IDAHO WING HEADQUARTERS, CAP

IDAHO WING SAFETY OFFICE BULLETIN

Maj. Gary Iverson Sr, Wing SE

22 December 2006 (January Bulletin)

**[Common Sense and Our CAP Missions]{.underline}**

We are now at the beginning of a new year in CAP. Great! We have a
chance to make this year, another star safety year for Idaho. We have
already experienced the clarion wake-up call of safety in the tragic
loss of the aircraft in Wyoming: no matter how wise, experienced, or
knowledgeable we may be, we could still become a statistic. Ah, the
frailty and fallibility of the human condition.

It was the great American humorist, Samuel Clemons who said, "Common
sense ain't so common some times." And so it is. This issue will be a
tad bit longer than my normal issue due to some humorous examples that
may serve to peak your focus on how easy it is to "lack" common sense.

1: From an altitude of 11,500 MSL I watched about 2 dozen snowmobiles
line up on a large long pond, up by a ski area just N.E. of the SCL
area. Temps were about 15\*F. The snow and ice on the large pond, which
was about the size of a couple of football fields, was covered with
water that looked to be no more than 4 to 5 feet deep. As I watched, one
by one they would each buzz to the opposite end of the pond, hit the
accelerator and streak across the full length of the ice-water at about
(my best guess) 60 to 70 MPH to shoot up the slope, and back to where
they originally had been before the exhibition began. This is called
"snowmoboating" by affectionados. Well.......

In Montana, an unnamed fella did the same with some friends and their
snowmobiles. They shot across the reservoir one by one with great
success. I'm sure it seemed safe enough, after all, they had been doing
it for some time and it was lots of fun! On this one occasion, it was a
hot July when they all were enjoying this activity. This one fella had
only one problem.... he couldn't swim. No big deal, he wasn't going to
need to swim anyway. He had literally, shot across well over 200 yards
of deep water already that day. As he turned and shot back across the
dam area, he suddenly lost momentum, and...... you guessed it..... he
sunk like a rock! He rode it all the way to bottom of the reservoir. No
life jacket (not required for snowmobiles), no flotation gear, though he
could not swim a lick! And he became the state's very first snowmobile
drowning stat.

2: The loss of the Pinnacle Air RJ-200 is one that provides some good
insight into the idea that no matter how smart, bright, trained, and
knowledgeable you may be (or not), you can still get yourself into a
whole lot of trouble! The Captain of the aircraft, Jesse, was 31 YOA.
The co-pilot, Peter, was 23 YOA. Because of what they were assigned to
do, transfer the RJ to another base for scheduled flight ops, you have
some good idea already of their flight training and background. Though
well trained and (probably) well skilled, they took on a moment of human
fallibility and became the providers of this true story synopsis:

The bird was light, there were no passengers, and they figured to see
what it could do. They set the auto control to take them to 41,000 MSL
as quickly as it could do so with the power available. It is estimated
that it was a great ride with G-forces of around 2.3 Gs. Wow! That must
have been a lot of fun too! Cool. Here are a few of the recorded
statements and conversations:

a\) Controller: "3701, are you an RJ-200?" Crew: "That's affirmative."
(Cool huh?) The crew laughed together as they replied, "Yeah, we're
actually a,... there's ah,... we don't have any passengers on board, so
we decided to have a little fun, and come on up here."

b\) Now, the auto-control was still in the maximum climb setting they
had placed it in at ground level, and it was still attempting to
maintain that climb at 41,000 MSL.

"Dude, it's losing it!" spoke one of the pilots, as he swore. "Yeah!"
responded the other.

c\) The bird stalled out at 41,000 MSL. One pilot observed, "We don't
have any engines." (Both engines had experienced complete failure and
compressor stall out.) "You gotta be kidding!" said the other (As the
light sloooowly dawned upon their dimly lighted wits.)

d\) They had enough altitude to glide for 14 minutes. Finally they
radioed control, "We need direct to any airport. We have a double engine
failure." (I'm sure they did this in a calm and professional manner.
Right?) However, by then, they had already glided past 5 other fully
suitable airports, which they now, could not reach.

e\) Pilot, "We're going to hit one of those houses, dude!" Well, the
good news is that they missed the houses...\...the bad news is that they
also missed the airport and both died in the crash.

f\) "It is beyond belief that a professional air crew would act in that
manner!" said a former manager of Pinnacle's training program for the
Bombardier CRJ-200. Comments, anyone?!

3: A couple of paramedic students were going through some of the usual
boring stuff in the classroom. One day, the one fella, as he often did,
picked up the paddles on the defibrillator and jokingly said, "Juice me
up." This time, para student #2 obliged his request, charged the paddles
to about 360 Jules, and let him have it. He took about 6 steps before he
collapsed in full cardiac arrest. When the "real" paramedics arrived, it
took another full 360 joules to restore his normal heart rhythm. He was
fully intubated, given one round of epi, and brought in "post-code" to
the emergency room. They worked on him there for another 4 hours to
stabilize him. In the true EMS spirit, he is now called by several
nicknames such as, Sparky, AC/DC, and Joules. Two rules:

a)  If you don't know what it is, "DON'T TOUCH IT!"

b)  If you do know what it is, "Don't kill anyone with it!"

Aftermath: Para-student #2 had to write on the board 100 times, "I will
not electrocute my classmates." Well, it was all sorts of fun for a
while, wasn't it? As I've said many times, "God seems to protect kids,
fools, and idiots.....I'm just not sure which one, I am." Ah, the smell
of humility, which comes from various "experiences" in life..... uh,
let's be moving right along......

4: Ingenuity, like curiosity, almost killed the cat....er...killed the
guy. It happened in Croatia. Really. The guy wanted to build a device to
help him clean out a very long chimney. It was way too long for a wooden
rod or chimney broom, so some adaptation was needed. So, if he could
attach a long chain, with a heavy weight on the end to the brush..... it
might work great. So, he found a large, round, heavy metal weight to
weld to the chain. As he welded the heavy metal object to the chain,
which just happened to be a (about 16 pound) hand grenade to the chain,
it went off killing him, blowing up his shed, and really messing up his
day. Oh, the chimney was unharmed. I'm sure that Marco knew it was a
grenade, but.........? And so it goes.

5: Last one: Many of you may not be aware that we have a new Safety
Officer on Region Staff. His name Don Johanson. Don has a real grasp on
reality and common sense ideas as applied to safety. We were discussing
such items by email and he told me of a discussion he came upon between
members of the USAF aircraft inspection team guys and a couple of our
CAP pilots. The discussion, [from our pilots]{.underline}, seemed to
center on the fact that the rules did NOT say that an aircraft installed
fire extinguisher had to be in working order, only that it had to be
there -- it was...... Uh, do I reeeeally need to add any comment about
common sense not being so common any more? Boy! And, they were some of
our own CAP professionally trained pilots, too!

Great news! We can each fix this one right now: Let's promise to do as a
desk sign I once had said, "Thimk Ahead". That way we will always get it
right, right?! We [really do]{.underline} need each other.

Always yours with a smile,

Gary Iverson, Sr. Idaho Wing Safety Officer