Good facts, not !
It was Sun & Fun in Florida, but you were close, not!
Sent from my iPhone Many thanks Bill for sharing that first hand account of an unlatched canopy.
My comment was a reflection of what I had been told or had read somewhere previously (not from actual experience) and I am happy to be corrected, especially from those who have been there and done that.
Yes we need to carefully check the canopy is latched before takeoff. Thanks again.
Gary
Sent from my iPad
I am sorry, Gary, but I have to disagree
with that third sentence. The Legacy can NOT be flown safely with the
canopy unlatched! If you take off with the canopy unlatched, you MAY
survive…I did! You MAY not damage the plane…I did! Several
others have not survived. It is a harrowing experience! I now check
the canopy latch several times before each takeoff!
When the canopy is closed it takes a
little extra force to move it up off the canopy seal, then it is easier to
raise and you have the gas struts helping you. So at about 60 knots, the
canopy will suddenly pop up and go all the way or nearly to the stops. This
action blanks off the elevator and you lose pitch control. The canopy
then is blown back down and you temporarily regain pitch control before it is
sucked back up for another round. By the time it is headed back up the
second time, you had better have the power off and using that short instance of
pitch control to get the plane either on the ground or close enough for a hard
landing. If this happened at 100 feet or so, flowers would be in order.
It is possible that you could unlatch the
canopy at cruise speed and it would only open a few inches, but when you tried
to land, the lack of prop blast would put you back into this regime. I don’t
recommend trying any of it. Latch the damn canopy!
Bill B
Not quiet right Fred.
VH-ALP has the standard canopy hinged from the front. I am not certain
if it was or wasn't a training flight, but hear there was only one on board.
The aircraft can be flown safely with the canopy unlatched as it trails
in the slip stream. It would however be very distracting and noisy.
If in fact it was an unlocked canopy that caused this accident it is
not the first Legacy to be lost in that manner. Oshkosh about 3 years ago saw a similar
accident.
I hope Gerry recovers from the terrible burns he has received.
On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 12:32 PM, Frederick Moreno <frederickmoreno@bigpond.com>
wrote:
A friend sent me the news report and just called
after phoning contacts he knows at the Geraldton
Airport which is about 200 miles
north of Perth
on the Coast. An imported US-built Legacy crashed shortly after take off,
rolled on impact and burned. It was a training mission, first
report is crew badly injured. Airport personnel were very quickly at
the crash site.
My friend learned in subsequent phone calls that
while Legacy aircraft have the canopy hinged at the front, this one had the
canopy hinged at the BACK (mistake number one). At about 200 feet it
popped open, but did not break off and so created huge drag and probably
blanked the vertical stabilizer and rudder. Pilot attempted to turn
back to the runway (mistake number two). Sink rate soared during the
turn and the plane went down.
Two huge mistakes in a row. It beggars belief.
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