Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
That’s going to be hard to explain.
(I think that picture, or one like it, has been around for a while.)
This one was on Mythbusters. They did not accept that the prop of a second plane would have cut the fuselage that way. They did eventually decide that it was likely.
I think I saw that one for sale on Barnstormers. . .”low time on the engines, full IFR suite, GPS. Annual good to 2009. Just needs a little body work. . .”
The Ronco airplane slicer.
Youch! That hurt! The pockets that is!
I’ve seen that before, but it appeared to be an original photo posted on the bulletin board of a hardware store in Pacific City, Oregon. The clerk said it had happened across the street at the local airfield. Interestingly, IIRC, the photo I saw was of the same plane, but it was outside on the apron.
http://www.isasi.org/docs/FORUM_2003_10-12.pdf
This photo was on the cover of the July-September 2003 ISASI Forum. Very little information was available. Readers were asked for help in identifying the incident and its circumstances. Many thanks to those who responded—from Australia, John Griffiths, Philip Smith, David Adkins (MO4479), Andrew
Simmonds (A04893); also Jack L. Parnell LM2680) USA, and Norman Hogwood, New Zealand.
But it was reader Alan Rohl, U.K., who wrote, in part, “It really happened at Parafield, the light aircraft airport
for Adelaide, South Australia. A
‘tabloid’ report follows—details may be
embellished somewhat!!”
VH-KBZ—The Sliced Plane By Colin McDonald
A doctor surgeon from Whyalla found his battery dead in his Piper Saratoga (a powerful single-engine aircraft) at Parafield Airport, South Australia, on the night of Aug. 26, 2001. He then proceeded to hand start the engine by
turning the prop. While this is actually not illegal, it should be approached with the utmost of caution and is really only used in remote areas where there is no help or decent pub within a long walk.
The pilot, by himself, did not chock the wheels or check that the handbrake was engaged ….
Anyway, the engine fires up at about 2,000 rpm and the aircraft starts taxiing to the runway on its own. The only problem with that was there were four piper warriors and a twin-engine Seminole (the sliced plane in picture) in its way. The pilot somehow managed to avoid certain death, although this may have been the better option considering what was about to unfold. At a steady rate of forward movement similar to a fairly upset hippo during breeding season, the Saratoga proceeds to destroy anything in its
path. With approx. 350 liters of avgas spewing out of the damaged aircraft, the pilot must surely realize that an appropriate timely death is about to occur….The result is he lived, and the
University of Adelaide lost one plane and the use of the other four for some time to come, all because of a flat battery and a really bad decision. The cost—$1.5 million and absolute
embarrassment for the rest of the pilot’s life.
You can just imagine the pilot, after being run over by his own plane, hanging on to the tail of his aircraft trying to stop it going any further and
watching in horror as it bit by bit shreds the tail of the most expensive aircraft in the vicinity and thinking any minute the engine will stop. Just when he thinks the nightmare is going to come to an end, his aircraft then makes a sharp right-hand turn and without conscience heads to the
second-most expensive aircraft in its way. Following the laws of Karma, this guy must have done some serious [stuff] somewhere along the line. (To see the full article: http://users.senet.
com.au/~colton/Interesting_Stories. html.)
Editor’s note: The end of the story? The crash was found to be a “simple and reasonable mistake,” as reported by the Adelaide Advertiser: “Dr Luis Isabel, 50, of Wattle Park, discovered his single-engine Piper Saratoga had a flat battery on Aug. 26, 2001. Satisfied the handbrake was on, he climbed on to a wing to hand start the propeller but a ‘huge surge of power’ as the engine started caused the plane to hit five other planes. “Magistrate Richard Brown dismissed charges saying it could not be proven it was not a mistake.” ◆
Cool. A flying Slinky.
Brakes? Brakes? Where are the brakes on this thing??
Saw the Mythbusters episode three (3) times. The only question was would the second engine keep running long enough to prove the ‘myth’.
Mythbusters actually tested this as there was much speculation about whether it was a real photo.
http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/01/episode_45_shredded_plane_fire.html
It’s an aeroaccordian. You can fly 300 miles and then land and play a polka…
N
My ‘46 Vintage bugsmasher has to be hand-propped and there is a very orchestrated way to do it safely when alone. Rule 1 is keep the tail tiedown secured and parking brake on, or when not at your home airfield, tied to something immovable. I have a good long piece of rope in the baggage bag always. If you screw up everything else in the hand prop process- see rule 1.
I once was the on scene witness to what a C182 prop does to the ankle joint of a pilot that fails to: 1) shut off the mags when turning for compression/fuel mixture, and 2) fails to keep arms straight when propping his ride to take us skydivers aloft. He did manage to climb in, taxi to where we were gearing up for the first lift to ask for a hand in rectifying his situation.
Yep…dead battery was the culprit.
Luckily, the Cessna did the deed just above the joint, and didn’t manage to get all the way thru. A year later, he was back to running and was just fine…flew for us, too…All I recall of his identity is it was summer of ‘72 and he was one of the two Johnson brothers.
And Da Winner is… NOSE! By a mile…
That certainly makes you think about the consequences of building all-metal aircraft lightly.
It’s enough to make a grown man cry.