http://www.wimp.com/parkedaircraft/
Wow... that took off... really well. You could see it pitch real bad to the starboard. I don't think it ended well. GT
The big mistake was locking the elevator in a nose up position. After that it was just a matter of time.... On my airplane the gust lock held the elevator in a nose down position. The more wind the more it pushed the nose down and that kept the wing from getting enough AOA to take off... This airplane was set for too much nose up and away it went. As noted, I'm pretty sure it didn't end well.
Have to wonder who didn't tie the plane down and why. Was it a rental at a FBO? An owner who just went to grab a bite to eat? I never left a plane untied if I was leaving the FBO premises, but I wouldn't tie down if I was just stopping for fuel and hitting the pilots lounge for "a few minutes". Would love to know the rest of the story...
I've seen plenty of windy days when there were enough gusts to fly an untied airplane. Remember if the plane is light on fuel and there is nobody in it, it will probably fly quite nicely at 40 - 50 kts. At one time there were plastic spoiler things that you could buy to snap on the leading edges to prevent this kind of thing. I haven't seen them lately, but I'm sure they are still around. There are also suction cup things that can be attached to the wing to act like spoilers and prevent this kind of thing. Once I got stuck at an airport where there were no tie downs on the ramp and 3 feet of snow on all the grass, and the wind was really going to start kicking up that night (50-60 kt gusts were predicted). I went to the lumber yard and bought two long 2x4's and got some padding and bungieed them over the wing near the max thickness point so that they acted like spoilers. My plane was still pretty much in the same spot where it was parked the next morning. One plane had moved so much that it was in the snowbank and one other had taken off and flipped. Mine might not have, but I sure didn't want to find out if it would. A couple of bucks for the 2x4's and some bungees was cheap insurance.
We had a Decathlon get loose from its tie-down ropes and fly on top of a nearby Cessna 172 at our local airport. Sadly, the damage was enough to total both planes. I remember the wind storm - it was a duesey. This photo is poor quality - it is from a local newspaper article. . Image Unavailable, Please Login
Wow! Doesn't even look real. Yikes. To my untrained eye it doesn't look like that much damage when compared to what we see in car wrecks. Maybe the pic just doesn't show the extent. Are planes ridiculously expensive (relative to their cost/value) to repair so they are easily totaled?
I know plenty of guys who could and would rebuild those two airplanes. I helped on several spam cans that we rebuilt from a hurricane in Florida and helped on a couple here in Seattle. I guess those birds are being " insurance company totaled".
Yes, "totalled" from an insurance point of view, from what I heard second-hand. The 172's wings were bent back toward the tail some - the tie-down ropes held the wings in place a little too well. I think the Decathlon was parked in the row of planes that is upwind from the 172's row of planes. The Decathlon broke loose and flew backward into the wings of the 172, hitting it from the front, and rolling over the top of the wings. I'm sure the planes still had quite a bit of value to them. Just parting out the avionics/radios would be worth some money.
One interesting rebuild from the hurricane damage was the joining of two Cessna 140's, one had the nose bashed and one had the tail crushed. We joined the two by unriveting them at a joint just aft of the wing and rejoined the good parts. Some deep repairs on the wings, new struts, and a recover did it just fine.
My dad had a Cessna 140a when I was a little kid. I remember flying with him in it back when I was about 4 years old. Great little plane, worth saving.
Well, except no one is operating the control surfaces She might "fly" but she ain't gonna land in any way approaching proper.... Jedi
A total failure of discipline here. There is a drill called pre-flight, there is a drill called post flight that includes TIE DOWN. No matter what the weather is when you shut down you ALWAYS tied down. Where I flew 1000 years ago we had chains and things called WINDS. They could get very strong when a cell was poking around or when some idiot ran his airplane up in the wrong place.
Ok, if there was a conveyor belt moving at the same speed in the opposite direction of the wind, would the plane have lifted off?
