Terrence,
You said:
Drivers are safe? Over 40,000 people are killed on
our roads every year. Over a million are seriously injured.
Floating statistics. How m any driver-hours per fatality?
Also, we who own our roads and cars find this level of safety acceptable,
adn don;t want any government agency telling us when to go, when to turn, how
to operate our cars, other than speed limits posted too low, for the
insurance lobbies, and for providing enforcers justification for their cars
and equipment... not that most of them don;t do a good job of helping people
in need, and catching obviously unsafe drivers, drunks, etc. Why are
posted speeds 10 to 20 mph different for identical roads in two different
states?
GA Pilots are safe? Part 91 flying is 25 time
more hazardous that Part 121.
Another un-checked statistic. Have you researched accidetn data
(like I did) and found that the airlines report safety in terms of passesnger
miles? Is a 747 with 500 passengers 500 times safer than one with jujst
crew? And since that's abviously a lying statistic, one must ask why the
FAA and airlines report such data... and why pilots like yourself do not
question it, or see the fallicy of it. In truth, in terms of pilot-hours
flown, the GenAve aircraft are a little less (insignificant percentasge) safe
than airlines, even considering thet the airline piklots have state of the art
equipment, top training and proficiency, and are baby-sat from taxi clearance
to shut-down. Comapre that to the average low time pilot, flying his
ramp-roped 25-year-old airknocker with steam gages and low compression thrice
overhauled engines, etc.
Come to Oshkosh and sit down with me and let's go
over the Lancair accident statistics. You show me where the airplane let down
the pilot, versus where the pilot let down the airplane. Be at the Lancair
Forum at 1730 Thursday.
I've already done over the Lancair accident statistics, so you'll have to
do it yourself. I don't know if I'll arrive in time for the Forum,
but I'd like to.
In the meantime, let me point out again several posts problems
1. I've noted on a number of previous posts: the 2-seat Lancairs haev
too-light a pitchcontrol, in lbs-per-G,a s documented by CAFE tests.
This was also complained about by a top AF test pilot, in detail.
Probably most Lancair piltos just disregard informatiojn they didn;t want to
hear, because they didn't know what to do about it.. I've suggested a
correction, and am doing it to my L235/320.
2. The horizontal tail is too small -- evidenced by very slow
stall-recovery. Everyone knows this but you, and I read many LML posts
confession fear of stalling, i guess. Austrailia required the tail be
enlarged. I've suggested a better cure, and will try it on my own.
Airplanes have been improved immensely in the last
ten years or so. I have EFIS screens with moving map, datalink weather, a
bitching betty telling me when I get too close to stall. Sterling Ainsworth
had that and a turbine powered airplane.. but he flew into convective activity
because he did not pay for the Canadian WSI subscription, iced up his pitot
tube (which most likely had pitot heat off) and put the aircraft
into a full power dive until the tail departed. How much safer could his
airplane been designed? He purposely flew an airplane into conditions he knew
before hand were hazardous-- did it anyway and somehow this kind of accident
is the airplane's fault? I call it "free will."
Again, Jeff, you're talking about avionics and pilots, not the airplane
itself.
Cirrus's have a ballistic parachutes yet pilots still
fail to pull the handle when they should. Too late, too fast, out of the
envelope--fatal and this is the airplanes fault?
Tell this to Cirrus.
Of course everything could be better with future
techology -- but we ain't got it today and even if we did you can't force
everyone to run out and buy it. There will still be someone 100 years from
today flying a J-3 Cub to Oshkosh and they will still be flying the Ford
trimotor there. I hope to be there.
You hope to still be flying J3
technology even 100 years from now?
Terrence