I believe there where
severe thunderstorms on the ILS approach path. This is why the pilot cancelled IFR 10
miles south. He new he could not
fly the ILS and remain out of the Tstorm cells. If you follow the flight path on Flight
Tracker.com the airplane made it to FFU vortac the
IAF for the ILS 13 approach. But he
never flew the approach. The pilot
then headed for the airport. He
never was established on the ILS but he was aligned with the runway. Earlier that week he had received
extensive flight training from HPATS, Pete Z. Much of this training involved flying
the ILS13 approach to PVU so it was not new to him. He was at the IAF and was
IFR but he elected to forgo the IFR approach opportunities and cancelled. He was also an active CFI out of the PVU
airport and had a lot of experience teaching the ILS to students. As a note, the last advice given the
pilot was to not fly the airplane at night until he had 50 hours and not fly
IMC until he had 100 hours.
My theory is that he left the FFU vortac heading and decending for
PVU. He didn’t realize how
fast the IVPT accelerates in a decent and how slow it loses acceleration. These airplanes are just “slippery”. He couldn’t lose the airspeed before
making the runway threshold and decided to make a 360 instead of aborting the
landing, flying a missed approach, and re entering the pattern. He starts the turn, continues to lose
altitude dips a wing and cartwheels the airplane.
It is possible he had one chance to make
the airport before another thunderstorm got in his way. And we know the rest of the story…
I had a friend working in his hangar until
2:00 am the night of the accident.
The storms were so intense he thought he was going to loose his door and
roof that night. I don’t
think the pilot ever penetrated a thunderstorm cell but they were certainly
having an effect on his decision making.
Bryan
N132BB
-----Original Message-----
From: Lancair Mailing List
[mailto:lml@lancaironline.net] On Behalf Of Sky2high@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 27, 2006 2:07
PM
To: Lancair Mailing List
Subject: [LML] Re: no more tragic
news please!
In a
message dated 6/27/2006 5:07:54 A.M. Central Standard Time,
skipslater@earthlink.net writes:
The reason for the turn at 1.5 miles was threefold:
750' AGL (300'
above a normal glidepath)
210 KIAS
(about 100 knots too fast)
1900 fpm rate of
descent (around 1200 fpm higher than a normal descent
rate)
That
plane was coming down like a clean brick to try to salvage an unsalvageable
approach when at 1.5 miles, it became obvious that a right 360 was needed to
get down and slow down enough to land. Apparently, the turn into the dark
combined with an unarrested sink rate resulted in flying into the water a
little over halfway through the turn.
Hmmmm,
I just looked at the ILS and GPS plates for runway 13 at KPVU. This
is another example of a puzzler that makes one wonder what was the start of the
chain of errors and why it wasn't broken. There should have been plenty
of "instrument" guidance available - even in the VMC conditions
that existed. Turning over the dark water should have been a
non-event with an approach dialed into the system and reversion
to instrument scan.
I
remember that during a night currency flight on a dark "cloudless"
night with the city lights to the east and the unlit cornfields to the
west, I was on the downwind to rwy 9 and the turn to base left me in the
black hole of an errant cloud. Reverting to instruments kept the plane
level until emerging from that little bugger. The lesson learned was to
expect anything at night and dial in the ILS if one is available for the
runway.