Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "KING 5 Seattle" channel.

  1. Pilot with an aerobatics endorsement here: He's NOT to low for aerobatics. He's too low for this specific situation of recovering from inverted flight this close to the surface by pulling through. The normal recovery is to roll upright first. I came here to see this after watching Juan Browne's take (Blancolirio Channel) and he said you should NOT do aerobatics below 3,000ft. Here in Australia our basic aerobatics endorsement (and yes we have a endorsement for aerobatics) requires all manoeuvres to be RECOVERED ABOVE 3,000ft What we can then get are what's called LOW LEVEL WAIVERS. I have mine for 1,500 ft which means I have to recover all manoeuvres above 1,500 ft. In Comp aerobatics which I was doing the 1,500 ft waiver is the 1st waiver we get. After that we get waivers for 800ft for advanced and 500ft for unlimited. The air show guys get a surface waiver which means they can go right down to the surface. That allows them to do things like low level inverted passes and ribbon cutting. To get that waiver I had to do additional training and prove my ability with additional manoeuvres including - steep (>60deg bank) inverted turns - reverse 1/2 Cubans where you climb first to an up 45 line then 1/2 roll and then pull through a 5/8 loop towards the ground - reverse sharpies which like the 1/2 Rev Cuban starts with a 45 up 1/2 roll to inverted. Instead of a 5/8 loop you pull to a vertical down line and then pull again back to level. The pre-briefing for all of those flights required me to explain to my instructor the FAILED MANOUVRE RECOVERY for each manoeuvre we would do. That meant that before we even got in the air that I had to know what my altitude needed to be BEFORE starting a figure and especially before PULLING TOWARDS the GROUND. So we have (and as far as I know its the same or similar in other places) a HUGE emphasis on situational awareness. None of us know exactly what's happened but one thing is for certain he was too low to pull through like that. Because the film is so short we don't know what he was doing right before hand. So we don't know HOW he got inverted as in why the plane ended up inverted that low to the ground. Having done aerobatics over water I can say its easier to lose reference to the surface because there's no surface texture to gauge altitude you have to pay more attention to the altimeter. Either way this is a tragedy and the loss of one of my heroes. As a small child I watched those guys go to the moon.
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  2.  @AviationJeremy  No probs. Never forget: Flying is one of the greatest things you can do. I had to step away from flying because of an illness and haven't got back. So I utterly know what its like to be up there doing things that are near magic to normal people and then NOT be able to do it. As an engineer I was once told this great comparison between mistresses and a particular technology. The flying equivalent goes like this. An air plane is a pilots mistress. She is beautiful and magical and lets us play with her in ways that most other humans can never understand, but like all mistresses the moment we disrespect her she ruthlessly wrecks our life.
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