Uh ok. So why can’t they build bleachers at the other end of the airport and hold the race there?
Have you stopped beating your wife?
The question isn’t whether it’s ‘acceptable’, but rather when one crash like this in 50 years is enough to establish a pattern of recklessness or to expose a serious danger to the fans.
There is no possible way that a plane can make a turn that takes it across the flight line without it being pointed at the crowd at some point. The question is whether the turn is located in a place that is safe for the crowd should the airplane break in the turn and veer off at a tangent. The FAA has guidelines for this, and Reno was following them. There is a 1.5X safety margin built into their guidelines. The accident with Galloping Ghost did not involve a departure straight into the crowd from a failed turn, so it does not provide evidence that the turn is dangerous.
What is your evidence that the crowd is located near a point with a high potential of plane failure? If you look at that diagram I linked to, it clearly shows the design of the turn. There is an arc drawn that shows all the potential vectors in the general direction of the crowd before the plane straightens out on turn 9. That arc is about a mile from the spectators. The FAA determined that a failure in turn 8 would not put a plane into the grandstands. For the past 50 years that has held true, and it’s still true. Galloping Ghost did not fly into the crowd out of the turn. It completed the turn, then failed, then climbed and completely left the course and barrel-rolled towards the crowd. It had nothing to do with tangent lines coming out of the turn.
IT was NOT headed in the general direction of the crowd. When it failed, it went almost straight UP. Then it slowly rolled onto its back in a corkscrew motion, which is the motion that took it towards the crowd. That IS a freak accident. If it had been moving AWAY from the crowd, it might have continued over in a loop if the failure mode was just right and come back towards the crowd on the top of the loop. Or it could have rolled in the opposite direction, taking it away from the crowd. It was just very unlucky that it behaved the way it did after the failure. Most structural failures among the unlimited class racers either leave the airplane controllable and the pilot flies it away from the crowd and onto a runway, or the airplane either comes apart or flies into the ground. This was a rare event.
Except that it didn’t. If it had failed and crashed in a straight line from the failure point, it wouldn’t have gone within 1000’ of the crowd.
That’s exactly what they did. I linked to the result of that analysis, which determined that the failure mode you’re worried about was safe. And Galloping Ghost doesn’t fit your scenario.
And I guess it hasn’t occurred to you that the race designers tried many different course layouts, and the one they have represents the best compromise between overall safety and actually being able to see the race? You’re smarter than all those designers and FAA reviewers, because it’s ‘obvious’ to you that this is dangerous?
Yes, they can. That’s irrelevant. The question is whether they’re likely to carry over a mile into the crowd from a failure that occurs when they’re only a couple of hundred feet in the air. The FAA doesn’t think so, and so far there is no evidence that they were wrong in that analysis.
Have you actually been to the races? Have you watched a complete race?
Have a look at this video. At 4:27 you can see the planes coming around turn 8 (it looks a lot closer than it is, because the cameraman zooms in). But you’ll notice that those planes remain banked all the way from turn 8 to turn 2, including the whole time they are on the 3000’ straightaway in front of the crowd. Rocking the wings level and then banking again just robs them of too much energy and speed, so they just stay banked. They carry enough energy to pull that off.
At about 6:55 you can see a plane coming around turn 8 when the camera isn’t zsoomed in, and it gives you some idea of just how far away that turn is.
That’s not exactly true. Just like the air races, they have rules about how far away the plane has to be before it can be carrying energy on a vector towards the crowd. Lots of airshow manoevers put the aircraft in the general direction of the crowd - they just have to be a certain distance away first.
But since Galloping Ghost didn’t just fly into the crowd after the failure, but went through a complex serious of course changes first, a better analogy would be if a pilot did a loop in front of the crowd at an airshow, and the g forces of the loop caused the trim tab to fail and the airplane barrel-rolled 90 degrees off its course into the audience. That’s closer to what happened with Galloping Ghost than your repeated but inaccurate scenario of it failing in the turn and barreling straight into the crowd off the tangent line. It’s simply not what happened.
Tried and convicted by the person with no experience in air racing, no particular knowledge of air racing or real understanding of what actually happened, and without recognizing that the Reno people work on safety issues constantly and have the FAA sign off on their course layouts and crowd positioning. But you just know that they were negligent and should be sued.
One more time: Look at This video, which is the one Charleesm posted. The first sign that something is wrong with Galloping Ghost appears when his wings waggle at 7:38. At this point he’s well past turn 8, and he’s going parallel to the crowd. You can see what happens then - the plane banks in the OPPOSITE direction off the course, and begins to climb. Its roll towards the crowd puts it maybe 30 degrees off course, towards the crowd. Had it continued straight along its flight path, it would have crashed somewhere near turn 1, thousands of feet from the crowd.
I have no idea how anyone can watch that video and conclude that GG failed out of turn 8 and flew straight into the crowd.
Well, there’s really not much information there to form a solid opinion, but as a guess I’d say that that wing waggle through 90 degrees marks the point of failure of the trim system. As a guess, I’d say that Leeward felt the airplane lurch and instinctively rolled level, not knowing that the trim was gone. As soon as he leveled the wings, the out of trim condition caused the zoom that knocked him out.
That’s very similar to what can happen in a spiral dive - with the wings off level, building up speed just causes a tigtening of the spiral because the tail is banked and adding to the turning force. The airplane gets increasingly out of trim, but in a high bank that manifests itself as a tighter spiral. If you recognize the spiral and level the wings, the airplane can suddenly zoom violently - enough to actually snap the wings off in a light airplane. In GG’s case, it wasn’t in a spiral, but the trim failure made the airplane behave like it was once he leveled the wings. At that point, he blacked out and was out of the picture.
I don’t think that 90+ degree blank was an attempt to correct a bad line. It looks to me like he was already on the straightaway, and a race pilot wouldn’t waggle the wings that violently even if he could - that saps energy and speed. Smooth motions are what it’s all about. So I suspect the airplane was already having problems.
Be careful about drawing conclusions about relative distance of lines from a video - the videographer is constantly zooming in and out, and that can make the airplane look like it’s doing things it isn’t doing if there aren’t any reference points in the background. If it looks like his turn was wider than other planes, it might just be because the camera was zooming while he was coming around.
The stands pretty much run the entire length of the main runway, with the best seats at “Airshow Center” (about the Finish pylon). The pits are closest to the final turns and off-limits to spectator without a special pass, and there is no permanent stands or seating in that area.
The flight path for the race course is *parrallel *to the stands.
The vice president of the Unlimited Racing Class, Matt Jackson, told the Reno Gazette-Journal that the reason the trim tab separated was because Leeward used it to control the aircraft’s pitch coming off the last pylon. Jackson says that trim shouldn’t be touched once the aircraft is at race speeds.
If Matt Jackson is right and Leeward was using the trim tab as a secondary control, Jimmy went into those final turns with his right hand on the stick and his left on the elevator trim tab control. The possible turbulence he hit that caused the aircraft to overroll may have inadvertantly caused him to apply excessive up trim, which resulted in the 90 degree snap roll to the right and the subsequent structural failure of the trim tab from the overload. If it wasn’t turbulence that started the sequence, a medical problem may have caused Leeward to jerk the controls. A third possibility, which most of us don’t want to believe, is that Leeward just screwed-up when he tried to tighten the turn.
http://www.stclairphoto-imaging.com/360/P51-Mustang/P51_swf.html
This link gives exact details of a stock P-51 cockpit. Compare it to photo 110 of the cockpit in the GG construction sequence, taken when the aircraft was ready for flight.
Check out the photo from post 16 from this link:
This was taken during a qualifying run while the aircraft was level and not under extreme loads. There are major ripples in the fuselage side, which makes me question the changes that were made the basic P-51 structure. The smooth finish they worked for on the aluminum skins to reduce drag are all for not if deformations like this occur.
In my opinion, the roll rate that leveled the wings out of the turn could not have resulted solely from Leeward’s control imputs. If you play the slow motion video frame by frame, the amount of positive pitch increase while the aircraft is still in a 90 degree bank is frightening. This, I feel, is the point of the highest G-load.
I agree with everything that Sam has said about the race course. The only other possibility for a safer location for spectators would be in the Air National Guard area inside the course. But this area probably couldn’t be shut down for the time required for the race, and the spectator view would only be of the aircraft coming down the Valley of Speed. There is also the issue of the smaller courses used for some of the other classes. The layout is the best possible. We can’t let the imposition of zero-risk
kill air racing.
What it comes down to is the amount of stress in turn 8. In you’re analogy it would be like G forces of a loop at 450 mph.
It’s too soon to speculate about any changes to the race but you’re suggesting that “shit happens” and nothing will come of this and I disagree. They could easily alter the course to lessen the loads on the last turn before the grandstands.
In the diagram of the race course that Sam linked to in Post 104, the placement of Pylon 9 and the Home Pylon don’t make sense to me. The dotted line would represent the perfect flight path for an aircraft. It passes through every pylon except the last two. Why wouldn’t these pylons be moved closer to the runway so that the pilots would have a better reference? If pilots fly their turn right on top of Pylon 9, they won’t be lined up correctly for Pylon 1. I hope this is a case of the diagram being drawn wrong.
Have you stopped beating your wife is a nonsensical non-sequiter.
As for establishing a pattern, are you suggesting that we should wait another 50 years to see if this is a repeatable occurrence, and only take action when another 10 people die?
When you have 10 people dead and 70+ injured that’s enough evidence to me that the event needs to take basic and obvious safety steps to make the race safer.
Technically correct, but of no real informative value.
Are you suggesting that turn 8 is not a point with a high potential of plane failure.
Yes. Or at least they had the same attitude you had. Nothing’s happened before, so there is no safety concern. Apparently, for you, that’s just changed to it’s just happened once, so there’s no safety concern.
No evidence, of course, besides the 10 dead and 70+ injured?
Holy fuck. How many times do I have to say that my scenario is not that the GG flew straight into the crowd?
You really need to look at that video again. For starters, the GG is in near level flight before entering the turn.
Second, the GG is in a highly banked turn. There’s no ground reference, but judging from the level to highly banked action it’s clear that the GG is going around turn 8.
Third, immediately after the failure, the GG snaps out of its turn, returns to level flight, and continues in the direction of travel at the time of failure. It doesn’t turn towards the crowd. It comes out of the turn and continues in the direction of travel at the moment of failure, and that was in the general direction of the crowd.
Fourth, the plane goes up. At this point, there’s no reference to tell what path the plane takes. So even if it did some sort of belly flop to hit the crowd that’s besides the point. At that point you have an out of control aircraft heading in the general direction of the crowd. That is a dangerous situation, and if basic steps were taken, would have been avoided.
I’ve missed the part explaining why they couldn’t build stands on the other end of the runway and hold the race there.
I didn’t say ‘shit happens’. I can see a lot of potential changes coming out of this depending on what the NTSB finds. I think it was you that suggested earlier that there might be mandated changes to the trim systems, and I find that plausible - we now have a common failure mode where elevator trim issues have caused multiple crashes. I expect the NTSB will focus on that. I’m sure they’ll also look at crowd positioning and re-evaluate the FAA’s original sign-off of the unlimited course.
My point with Treis is that there is currently no evidence that turn 8 was the problem, and his claim that the danger of that turn is that it’s too close to the crowd and an airplane could veer off at a tangent after failing in the turn and hit the crowd is a scenario that has not happened, and for which the course designers paid specific attention to and intentionally designed it to be safe from that kind of danger.
Your argument is different as I understand it - you’re simply saying that it’s not a good idea to design the course so that a point of maximum stress on the aircraft occurs just before the plane passes the crowd. That’s a much more defensible argument than Treis’s.
However, in my years of attending and watching the Reno air races, I don’t recall turn 8 being implicated in any major failures. I think it would be interesting to plot the location of every accident at Reno and see if there’s a common geographical factor. If airframe failures are clustered around turns 1 and 8, the two most difficult turns on the course, they you might have a good point.
Actually, I went out and found this page, which has details on every crash that have happened at the air races. Aside from this year’s crash, only one of them happened after turn #8, but it had nothing to do with structural loads. An L-39 jet hit the wake turbulence of another jet, and flipped upside down, then dove into the ground. That could have happened around any pylon. And even though the L-39’s are extremely fast, and the crash DID happen right after the turn, the plane did not come anywhere near the crowd.
The other thing that jumps out of that page is that the unlimiteds actually have a very good safety record. Of all the fatalities, only two were unlimited warbirds. and one a custom unlimited racer (The Pond Racer).
The most dangerous category appears to be the Formula 1’s, followed by the T-6 races and the biplanes. This makes sense - the T-6’s are a ‘stock’ class, and as a result they remain grouped very tightly together through much of the race, raising the risk of collisions and wake turbulence. The Formula 1’s are lightweight homebuilts, where the cost of entry is lower. They generally are probably not built to the same engineering standards as the multi-million dollar warbirds, and the pilots may have less experience. They’re also unstable, skittish little beasts to fly, I’ve been told.
In any event, the Formula 1’s aren’t much of a threat to the crowd. They’re reasonably slow compared to the unlimiteds and they’re very small - much smaller than even a Cessna 150.
So far, I’m not seeing anything that tells me that turn #8 has posed a particular hazard to anyone. Turn #1 has been implicated in a couple of structural failures, but it’s the most radical turn on the course so it stands to reason that you’d see it collect more than its share of airframe failures. Of course, turn 1 is taking the planes away from the crowd into the desert so there’s no spectator risk there whatsoever.
Here’s a summary of all the Reno accidents to date:
2011: Modified P-51 Galloping Ghost loses control - cause yet to be determined
2007: L-39 Jet crashes during race due to wake turbulence
2007: Biplane crash on takeoff
2002: Sport class Questair Venture racer crashes due to tail failure rounding pylon #1
1999 P-51 “Miss Ashley” disintegrated due to tail failure rounding pylon #1
1998: Formula 1 plane crashed after pilot heart attack
1994: P-51 crashed attempting to land with oil-covered windscreen
1994: T-6 crashed after colliding with another at race start
1993: Pond Racer crashes while attempting to land
1989: Formula 1 plane crashed due to interaction with a ‘dust devil’
1987: Formula 1 crash ‘after losing lift’. Cause undetermined
1981: Formula 1 crash during practice. Suspected pilot error
1979: Formula 1 crashed after rounding pylon #1 ‘a mile from the grandstands’. Probable cause: Vortex turbulence.
1978: Two T-6’s crash after colliding
1975: T-6 crashed at the start of the race after clipping a pylon
1972: Biplane crashed on the first lap ‘after it fell from a group of racers’
"Third, immediately after the failure, the GG snaps out of its turn, returns to level flight, and continues in the direction of travel at the time of failure. It doesn’t turn towards the crowd. It comes out of the turn and continues in the direction of travel at the moment of failure, and that was in the general direction of the crowd. "
During GG’s climb it did a 1/4 roll to the right. This is what put the aircraft on a course toward the spectators. It is ingrained into all Reno pilots to turn away from the crowd during emergencies, which on the home stretch is always to the left. No course setup is safe from an unconscious pilot.
If you compare Voodoo in the back straight to Galloping Ghost, you can see that GG’s wings were nearly level, while Voodoo maintained a fair bank angle. This would have set Leeward up to run wide heading into the front straight.
It looks to me like he pulled too hard trying to stay on course and did about 1/8 of a snap roll toward the inside (not a full roll). Such a violent maneuver at such a high speed could have broken something or incapacitated the pilot.
What I can’t explain at all is how he would have had time to report trouble, or if the trouble report was earlier, why he was still flying the course.
Like I said, I can’t really tell the trajectory after it makes the initial climb due to a lack of reference. What’s clear is that the plane snaps back and flys level for a bit before going up into a climb. That take place in the general direction of the cloud.
It’s like golf. If I am aiming for the fairway and accidentally slice one into the woods on the right and hit someone, that’s not really a fluke. Golfers slice, and out of control aircraft can veer in any direction.
This statement is factually correct, but there’s no real information there. It’s true that it is impossible to make a course completely safe. But there are safer designs than others. Placing the crowd after a sharp turn isn’t one of those safer designs.
Despite early reports, there was no Mayday call from Leeward. When he pulled up, people were heard to say “He’s having a Mayday”. This is what caused the confusion.
It was a commentary on the type of question you asked: “Is killing 10 people acceptable?”
Jesus. By your logic, if a jet crashes into a house, the entire area of the crash should be completely cleared forever. After all, we have a data point that a jet has crashed there. Why take a chance?
The fact is, we have a data point of ONE accident that took the airplane into the crowd. Looking at the video footage, the airplane had to veer significantly off the race course to reach the crowd. This alone is not indicative of a dangerous location for the spectators. We need more analysis to determine that, which the NTSB is doing. Even though I clearly know a hell of a lot more about air racing, aircraft engineering, and flying in general than you do, I’m not willing to make sweeping statements about who might or might not be negligent based on my armchair analysis.
You, on the other hand, appear to be certain about the ‘facts’ despite the fact that you use terms like ‘belly flop’ to describe aircraft movements.
I see. It doesn’t matter to you at all that the sequence of events might have been 1-in-a-million. The mere fact that something happened that killed people is all the evidence you need to convict people of negligence and demand ‘obvious’ changes that apparently have never been noticed by all the professionals actually involved in the event for the past 50 years.
No, it really is. For example, one aerobatics team does a manoever where a modern jet fighter does a 360 degree circle in front of the crowd while rolling the aircraft. That puts it on a vector directly towards the crowd at one point. You don’t seem to have your panties in a bunch over that.
Well, I just posted a list of all Reno accidents, and to date there hasn’t been a single structural failure coming around turn 8, unless Galloping Ghost’s failure turns out to be related. But we don’t know that yet. Turn 1 is a much more radical turn, so I would expect any aircraft with impending failures to have them there. It may act as the filter that weeds out the airframe problems. Hell, that may even be by design for all I know. And failures there happen while the aircraft is turning away from the crowd.
Oh for God’s sake. You didn’t even read the link I posted, did you? They even reproduce the math used by the FAA to determine if that turn could bring the airplanes dangerously near the crowd.
And in my experience, people involved in air racing are extremely concerned about safety. Did you see how rapidly emergency services were on the scene? Do you know how often the Reno Air Race people practice emergency procedures? How much money they spend on safety? Your glib dismissal of the opinions of 50 years of expert analysis in favor of your armchair quarterbacking is a stunning display of hubris.
That’s a result, not evidence of negligence. We won’t know if the race itself was unduly hazardous to the spectators until the NTSB has finished its investigation, but there’s nothing I can see about this accident that implicates the location of turn 8.
Then why do you keep going on about tangent lines from turn 8, or continually saying that the problem is that coming out of turn 8 the airplanes are on a flight path towards the crowd? Galloping Ghost was on a completely different flight path after the trim failure.
Galloping Ghost is entering the turn at about 7:30 in that video, and appears to be banked about 70 degrees in the turn. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘near level flight’. If you mean at a constant altitude, I’m not sure what that has to do with anything. Were you under the impression that they dive into those turns from a high height or something? The planes do vary in altitude as they go around the course, but it’s not by much.
Whether it’s highly banked or not means nothing. As I’ve already pointed out (and anyone who’s been to the air races or watched a video of an unlimited race knows), those airplanes generally remain ‘highly banked’ all the way from the start of turn 8 through the completion of turn 1. When they go past the crowd you’re generally staring at their bellies. You claim to have watched those videos, so I don’t know why you don’t know that. Watch the sequence from 5:51 to 6:03 in the Vimeo video, and you’ll see what I mean. The camera follows one of the planes from the start of turn 8 through turn 1, and at no point are the wings anywhere near level - it remains highly banked all through. That straightaway in front of the crowd is crossed by those planes in about 3-4 seconds - a short enough time that they can just keep the bank in (while unloading the aircraft through use of down elevator). Using the ailerons to level the wings then bank them again costs energy and speed.
Anyway, at 7:31. GG is in turn 8. GG’s wings go past vertical at 7:38. This may be the adjustment at turn 9 if it’s true that GG was too wide and out of line, or it may be after turn 9 and an indication of a control problem. At 7:39, GG’s wings have rolled level and it starts to climb. At this point, it is parallel to the crowd, and it looks like it’s about even with the pit area.
At 7:40, Galloping Ghost begins to roll TOWARDS the crowd and AWAY from the flight light. Right there, if it didn’t do that, it would have crashed far away from the people. Look at this video for context: the point at :44 in that video is exactly the same as at 7:40 in the Vimeo video. That gives you context as to where Galloping Ghost is.
The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s a long way from the crowd and NOT traveling towards the crowd. It’s also well past turn 8 - it looks like the climb started just past turn 9. But the most important thing to notice is that the airplane goes WAY up in the air, turns WAY off the course (maybe 40-70 degrees away from its original flight line), then it plummets straight down . It was nowhere near the race line - it basically veered completely off course. Had it not rolled quite so fast it could have landed a half mile behind the grandstands. Had it rolled a little less it would have come down in the infield, or maybe just come out on top of a split-S. The location it came down on was essentially random, and not any direct extrapolation of its original line of flight. Thus, the tangents off of turn 8 or the direction of flight after turn 8 had nothing to do with it. Hell, if it had turned completely away from the crowd by the that point but NOT rolled its wings it might have continued a loop and come down on the backside into the crowd anyway.
I just don’t see any connection between the impact point and the setup of turn 8. At all.
One more point: From the start of the climb until impact took 8 or 9 seconds. That airplane was traveling somewhere around 700 feet per second. If it was essentially out of control and could come down in a random area, that’s semicircle with a radius of more than a mile. Just where are you going to put the spectators to make sure they could not have been hit by that plane?
This is completely wrong. Look at the sequence from :44 to :54 of the video I just linked, and tell me that that airplane is following its race line. I’ve been to Reno many time. I’ve stood right where the video was taken, and my seats were right at the point of impact. That airplane was not on its race line. Not even close.
As further proof, I would like you to look at this video. Look at the race lines of the planes coming around the pylons, then look at how Galloping Ghost hits the ground. In particular, after the impact you can see what looks like the engine go skidding across the tarmac. Notice the direction it’s going. What you’ll see is that it’s skidding AWAY from the audience and towards the runway. How is that possible? The answer is that Galloping Ghost climbed, then rolled on its back towards the crowd and dived down the backside of a loop. This is a manoever known as a ‘split S’. That plane essentially veered so badly off the flight line that at the top of the loop it was going almost 90 degrees from its original direction of flight, and as it came down the backside of the split S it was going back in REVERSE direction from its original line of flight. Its direction of impact was almost opposite to the direction it had originally been going.
Now go back to the first video I linked in this message. Starting at :44 you can see the motion of the plane as it does this - it turns towards the crowd while climbing, continues to turn and climb, then once on its back it comes down as if it’s trying to complete a loop, and impacts the ground at an angle taking it back towards the runway. In fact, it looks like at one point it was behind the crowd, then dove down and started coming out of the loop, moving back towards the crowd and impacting on a heading that would have taken it back towards the runway. You can see that by the direction of the debris. Had that aircraft been on a line directly from the race into the crowd, the debris would have blown right into the grandstands. It doesn’t.
Or another way to visualize it - Galloping Ghost executed a big corkscrew in the sky, veering off towards the crowd, then rolling over and heading down, then back towards the runway slightly. When it impacted, from the angle the engine takes I’d say it was maybe on a line that would have bisected the original race line by 30-45 degrees.
So let’s say you put the crowd farther down the line (“At the other end of the airport” as you say, which is kind of nonsensical if you’ve been there, but whatever). Now imagine if that failure mode had caused it to climb, stall, then plunge down, which is what you apparently think actually happened. If that HAD happened, the plane would have landed a mile farther down the course - right where you want to put the spectators.
Or hell, let’s move them back another 1/4 mile from the flight line (you can’t, because there are fixed buildings all over the place there, but whatever). Now what if that airplane hadn’t split-S’d, but carried a little more energy into the loop so it stayed at the top for 3 more seconds before falling off? Now it’s on top of your spectators again.
Since this crash was NOT on a path extrapolated from the race course, there’s no evidence that the grandstand location was any more dangerous than any other location. Given slightly different parameters for the failure, that airplane could have turned left, or right, or gone onto the top of a loop and reversed direction for a while before coming down, or followed any number of other paths.
Clear now?
I’ve heard several knowledgeable people say that he might have had a high-speed stall. It doesn’t look like it to me, but then I’ve never seen a high-speed stall in an airplane that heavy going that fast, so maybe that’s what it looks like. If so, he sure recovered from it quickly. So I guess in your scenario, it’s A) pulling too hard to get back in line, followed by B) high speed stall and slight snap roll, followed by C) failure of the trim tab due to the violent stall, followed by D) Leeward rolling level to recover the plane, not knowing of the badly out of trim situation, follwed by E) the sudden climb blackout, barrel roll/split-S, impact.
That’s a plausible scenario. But I’m not sure it’s more plausible than A) trim tab fails, followed by B) wing waggling as Leeward struggles with control, followed by C) Leeward rolling level, rapid pitch up, etc.
We’re now into a level of detail that none of us can really answer. The NTSB should be able to figure some of this out. Even without telemetry they can do things like fatigue analysis of the metal in the trim system to determine if the break was due to flutter vs a some other cause. They can tell if a piece of metal broke on impact or due to fatique. They’ve probably got access to a ton of videos and photos none of us have seen. So we’ll just have to wait and see what they say.
It’s also possible we’ll never know. The destruction was so complete that there may not be a whole lot left to analyze. There are several Reno crashes that are still listed as ‘cause unknown’.
Yeah, as Charleesm said, there was no mayday. Lots of people at the races have radios tuned to the race frequency, and everyone agrees that Galloping Ghost was silent.
Btw, Kevbo’s scenario, if it turns out to be the cause, could be a valid reason for modifying the course. Not because the lines coming out of turn 8 put the airplanes into the crowd on failure, but because the hard requirement to avoid the grandstand could cause pilots to pull too hard around the turn to avoid disqualification, leading to a dangerous situation for the pilots, if not for the spectators.
Yes, you summarized my point nicely. I didn’t mean to accuse you of saying “shit happens” but I thought that was your point. I think we’re on a similar page. Anything can fall out of the sky for no particular reason but coming out of a hard turn would certainly up the probability of a bad hair day. And I don’t think the mechanical failure should be viewed as a Mustang failure. Those connecting points looked like something from a battleship. Everybody pulling hard G’s should be focused on the NTSB’s findings. they may find out that the trim flap is getting some bizarre G force because of something nobody expected.
Interesting. Multiple tail failures and air turbulence.
BTW, if you know anyone who hangers at Carson City I’d make that a mandatory visit during the air show. If heaven has an airport for pilots, that’s what it will look like.
Some reading these posts may get the impression that the loss of an elevator trim tab will in most cases result in an uncontrollable aircraft. With the aircraft configured for down trim, the trim tab is pushing the elevator down. With the aircraft in a tight turn, the pilot is pulling back on the stick very hard. If the trim tab were to suddenly stop providing the downward force, it would be virtually impossible for the pilot not to instantly be pulling back even more on the stick. Even a split second of this increased elevator imput can produce damaging structural and physical loads on the aircraft and pilot. From the photos showing the position of the trim tab before the accident, its angle of deflection is no where near what it would take to level out what would otherwise be a 10g climb.
I’ve just looked in my souvenir programme for the 1978 California National Air Races at Mojave. (And found my patches for the '78 and '79 races.) There’s a photo of a 42-year-old Jimmy Leeward in it, looking young and with a full head of brown hair. He sure looked a lot younger three and a half decades ago! There’s also a photo of his P-51D Cloud Dancer, which he first competed in at Reno in 1976.