navajo, then bought another one and had it refurbished, sold it, and bought another one... He eventually settled on the name "Lock & Key Navajo" and is still selling them.

Then there was the suggestion to develop a Quick Engine Change kit, adding cannon plugs to the firewall and standardizing the installation as much as possible, so that a customer could pay their deposit and schedule a time to bring their plane in, and by the time it got there, an engine would be waiting with baffling and accessories already installed, and bolted to an overhauled engine mount.  Just disconnect the cannon plugs, hoses, and control cables, hook up the hoist, unbolt the mount from the firewall, and reverse the procedure with the new engine.  I think the unanimous response from management was "Why in the world would we want to do that?  The customers can wait two or three weeks to pick up their plane."  We had a few regular customers that were commercial operators.  The downtime for engine changes was a big consideration for them, and they would sometimes leave a pilot to see if he could prod us along to get the engines changed faster.

ETA:  The company laid everybody off (except a few office staff and a warehouse worker) in May 2010, and started liquidation.

Indeed it does, provided the plane was already trimmed before you got in the soup. Hence my VFR instructor was anal about keeping the plane trimmed.

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It would be interesting to try, proving dihedral is a miracle.  



I would be interested to see how it works with your average bent and battered flight school airplane.  



 

It would be interesting to try, proving dihedral is a miracle.  



I would be interested to see how it works with your average bent and battered flight school airplane.  



 

Way too many GA pilots are really marginal on IFR skills/currency.

Unless you do it frequently, you're taking a huge risk.  When things start to fail, it's too much for most to handle.

TC

Getting into that kind of icing in a light aircraft means you have made a very poor decision somewhere in the process.

TC

I did it in 1987, with a Cessna 150 that had been built in 1967.  10 degrees of flaps, trim for approach speed, set power to maintain altitude, then flew back to the airport with my hands in my lap.  After I got in the pattern, I controlled altitude with the throttle, and didn't touch the yoke until short final (had to flare with the yoke).

If a Cessna 150 wing has any dihedral, it's not much.

As I previously stated, whether or not the flight controls are properly rigged, has a lot to do with the plane flying like it is supposed to fly.

Here's my V tail Beech story.



As a Cub Scout, our leader took us to the airport to take turns flying in his plane.  I actually landed it based on his instructions, his hands and feet an inch from the controls.  It was a great trip and lots of fun.



A week or two later he got busted for flying weed into the States and lost his plane.  Wasn't our leader anymore either

I believe it.

The weeping wing STC (currently drawing a blank on the name of the company that makes it) seems to be popular with Beechcraft owners.  

I agree with you, but there are obviously light aircraft owners that are willing to pay quite a bit of money so that they can 'laugh at icing conditions'.

The victims.

For the record, In a similar situation, assuming I don't trust my partial panel skills and I'm VFR on top.Trim the airplane for straight and level flight then reduce power for 500 fpm decent. Put hands on lap and feet flat on floor and watch for VFR conditions as I descend thru clouds. The plane will fly itself and with a few minor deviations stay upright.

VFR on top IS IFR!

Everybody please be aware that the piece bolded and struck thru is not mine.



Whoever edited my quote, please go back and fix it.

Make that statement by all means, but please do not attribute it to me.





 

that depends on the airplane. not sure about bonanzas, but my 1971 cardinal rg does not have any real useful dihedral. She is very neutrally stable. for me it would be a trim for mostly level, power back, below 140mph (yes, she has a dual unit ASI and mph is what the handbook is written for), drop gear, re trim, set power for the same 500fpm decent. and lock eyes on the turn coordinator and the altimeter. keep that ball centered and the little airplane level and you cant get too far off, check the compass every few seconds for confirmation and the air speed indicator/vsi the same frequency.


sky, im sure you know all this already, just a little inside baseball for the rest of them.

This is my old man, he wasn't old at the time.  Plane was a year old, he was 16, legal to fly, illegal to drive a car in NJ.  He road his bike to get to the airport to fly.

He soloed in this plane I think when he was 15.

Owner of the plane sent him the original clock which you can see has been cut into the photo about 7 years ago.

As luck would have it,  I think the plane was wrecked in 2011.

v tails are sexy little birds

 

Agreed.  Bonanza or Salto, V-tails are the redhead of the world of aviation.  



 

One of our planes had the affectionate nickname Eight Four Fuckup.

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I wonder when was the last time he had done any partial panel work. I don't mean the five minutes under foggles during a BFR.

Those are THE BEST kind of instructor pilots!  Rare as hen's teeth but worth their weight in gold to get hours with them.

Well....maybe there's nothing wrong with the REST of them....clearly, this one developed a sniffle.