52F

Nope - the huge amount of air involved just gets hotter and hotter from the first blades (compressor) on through the engine. It might be possible to drown one out with lots of water - but it would probably take a fire hose or two.

Seriously, I think we really should stay quiet on the speculation here as some people's friends were involved. Emotion and personal feelings involved here.

I had a very good friend (my next door neighbor and flying buddy) killed in an aerobatic practice accident in the early 1990s...all the people in our little aerobatic group did everything in our power to think up some kind of non-pilot-error scenario for this. It was basically nothing more than just an unrecovered stall/spin while practicing snap rolls.

Finally, after about a year, two of the guys and I were talking about it. The emotions having quieted down - we all privately admitted to ourselves that it was really pilot error.

We never said this to the guy's ex-wife and daughter, of course.

 

Inlet icing can be an issue. Do not know whether or not this conversion had a heated inlet. I think the big danger here is getting ice and then ingesting it into the compressor blades.

 

http://www.airsafe.com/events/celebs/jfk_jr.htm

 

The JFK flight was not IFR, but was the next thing to it because it was a very dark night over dark water out of the sight of land. I am not sure if the plane was stalled or just went into an unrecoverable spiral - but it did abruptly fall as you say.

 

Ok.
Hypothetical situation here.
Single engine plane. Turbine. IFR flight plan-3000 ft in the soup.

As much as we all like to think we will hand fly it, let's be honest. On autopilot merely chasing the bug as directled by ATC.

Primary is below minimums, head to secondary by changing heading while still on autopilot.

Unexpectedly, you fly into a microburst/wind shear. Autopilot is on- maintaining altitude.

Here is the question.

Is the pressure from the autopilot ( attempting to maintain altitude) against the wind shear strong enough to break the contol cables?