Originally Posted by Electricity

Starting at 39mins and on... If you have the stomach for this kind of thing
vid of the crash/aftermath corpses, body parts, plane pieces, crater, people milling about confused/shocked etc...


Live Show [Procaster] Fri Sep 16 2011 06:45:17 PMon loadedtv - live streaming video powered by Livestream

When the camera panned to all the people lying on the ground all I could think of was this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikmRF...eature=related

looks like the trim tab on the left elevator came off. I don't quite understand how that would cause him to lose complete control of the aircraft because he still had the elevator on both sides but I don't know much about P51s :x at the speeds they go, he probably had to have the trim pretty + to keep the airplane nose down so when he lost one, it caused the airplane to pitch up & have a small rolling moment to the right. I would have expected his working elevator and ailerons would have been able to overcome any sudden loss of trim on one side of the airplane but maybe he lost more than just the trim tab

From a friend...

in fact, with no other information, if you were to ask "what would losing an ETT at high speed cause", the immediate guess would be "pitch oscillations, followed by a violent roll"

which, apparently, is pretty much EXACTLY what happened

that little tab...a trim tab...is designed to deflect very slightly up or down to relieve pressure on the stick. That is to say, you're flying along fat dumb and happy, but the airplane requires just a tiny bit of pulling back on the stick to stay level

it wants to go nose down ever so slightly

if you adjust the "trim"...which moves the entire elevator..it's too much...airplane wants to climb

so...when you get home, you move that little trim tab...much smaller than the whole elevator...just enough that you can fly along hands off

grossly oversimplified, but that's the basic premise

since that tab is connected to the elevator...if it breaks and starts flapping around, it becomes a "big floopy tab" if you will...I mean, usually it only gets moved small fractions of an inch..like, 1/8 or 1/4" maybe

even worse, only the one on the one side went wonky...meaning only one side of the tail is trying to come up or down

so...the plane SUDDENLY jumps up..or down...and is now also trying to roll..violently...because it's like an aileron at this point, changing the angle of only one side or the other of the tail

all the reports say the airplane pitched up, rolled almost in a "snapping" motion to inverted, and then headed for the ground, and then "yanked" again quickly before hitting the ground

sudden pitch movements, violent roll. *shrug*

u should be able to overcome that (key word is should) in that kind of airplane, the problem with runaway trim or an outright failure though is the pressure on the control column, especially in such an airplane, it can be like bench pressing Oprah. Not to mention the force required to stop the airplane from rolling. If it caught you off guard at 300mph 200ft from the ground, it would be game over for even the sharpest individual. I'm sure he did the best he could in guiding it from the grandstand.
RIP sir

Did you see that plane just explode? No plane that small could make that big of an explosion. Someone put demo charges in the stands.

The sheer idiocy in this thread is ****ing astounding. The fact that the guy is 73 has absolutely ZERO bearing on his flying ability. Sure, there are 73 year olds that shouldn't be ANY WHERE NEAR an airplane or a car, but there are plenty that are. Bob Hoover is a PERFECT example of a guy that flew with incredible precision at that age.

To even attempt to hypothesize about what would happen to an airplane like that with a flapping elevator trim tab is retarded. Guy flying in a 4g+ left turn at 400+ mph, **** happens REALLY REALLY ****ing fast. I'm incredibly surprised many more weren't killed.

Very sad day in aviation and for the Reno Air Races. I've been many times and it has always been a really cool experience. This really ****ing sucks.

Originally Posted by aur0ra

u should be able to overcome that (key word is should) in that kind of airplane

Really? When was the last time you flew a P-51?

The scuttlebut is he called mayday before..if thats the case then the pull up is exactly what pilots would do to get out of the way. After that who knows.

Originally Posted by ScooBySnaCk

The scuttlebut is he called mayday before..if thats the case then the pull up is exactly what pilots would do to get out of the way. After that who knows.

That is exactly correct. Anytime you have an issue during a race you declare a Mayday and pull up and turn all of that airspeed into as much altitude as possible. Altitude == Life

Kinda odd but all the C level people at my work are pilots with planes out of the Carson City airport so I get more info than I actually care for.

Originally Posted by aur0ra

If it caught you off guard at 300mph 200ft from the ground, it would be game over for even the sharpest individual. I'm sure he did the best he could in guiding it from the grandstand.

Originally Posted by Strega

Guy flying in a 4g+ left turn at 400+ mph, **** happens REALLY REALLY ****ing fast. I'm incredibly surprised many more weren't killed.
Really? When was the last time you flew a P-51?

you need to relax dude, and take a reading comprehension class.
High performance airplanes have huge control surfaces, so they can pitch, roll, and yaw FAST with authority, and military airplanes are built to make it back with partial control failures. As far as I know, and maybe Eggi can enlighten us, but trim tabs are designed to be smaller and have less authority than a pilot seated at the controls applying full opposite pressure, this is to ensure if it fails or sticks, you can overpower the trim tab with brute force .I sure as **** didn't imply anywhere that his age had anything to do with the accident. I'm sure at 10000ft. straight and level, he would have had a shot at recovering that plane, but had no chance at low level flying at that kind of speed. You can tell in the vid he was trying to dodge the grandstand, that's a credit to him never giving up and fighting that beast to the very end.
Aren't u that gay flight instructor?

Originally Posted by aur0ra

u should be able to overcome that (key word is should) in that kind of airplane

Why is it that I need to relax because I challenged a ridiculous comment that you made?? What about statement makes ANY sense at all? I was serious, do you have any time in any Warbirds? Ever had a runaway trim tab or had one break off? Why would you think that someone would be able to overcome a failure of that kind?? Your statement just doesn't make any sense especially from a guy without any time in those types of aircraft.

Originally Posted by aur0ra

High performance airplanes have huge control surfaces, so they can pitch, roll, and yaw FAST with authority, and military airplanes are built to make it back with partial control failures.

You do understand that there is very little that's similar between these airplanes and the Warbirds like this that came off the factory line in WWII. Most of these airplanes are stripped to almost nothing and rebuilt (Some built from the ground up that just look like a P-51. 'Strega' is a good example). This particular P-15 had clipped wings and a host of other modifications specifically designed to race. That means, change in aileron length, elevator size, etc etc. The list goes on and on with the modifications and changes made to these airplanes to make them go as fast as possible. This isn't a generic airplane at all so your assumptions are incorrect. Go do a little research on the Reno racers and you'll see they are far from 'normal' even for Warbird standards.

I'm sure this guy did everything he could to try and not hurt anyone, and the fact that only 9 were killed absolutely astounding. My comment directed at you had nothing to do with his age, just your blanket statement about a pilot being able to overcome a runaway (or missing) trim tab.

Losing control of the plane from not having a trim tab sounds unreasonable.

Originally Posted by max

Losing control of the plane from not having a trim tab sounds unreasonable.

From the video, it looks like it was flapping, like maybe 1 of the hinges broke and it was still holding on to the other(s). Later in the video when he's more than 90 deg of bank it looks like it separated. Up until it broke off, who knows how nuts it would have been trying to control it.



Shows it still connected, (also shows the horz stab has been clipped, which means less control surface) which is far worse than having it 'runway' or have the linkage break. Overcoming that thing flapping in the wind would be nuts.

Standard tail:



Trim tab is a big chuck of the surface area of the horz stab.

Originally Posted by Strega

Standard tail:



Trim tab is a big chuck of the surface area of the horz stab.

I bet someone pushed it.

Originally Posted by Strega

The sheer idiocy in this thread is ****ing astounding. The fact that the guy is 73 has absolutely ZERO bearing on his flying ability. Sure, there are 73 year olds that shouldn't be ANY WHERE NEAR an airplane or a car, but there are plenty that are. Bob Hoover is a PERFECT example of a guy that flew with incredible precision at that age.

Initially people were saying he was 80 but even at 73 it's questionable due to slower reaction time alone, at any rate I don't think it's such a good idea to put senior citizens in racing airplanes. Perhaps it would have been best to not have the planes fly so close to the stands?

Higher Rez pic:

not to push the fact but do not racing airplanes bring higher g-forces..I think age does indeed play a factor here

Originally Posted by ScooBySnaCk

not to push the fact but do not racing airplanes bring higher g-forces..I think age does indeed play a factor here

They aren't pulling a ton of G's while racing. Pulling too hard slows you down, the more G's you pull the more speed you scrub off. They're pulling in the 3-5g range, not doing the 7-9 range that some fighter pilots do in modern aircraft.

I don't know enough about P51 aerodynamics to do anything but conjecture, but like i said before it would surprise me if the loss of that trim tab would cause a loss of control situation. It's relatively small compared to the size of the elevator and it is very close to the longitudinal axis of the airplane so it wouldnt cause a huge rolling moment (esp compared to what one would get from the ailerons). That being said, the P51 is a fighter aircraft and it is extremely responsive. The sudden pitch up and slight roll when the trim tab first failed does not surprise me, but the eventual loss of control and the roll over does. I'd be interested to read an expert's assessment of the impact of a loss of the trim tab. And it wouldnt surprise me if the trim tab wasnt the only failure.

also angry strega rears his head in an aviation thread again

I heard that he had shortened the wings by ~5 feet ( among many other mods ) to increase the speed, so that would cause a lowering of the lift area and possibly stability I would think.