Almost Hits Corsair!

by ANN Associate Editor Rob Finfrock

C'Mon, Guys...

When your day begins with watching an absolutely gorgeous red-and-yellow Decathlon as its pilot practices touch-and-goes on a calm, coolish (well, for Dallas -- 75 degree) morning, you know there are still at least a few things right with the world. Flying funk? What flying funk?

And then you read the news.

This morning, still buzzed from the spectacle of short approaches and perfect three-point landings, I came across an item written by Mark Baylis, staff writer for the Santa Maria (CA) Times. The headline: "Plane crash almost strikes spectators."

Like it or not, plane crashes are news -- especially this month. (Never mind what Green Day says, wake me up when August ends.) Anyway, I clicked on the link, hoping to read of tragedy averted, due to the last-minute heroics of a pilot who is still in one piece.
 
"The Thunder Over the Valley air show had a scary start Saturday when a radio-controlled plane lost its radio frequency, veered into the spectator area and crashed, nearly striking bystanders."

Um, okay. Further reading reveals that the plane in question wasn't a real -- full-sized, pilot-sits-in-it -- airplane, but rather a radio-controlled Piper Cub that looks from the photograph to have been about 1/10 scale.

I read on. According to the article, the accident plane belonged to a member of the Tri-Valley R/C Modelers club, an organization that has had a booth at the air show for 10 years. This was the first year the club performed -- and sadly, will likely be the last.

"Larry Schlagel, president of the Santa Maria-based RC club and pilot of the errant plane, said the plane lost its radio frequency, causing the free fall. The plane crashed in the spectator area - missing several heads by less than six feet - and crashed beside a vintage plane that was on display." 

Of course this is a tragedy -- at least for the unfortunate Schlagel, who no doubt watched helplessly from the ground as the aircraft he was flying, and probably built himself, dropped from the sky and crashed into several pieces against the sun-baked concrete tarmac of the Santa Maria (SMX) airport.

I also sympathize with those spectators, some of whom where likely sufficiently scared into never attending an air show ever again. Seeing an aircraft falling from the sky would certainly be a frightening event, radio-controlled or not -- even more so if said airplane is heading right towards you.

(In fact, I'd be running with all my might, just as I did the time I saw an airplane directly overhead, in a spin, when I was twelve. Scary -- and while that airplane recovered in plenty of time and flew out of the spin well above 1500 ft AGL, you couldn't convince me at the time that I hadn't just witnessed a near cataclysmic event. I even still wonder, a little.)

Back to the article. "The accident ended the RC portion of the event Saturday and organizers canceled the RC slot schedule for [Sunday] as a safety precaution until they could figure out what happened."

Certainly understandable. In fact, so far I was mentally giving kudos to Baylis for his fairly restrained tone... until it all went wrong.

And not because of Baylis.

"Safety is number one," [air show director Mike] Geddry said. "That thing is flying fast as a bullet and someone is going to get hurt."
 
There were several things wrong with this, and I'm a guy who appreciates some well-thrown hyperbole. "Someone is going to get hurt," sounds too much like we're to assume one day, somewhere, a person IS going to get hit by an errant airplane. Just pray that it isn't you, or someone you care about! This from the director of an AIR SHOW?

Besides, show me a Cub anywhere, model or otherwise, that can fly as fast as a well-thrown baseball, never mind a bullet. Granted, the baseball hurts when it hits you, and that's without a spinning propeller attached to it, but still -- didn't the article just say that the airplane was in "free fall?"

But that's okay... next up Baylis quoted an actual pilot, in fact the owner of the vintage Corsair that almost got hit by the errant (one-tenth scale, remember, radio-controlled) Cub. Surely he'd set the record straight... right?

"Chuck Wentworth, who flew the vintage Corsair plane that was nearly struck by the smaller plane, said there wasn't enough oversight for the RC flyers."

"This is a $1.8 million airplane," Wentworth said of the Corsair. "It's going to put a real damper on the show. I can't risk my airplane." Wentworth noted that the plane's owner probably wouldn't enter it next year because of the accident."

So according to this, the owner of the Corsair (not Wentworth, apparently, although he clearly considers it at least partly his) won't enter his airplane in next year's show, all because of an R/C model that ALMOST hit his airplane?

I'll be the first to admit that I will probably never have $1.8 million dollars to spend on anything, much less an airplane. I salute, admire, and envy the heck out of anyone who does, and can.

But Chuck, really, what was the greater risk: having your plane hit by a marauding model airplane (especially of it happening ever again) or having you -- or anyone -- fly the darn thing to the show in the first place?

It's one thing for "the media" to spin something like this in a way that may very well discourage someone from ever attending an air show -- one of the single most accessible ways for people to participate in the joys of flying. It even gets to the point when you start to expect it.

But when pilots (and those who put on air shows) start doing the same thing, we're done!

Yeah, it wasn't "my" plane that was almost hit, Chuck, okay. And Mike, I'd be ticked too if something like this happened at my show, scaring people and potentially tanking tomorrow's attendance figures in the process.

But please, couldn't you both have been just a little more pragmatic about all this? No one was hurt, no property (other than the Cub) was damaged.

And each and every person who saw that accident yesterday was at much greater risk the moment they got in their cars to drive home, than they ever were or will be watching an air show.

Why didn't one of you say that?

FMI: www.trivalleyrcmodelers.com/