Darwin is Lookin Hard at This Guy

Coming to a headline near you, soon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD1T97UqMMU&feature=player_embedded

good god...

I thought he was either going to end up on a tree branch or in the lake.

I don't see a problem

I bet he won't supersize his lunch next time.

One of my favorite expressions is apt:

"An inch is as good as a mile"

Id need some new underpants!

Man, that airplane wasn't that big - what the hell did they have it crammed full of to be that overweight?

Hope he wore a diaper.

wonder if he was trying to fly from the front seat? Cubs are pretty suseptible to bad weight placement. A lot of pilots will control the plane from the backseat when flying alone to keep the balance under control. If he was in the front seat.. coupled with a downhill roll.. he was way nose heavy

Doesn't look like the flaps were down. Bet he'll never miss that on the checklist again.

I bet he went back to the field the next day with pruning shears

my bad.. it is a Stinson 108-3. If it has the aluminum wing conversion it will need more power to get lift over the original fabric wing

You can clearly see him texting during the takeoff roll.

Humidity is a bitch.

That looks like something I'd do in a GTA or Just Cause game.

I'd say he cut it a tad close.

Even when it is in the air, it looks like a bird that hasn't quite learned how to fly. That's a lot of trust in a machine that easily results in insta-death.

kazoospec wrote: Doesn't look like the flaps were down. Bet he'll never miss that on the checklist again.

You beat me to it, sir!

Also it sounded like it was having problems making power. Could have been the audio recording but it didn't sound right.

friedgreencorrado wrote:

kazoospec wrote: Doesn't look like the flaps were down. Bet he'll never miss that on the checklist again.

You beat me to it, sir!

Not all light planes have flaps. Just sayin.

That Stinson 108 has flaps, if it is a 108-3, earlier ones were not equipped with flaps. Flaps on that type airplane would typically be used only for landing.

Reminds me of a coworker with an ultralight and a runway he bulldozed in his yard. There were large trees at the end that he would clear by about 5 feet every time he took off.

Until the day he decided to take his dog for a ride.

Thank god for cell phones or he'd have starved to death. Friends managed to show up 40 minutes later (after stopping for a case of beer) with ladders, chainsaws and cameras. The photos were priceless.

John Brown wrote: Also it sounded like it was having problems making power. Could have been the audio recording but it didn't sound right.

Didn't sound too off to me. Keep in mind that you're hearing a very simple, open piped, carbureted, flat-4. It is almost certainly running rich too, which is standard on takeoff.

It probably is down on power. As titled, it's all about density altitude. Hot, humid day means thinner air, means more speed required to gain lift and less power produced by the engine.

And flaps were not part of the takeoff check list at most altitudes for most of the planes I've flown. The airplane I learned in, which is slightly larger than that one, did not have flaps.

I used to work for an airline that flies turboprops in the arctic. The guys loved takeoffs on cold, cold days - lots of power and lots of lift. No trees either.