From: tmorris@convex.com (Terry Morris)
Subject: Confessions of non-pilot
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 19:02:44 GMT
Organization: Engineering, CONVEX Computer Corp., Richardson, Tx., USA
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by a user at CONVEX Computer
              Corp. The opinions expressed are those of the user and
              not necessarily those of CONVEX.


	I loved to hear the biplane that woke me most summer mornings. 
The Mosquito Control spray planes were out at dawn, roaring along just 
off the deck while spraying a thick mist of diesel fuel mixed with 
insecticide. We lived in a two-story house on South Merritt Island at the 
time, and the plane which sprayed our area would make a long run across 
a swamp, then pop up to just clear our house, then back down. I could hear 
him coming, and if I jumped out of bed in time, I could see his landing 
gear clear the top of the roof by just a couple feet as I looked out my 
window. I don't know how you feel about those who pilot Mosquito Control 
planes, but to those of us living in a swampy area, they were real heros. 
They wore goggles and leather helmets, white scarves, and flew _real_ 
airplanes, Stearmans and Wacos, the kind with two wings and a distinctive 
roar. 
	
	I wanted to join them up there, and as I looked out my second-story
window, I could imagine the scene in front of me as seen through a windscreen.
Diving low after passing the house, racing along just feet over the orange
grove while streaming a continuous white cloud, then back on the stick and
kick in the rudder to stand it on a wingtip at the treeline. Finish the turn,
pull back on the stick, and I'm screaming along again, just feet off the 
deck, silk scarf snapping in the breeze.

	I wanted to go on airplane rides, had airplane models, flew control-
line stunt, watched airplane movies, and could not wait to grow up and fly.
I was in school just a few miles from Cape Canaveral. We were all going to
grow up and be astronauts. We had to be good at math and science, and we
were all going to learn to fly. Anytime I could get to the airport, I would
sit by the fence and watch the planes come and go for hours. I watched
Martin Caidin's Junkers JU-2 in later years as it lumbered along, the 
three engines howling to maintain what seemed like 40 KIAS. 

	One summer, when I was sixteen, I got a view of aviation from a 
different perspective. The first crash occurred early in the morning, in 
the fog. The pilot flew just over our house, low and slow, in a pea-soup fog. 
He continued 1/4 mile west until he was over the Indian River, where he 
attempted to get under the clouds. His plane hit the water hard, knocking 
him unconscious, and he drowned before a neighbor could row out and unstrap 
him. He had taken off from Merritt Island Airport to fly to Rockledge, about 
a three mile flight. Several homeowners in different areas near the crash 
reported hearing him fly very low before the crash, suggesting that he was 
lost. He did something stupid, and he died for it. His Cessna drifted just
off the dock at the end of our street for three days, wing tops just above 
the surface, the tail submerged. It had shucked the engine on impact.

	The second crash came the next day. Another plane taking off from 
the Merritt Island airport bound for Rockledge. The ambulance had just left 
when I saw the group of cars at a friend's house. I asked what was going on, 
and he said a plane had crashed in the river. I couldn't believe it, so we 
walked down the dirt road and there it was. In about three feet of water, 
seats and papers and stuff floating around a twisted up red and white plane. 
The guy from the airport had gone back to get a john boat to load the stuff.
Some of it was drifting away with the breeze, so we waded in and piled it up 
on the bank. I stubbed my foot on something about twenty feet from the plane,
it was the nosewheel strut mounting plate, sticking out about 3" from the 
sand bottom. The rest of the assembly was firmly inserted. I turned around 
and stumbled over something else, which turned out to be the engine. "He was 
going 180", my friend said. I asked what he meant, and he said that the 
ambulance driver told him that when he peeled the guy off the instruments, 
the airspeed indicator was jammed at 180. He asked me if I wanted to see it, 
and I said no, thanks, I've seen enough. It turns out that the plane had 
been sitting for weeks, the pilot did not do a thorough preflight, and 
missed the mud-dauber nests over the fuel vents. He tried to turn around 
when the engine lost power, stalled it, and ended up very dead in the river 
behind my friend's house.

	The third incident in three days was luckily not a crash, but an
exciting time for the pilot. While inverted at the top of a loop, just
off the beach at Sebastian Inlet, the prop suddenly departed the shaft of 
his Pitt's Special bipe. He continued the loop, which left him a two hundred
feet above, and lined up with, the thin strip of beach at high tide. With the
Atlantic on his right, and the dunes on his left, he set it down dead-stick
on the soft sand. The next day, they got a prop and flew it out at low tide.

	By the end of the week, when we head a small plane, we looked up to
see if it was crashing. There were a few more over the summer, of course, 
but none in our neighborhood.

	The next incidents came later, but claimed a schoolmate, engine 
failure on takeoff after engine work; the father of a friend and owner 
of a multimillion-dollar construction company, crosswind landing in a twin
that ended up in the trees; and a next-door neighbor. Somebody did something
stupid. Somebody died.
	
	Still, I loved the biplanes. They weren't spam-cans that got in 
wrecks like so many airborne autos, they were _real_ airplanes. Real pilots
flew them and did neat tricks in them. When I was first married, my wife and
I would spend Sunday afternoons parked along the Banana River watching a
Pitts Special. It was owned by a group of pilots from Patrick AFB, and a
couple of them did aerobatics over the water on Sunday afternoons for about
a half-hour at a time. It was like a free airshow, and since it was in 
viewing and hearing distance from a mall, crowds would gather to watch. It 
was a pretty good show, too when these jet-jocks got hold of a hot tail-
dragger and put it through the paces. Until the upper wing blew off at the 
bottom of a loop, and the pilot died trying like crazy to get it to pull 
out on the remaining wing. Undoubtedly somebody somewhere did something 
stupid during an assembly or maintenence step, or the pilot exceeded a 
G-limit or airspeed, and somebody died.

	Why don't I fly GA aircraft? I make mistakes, get preoccupied, 
in short, I am just waiting to do something stupid. I have seen too many
bent airplanes, bloody seats, and heard too many "he was a very careful,
cautious pilot" stories. I have read too many NTSB reports about the 
interactions between aircraft, aircraft malfunctions, people, and people
malfunctions. I got the phone call about my cousin's death.  He was 
taking heli lessons. He had over 6,000 hours in military and GA fixed wing 
aircraft. Somebody did something stupid and a rotor came apart in flight. 
There wasn't anything they could do. I am not saying that the pilots who fly 
GA are all going to die horrible flaming deaths, and I do realize that there 
is significant risk inherent in any mode of transportation. I am not going 
to engage in risk statistic specsmanship. But I do believe that the 
cumulative effects of maintenence errors, the age and condition of the 
aircraft available for rental, miscommunications, distractions, and plain 
old attacks of the dumbs cause the risks to exceed the rewards _for_ me_. 

	I remain incredibly interested in aviation, love to design and build
and experiment with RC planes, and have really enjoyed this newsgroup for the
past 4 years. I am sure I will get the "another little airplane hater" label,
and my share of flames, but think that this viewpoint needs to be at least
considered by those of you who fly GA. Don't blow off all your future 
passenger's concerns as ignorance or regard them as victims of media hype.
There are real considerations that one must make prior to committing one's
safety to a private pilot in a GA aircraft, and the pilot's skill is just
one of those considerations. Of course I get kidded by my pilot friends who 
want to know why I won't fly to get a hamburger from the next county or go 
up for an afternoon of touch-and-goes. It's just a stupid fear, or more
precisely a fear of something stupid.