Warbird Abuse?

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Here's a guy who has very obviously practiced his routine!

Lockeed-Martin C-130J at the Paris Air Show.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIVWxs9QmW4

Can you say "professional?" Missed his airborne time by 3 seconds! Was supposed to be 3 minutes 15 seconds and went 3 minutes 18 seconds.

If this is abuse, can I ride along for the abuse?
 
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And here is the airshow where that pic was taken. You can see there is no photoshop and he really WAS that low. The announcer is an idiot who says that Packard manufactured more Merlins than Rolls Royce! They DID make some, but rolls royce made more by FAR.

Anyway, here is Dale's Mustang show from 2009. You can see the golf cart right about 1:19 or so.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn-zGl81BTI

Nobody flies MUCH lower than Dale!
 
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There is a video of a P-38 crash in the UK where the pilot is doing a fast low pass, starts a roll, and hits the ground.
Click to expand...


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG4mCvUfpsk

I was there and watched this happen. I had taken a new girlfriend to DX as she'd never been to an airshow before - hell of a way to impress. Very sad to see.

This one is both...
Click to expand...

Even the good ones f*ck up occasionally, and many, like Hoof Proudfoot don't live to talk about it afterwards.
 
GregP said:
And here is the airshow where that pic was taken. You can see there is no photoshop and he really WAS that low. The announcer is an idiot who says that Packard manufactured more Merlins than Rolls Royce! They DID make some, but rolls royce made more by FAR.

Anyway, here is Dale's Mustang show from 2009.\


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dn-zGl81BTI


Nobody flies MUCH lower than Dale!
Click to expand...

didnt see anything dangerous there at all, great skill but if his life depended on it i bet he could go lower.
 
GregP, how much does a low pass like that depend on the air condition? When I see planes flying low in UK they seem to get buffeted about much more than Dales P51. Comin into land at my local airport even a 100 seater passenger jet seems to move around a good bit in the last few seconds. Is this discussed before the show, or my imagination.
 
any time you strap into the seat of an airplane you take a risk. most of us know pilots who werent even doing anything fancy...just flying normally and had incidents with some of them ending tragically. so when you start to push limits your degree of risk goes up exponentially. you can have all the experience in the world but $#!T happens. a sudden loss of power....heavy gust of wind at the wrong time...change in air density....burst coolant line...etc...and things go south...real south and real fast. sometimes a great pilot with tremendous skills can minimize the damage but there are times even they are helpless to change the outcome. i am not criticizing or saying they shouldnt do such things...i love them! the more the merrier. you just cant be too surprised when something bad happens but more over there needs to be safeguards make sure that the audience doesnt get caught in the fall out.

pbehn....air conditions will dictate a lot of what can and cant be done.
 
The big planes and small planes that get buffeted about are going very slowly and are approaching their stall speed. Right around stall is where the controls are at their least effective. They stop working altogether when the plane stalls ... well not completely, but close. The only place you are going is forward and down, hopefully with level wings, if you stall it in coordinated flight and stay on the rudder and ailerons to keep it that way.

So, the planes that "move around" just over the runway are usually at 1.2 times stall speed or less, usually less just before touchdown.

The P-51D that Dale Snodgrass was flying was probably moving at about 200 knots or more and is not very susceptible to small gusts. It DOES move around, but not much since he is moving at what would be virtually cruise speed and is into and out of gusts before they move the aircraft much. If he were going slow and were landing, it would move around, too, right before touchdown, if wind and gusts were present.

At our airshow in Chino, it is usually warm and gusty since our event is in the first week of May in Southern California, USA. The performers all KNOW that and realize they will get kicked around by wind and gusts. Nobody flies down the runway at 2 feet. The lowest altitude we fly is somewhere around 50 feet, so there is considerable room for error.

The faster you go, the less you move around. When Steve does a low pass in the F-86 at 400 knots, he isn't moving around much. When Hartley does a low pass in his Stearman with Margie on the wing at 90 knots, he moves around several feet at a time. Both fly accordingly.

When I was flying a lot in Cessna 172 / 182's, I knew exactly how much it would move around when landing. It comes with experience and there are no low-time airshow performers. All have a lot of hours behind the stick, all the ones flying aerobatics KNOW aerobatics, all have FAA waivers to fly in close proximity to the ground and the crowd if they are doing any aerobatics. The guys just flying the warbirds around don't have special waivers, but they have enough hours in the planes to fly them around in safe, non-aerobatic fashion and have been signed off in the planes. Nobody does aerobatics in our B-25, but they can land it on a spot and it goes exactly where they want it to go.

The FAA doesn't hand out credentials without a pretty thorough examination of the pilot's abilities. The people doing level passes are qualified to do them and the people doing warbird aerobatics are qualified to do aerobatics in warbirds. Sometimes mechanical woes get someone and sometimes a pilot makes a big error. There was an airshow recently where a wing walker on a Stearman was killed due to pilot error. The pilot was killed, too. He pulled before he had rolled out enough and pulled won into the grass. Though it happens, we all want the next error like that to be a long way off or never.

We take thing a step farther and require practice of the complete routine on Friday before the Saturday / Sunday shows. If anything looks "iffy" at all, adjustment s are requested by the air boss and it is flown again until there are NO issues. There is no possibility to "decline" the requested adjustments; you make them and fly it again or you don't fly in the show.

So yes, the planes landing move around a bit, but mostly when slowing for touchdown. They DO move around SOME in a flyby, but not nearly as much as when landing.
 
Thanks Bobby and GreP great info and insight, flying into uk airports under overcast skies the plane seems to be all over the place, not just from gusts but moving a lot up and down even Jumbos into Heathrow and a long way from the runway, much more than landing in my workplaces which luckily are under sunny blue skies. I dont see why people make such a point of pointing out the speed of a high speed pass, planes such as a P51 were made to fly fast, probaably under better control at 300MPH as at 150MPH. If you clip the ground then it makes no difference.

What a guy does with his own property is his business, a great plane with a great pilot is a joy to watch, the only exception I make is with the BoB flight which is a national asset, I wish for my great grand kids to see them if possible but then I havnt seen them involved in any sort of wild aerobatics. I read that the Lancaster isnt even allowed to fly parallel to a motorway!!! In any case if the number of Spitfires flying keep increasing we may have more in 2039 as we did in 1939
 
Properly flown, there is nothing dangerous about a loop or a roll. Improperly flown and straight and level can be dangerous.

I have not had the pleasure of seeing the BOB Memorial Flight in the air in person, but would love to d so at some point ... unless all they do are level flypasts. I have seen well over a thousand of those and while the engine sounds never get old, but it IS nice to see some crisp handling every once in awhile. even if it is a crisp bank into an overhead recovery. So if the BOB flight guys don't do basic aerobatics, then they aren't in practice and certainly shouldn't do them in Spitfires, Hurricanes until they are practiced up away from people and up higher than 2-mistake altitude plus spin recovery margin.

Question, why would a Lancaster be prohibited from flying parallel to a road? That makes no sense at all to me unless it is to help prevent traffic accidents by drivers who are gawking. If THAT is the case, it is the fault of the drivers, not the Lancaster.
 
GregP said:
Properly flown, there is nothing dangerous about a loop or a roll. Improperly flown and straight and level can be dangerous.

I have not had the pleasure of seeing the BOB Memorial Flight in the air in person, but would love to d so at some point ... unless all they do are level flypasts. I have seen well over a thousand of those and while the engine sounds never get old, but it IS nice to see some crisp handling every once in awhile. even if it is a crisp bank into an overhead recovery. So if the BOB flight guys don't do basic aerobatics, then they aren't in practice and certainly shouldn't do them in Spitfires, Hurricanes until they are practiced up away from people and up higher than 2-mistake altitude plus spin recovery margin.

Question, why would a Lancaster be prohibited from flying parallel to a road? That makes no sense at all to me unless it is to help prevent traffic accidents by drivers who are gawking. If THAT is the case, it is the fault of the drivers, not the Lancaster.
Click to expand...


The BoB flight put on a good display, not just an overhead pass, though they do a lot of them at ceremonies and memorial services. A spitfire doesnt have to do a loop, appearing out of the blue at speed and rolling our into the distance or just climbing up after a low pass into a blue sky is enough for many (like me) but I am not surrounded by them as routine.

You are on the button with that, the Lanc is such an icon in the UK people cannot take their eyes off it, who wants to fly a Lanc and witness motorway pile ups I dont even know if it has caused a pile up but on UK motorways it doesnt take much. More dangerous was the Vulcan, I couldnt take my eyes off that the one time I saw it while driving.
 
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OK, that makes a kind of sense.

If warbirds are such an infrequent sight, then maybe such rules are indicated. They ARE hard not to watch if you love the piston warbirds like I do, but I refrain when driving. Maybe if I didn't see so many, I'd not refrain while driving ... a fast low pass with a nice pull-up IS nice to see, and very few planes can climb like a Spitfire!
 
I saw the Vulcan flying up here when they were pracising low level ground hugging

https://www.google.de/search?q=farn...gGcXDtQbewoDQAw&ved=0CFwQsAQ&biw=1093&bih=534


That was just surreal. Officially no lower than 200ft (yeh right) the noise was unbelievable and the shape straight out of star wars. Anyway thanks for all your info and insight I think its great to see the old planes doing roughly what they were designed for without the killing.

Just one thing, why would military pilots trim "nose down" it seems illogical. takes a seat and waits for an education.
 
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