Sport Pilot Talk

Warmi wrote:Do you schedule your students , especially with very few hours, around midday ?

Yes and no. My morning lessons all run 9 to noon, and my afternoon lessons are 2 to 5. Each lesson includes both ground and flight segments. My AM students typically opt to fly first and do ground afterward. My PM students prefer ground first, and flight after. So, they seem to have figured out on their own how to avoid the bumpiest part of the day.

Wm.Ince wrote:Paul . . . where are you? You need to weigh in on this issue.

Well, since you insisted:

The aerodynamics of an aircraft flying in a uniformly moving block of air are not influenced by the velocity of that block of air. (Of course, groundspeed is another matter).

However, flying close to the ground (or the water, or the trees), the block of air is not in uniform motion. Gusts, differential lifting and sinking air masses, thermals, eddie currents, etc. mean that the accident aircraft was flying between different moving air masses. So of course it's flight characteristics were influenced by the turbulent air, with its (varying) wind speeds and directions.

Bottom line: you're all correct!

drseti wrote:Bottom line: you're all correct!

Have you ever thought about going into politics? . .

I don’t have a seaplane rating, but still knew he had nowhere near the takeoff run he needed to clear those trees.

Wm.Ince wrote: Have you ever thought about going into politics? . .

No, Bill. I'm entirely too outspoken for that.

drseti wrote:

Wm.Ince wrote: Have you ever thought about going into politics? . .

No, Bill. I'm entirely too outspoken for that.

Well... given what happened in the last 4 years , I feel that entirely new ground has been broken in that regard and there is nothing you could say, however outspoken , that could top that ... hehe

Just saw this one - have been busy trying to get our new flying club "off the ground". Could a contributing factor have been a rookie mistake? From the video, it looks like he has an a lot of flaps dialed in. Many call for no more than 15-20 degrees for short field T/O. Once while strung out doing endless TG's, I landed with full flaps and inadvertently left in for the T/O roll. Full throttle, plane lifted at 40 kt (way too slow), rose to about 10-15 feet and would not accelerate beyond 50kt with climb-out attitude. Realizing my mistake, I retracted the flaps, the plane dropped and made a light bounce, and away we went. Close call, but a good lesson after all. Could our hapless pilot have realized a (possible) T/O error, and tried to correct by retracting the flaps while still in a climb-out attitude, thereby inducing a stall?

I would think they would not have a rookie doing demo flights for prospective customers ...but I don’t know any details on who was piloting the thing so it is just a guess.

Warmi wrote:I would think they would not have a rookie doing demo flights for prospective customers

This was not "they" (Icon) demonstrating, but rather a private owner from Tennessee trying to sell his plane to a prospective buyer in Michigan.

drseti wrote:

Warmi wrote:I would think they would not have a rookie doing demo flights for prospective customers

This was not "they" (Icon) demonstrating, but rather a private owner from Tennessee trying to sell his plane to a prospective buyer in Michigan.

Did he offer a discount after they hit the water?

In the youtube comments someone who was there stated that the pilot was a flight instructor.