Well congratulations my friend. It is a pleasure to know that there are some pilots around who are honest enough to admit that it was their mistake that caused a problem.
We've all heard the lines: "I don't know what happened, musta been interfearance, or someone musta shot me down, they musta used cheep materials to have the wing snap like that and on and on and on the list goes! Everything under the sun caused the problem exceipt pilot error!
We were out at the field one day to give a maiden flight to a new 1/4 scale aircraft. It was a low wing craft with approx 100" span, about 16 lbs AUW running a Saito 2.20 glow four stroke. More than enough power for that plane!
Now the pilot doing the flight test had not seen the plane before that day. He is one of the best "Hotdog" pilots I personally have ever seen. He flew a 40% scale aerobatic plane and he could make that plane do anything. He could hover about 6" off the deck doing torque rolls. He'd pull up and come back across the full length of the field on knife edge again with the wing tip only 6" off the deck and slow.....Anyway just an amazing pilot.
He took off into the roughly 20km headwind and got about 40' of altitude and cut back on the throttle. Huh? Turned cross wind and I could see the plane wobbling slightly. He looked like he was hardly moving at this point. He then cranked in about a 60 degree bank as he attempted to turn downwind. The plane just continued to roll, nose pitched down and the plane went into a spin and hit the ground with a horrible thud. Scratch one new 1/4 scale plane. This whole sequence took less than one minute from start to tragic finish!
He turned and looked at us with a dumb blank expression and said it...." I don't know what happened. It was like I had no control. The plane wouldn't respond to my inputs. Musta been some sort of mechanical failure....I dunno...No control!"
NOW, just from reading this I know that you know exactly what happened! But to this day he contends that it must have been some sort of glitch or a mechanical failure.....again, it had to be anything but pilot error!
Anyway, thanks for your story bbbair. It is refreshing to hear from an honest pilot and one who is human enough to actually make mistakes.....AND admit it was his fault. Good on you my friend.
