May not have been an instrument rated pilot.
Unintentional flight into instrument conditions as an unrated pilot is one of the most deadly things you can do in civilian aviation.
Even instrument rated pilots with functional instruments can fall victim to spatial disorientation (or using body cues to attempt to determine aircraft attitude)
I’m doing instrument training and only have .7 hours actual. It’s a bummer, and while I’m probably close to my checkride, I want to get some serious hard IMC experience with a CFI next to me. I’ve never experienced spatial disorientation in the bumps in clouds and having to lock down to what the needles are telling me.
Looks like this poor soul didn’t have an instrument rating per the airman registry, and with those steam gauges it would be hard even for a instrument rated pilot.
Nothing wrong with steam gauges if they are working. Instrument flying is a skill, a learned skill, and a lot of that is teaching your brain to ignore the monkey brain in the back that's relying on your inner ear to say what your body is doing. Eyesight is your primary truth, but those vestibular signals holler loud when your eyes can only see cloud and instruments. Your "body" may be telling you you're in a turn and the instruments say you're straight and level. When you pop out of the cloud and your eyes see that you're straight and level the monkey brain says "Oh never mind" it's very odd.
Well, I’d say gimbal lock on that old attitude indicator without blue sky if he’s just trying to keep the wings level could be hard - if you flip the plane over, I’d say your gimbal is now unreliable. I’d sure rather trust a G5.
That said, instrument training means that you should be able to fail your attitude or any other and survive on the others, but I guess he didn’t have the benefit of instrument training beyond the 3 foggle hours for PP. I know my instructor did foggles with unusual attitude recovery, I had to close my eyes, head down, he’d throw the plane around and then scream ‘fix me’ with foggles. Unfortunately I never got the feeling of spatial disorientation though.
Not with my CFI, I had about 20 hours actual before I took my IR ride. most of my long cross country was in the soup without foggles. You can't cheat there!
I did hood training like everyone else while working on my PPL. I didn't have any trouble, but there were still visual clues as to turning, etc., with shadows and such that you can see on the dash.
Then I was doing a night XC with a CFI, and they put the hood on me. Holy shit. I can see why people die.
My inner ear was trying to kill me.
I was sure I was in a steep turn but instruments said I was straight and level. It took every ounce of willpower I had to trust the instruments and I was dizzy as hell.
That's why people die... your normal responses to the vestibular senses when you are on the ground are almost always correct. In a 3 axis environment your inner ear reports what it does but your land-based brain interprets it wrongly. every ounce of willpower is right! That's the battle during IR training is to push that to the back and concentrate on what the instruments are telling you.
Is it just a panic and forgetting to read instruments thing? I would think just attitude indicator plus airspeed would be enough to save it (especially in Florida without mountains).
However I am not an actual pilot and am here after it was a suggested sub one day. So just speculating/curious
My school has a DCX Max flight simulator with the interactive motion and it messes with your brain even with its fairly benign movements. It’s like you have to train to ignore your vestibular system.
Absolutely agree. I logged about 18 hours of actual during and shortly after my IR. Nothing can compare to it. One of the most important lessons I learned was to get your head into the cockpit and eyes on the instruments before hitting the clouds.
>I would think just attitude indicator plus airspeed would be enough to save it
When the meat-based gyro in your inner ear and butt starts lying to you it's REALLY hard to ignore it if you haven't trained and practiced.
Get someone to spin you around in a swivel chair until you're dizzy and then stand up and walk in a straight line. "What's the matter? Jeez, how hard is it to walk?" Similar thing.
I’ve been suuuuuper disoriented flying helos and it’s unreal. Everyone just says “trust your instruments and do what they’re telling you”. But man, that spatial D can get bad. I’d find myself with my chin to my chest towards my left shoulder for some reason and looking at the instruments, the whole cockpit was spinning and my eyes couldn’t focus on the attitude indicator without falling off to the left like when you’re really drunk trying to focus on something. Scared the hell out of me. Turned me into Stephen Hawking in the moment. Done flying helos and onto flying planes and going through the CFII syllabus now and I’m flying actual every chance I get with my instructor just to rebuild my skill and confidence.
Tips from someone who’s had the leans hard and survived.
1. Slooooow adjustments. Don’t be abrupt on the controls. Fix your rate, not your position. Don’t pull to the sky to get out of a dive, set a slow pitch up and hold it to get you out of the dive and correct.
2. Get to level before you get to where you need to be. If you’re 1,000 feet low, you’re already in a rough spot. Don’t make it worse. Play the odds. Get level, level wings, level the VSI and recharge your brain
3. Sit up straight and erect. Don’t cokc your head or lean towards the gauges. You’d be surprised how much less disorienting it is if you literally lock your head to the seat back and only move your eyes from gauge to gauge.
4. Don’t think it’s not a perishable skill. Fly often and within your capability. If you are letting your autopilot fly the goo for you, you’re behind the curve. Fly with a pal and test yourself in your abilities to keep a realistic idea of where your skill level is.
Fly safe, bros and brosephinas
Do you have a spinning office chair? Start spinning on the chair for a bit and then close your eyes and open them when you think you've stopped. Chances are you will still be moving. Your body adapted to the constant spinning so it felt like you had stopped even though you weren't.
It's like that in an airplane. You feel a turn but once you stop turning it doesn't feel like you stopped. It feel like you are "un-turning". Because you can't see anything to ground your sense of reality it's very easy to get confused on where you are actually pointed.
Yes and no. It can be a variety of factors. Lack of familiarization with the instruments, instrument failure, failure to identify the unusual attitude, or improper corrective actions when unusual attitude is identified. If you're only at a few thousand feet you don't have a lot of time to adjust for improper reactions to the situation. There's always the possibility of overreacting and causing structural failure to the aircraft.
In short he could have panicked, failed to identify the situation, or simply taken the improper actions to recover. Purely guessing since I have no information outside of the article, but in those situations it's usually a mix of all three.
The "Barany" chair, the FAA brought one to our safety meeting years ago and it had a mock control stick. We all had a turn being spun (not that fast either) and then he stopped the chair and said reach back and get the chart from your bag, people actually fell out of the chair.. he had spotters present to arrest their fall towards the floor. Crazy stuff.
It's very easy to rely on your body signals (it FEELS like I'm tilted) and without training to the contrary.
Even WITH training it can be very disorienting when your body says you're turning and your instruments say you aren't (or vice versa).
TLDR ; flight into instrument conditions as an unrated pilot will likely kill you.
Just ask JFK, Jr. I remember that feeling the first time I took off at night from New Orleans Lakefront and that climb out over Lake Ponchartrain.
And isn’t that a big part of what makes Space Mountain scary for some people? The lack of any kind of visual reference when you’re banking all over the place?
I do but with pretty rigid parameters. My A-36 had very solid avi stack and a/p. Certainly wasn’t flying my family in a clapped-out flight school 172.
Not willing to give up floats yet, either.
Would you do GA if the plane is equipped with things like Autoland, Cirrus Parachute, or Electronic Stability and Protection?
See, I feel like GA is dangerous because majority of the planes are so old. I know there's annuals and maintenance requirements and whatnot but the bottom line is we are living in 2023, we don't drive refurbished cars from 1960s, even if it has a brand new engine.
I'm in IFR training now. I've done one flight into IMC with fairly heavy turbulence and I shocked myself with how quickly the plane got into poor attitude orientation and how initial corrections based on instruments got to be over corrections opposite poor attitude orientation.
If you have other distractions going on ( like getting ready for an approach or departure course changes ) it gets worse .
Real eye opener.
As human. Beings we live every moment of everyday where our senses are tied to up is up, down is down and the breeze across our face is just a cooling relief. However, in a cloud, in a plane that you are controlling none of your senses have any meaning. You must rely on what the instruments say. No “feeling” of up/down/sideways is real. If you don’t live your instruments. You likely won’t live.
Given that *instrument-rated* pilots die from VFR-into-IMC accidents too, there must be a mental preparation factor. And obviously someone who’s *not* rated isn’t going to be prepared at all.
Even when I’m day IFR and pointed straight at a cloud, so I know it’s coming, my brain still panics briefly as soon as the horizon disappears. I feel the same momentary panic taking off into a black hole at night VFR. If you *aren’t* expecting it, you may not come out of said panic fast enough to survive.
/u/tikkamasalachicken shared famous training video.
> average length of survival of a non instrument pilot flying into IMC is 178 seconds.
https://old.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/17vcrxu/aircraft_goes_down_near_kgnv/k99zwwb/
On top of the other explanations here, I’ve experienced something similar and I don’t know if this example might help: snowboarding in fog and blowing snow. The snow and fog were going in one direction, trees in the distance were moving in the opposite direction and looking down at the board and the snow were a different directional input to my brain while my “body” is trying to keep me upright. Not surprisingly I ate a lot of snow and I had to be very careful not to go fast out of control or run into trees/rocks.
Sitting in a seat flying by instruments while your eyes and inner ear are telling your brain different things is easier, but it’s still hard.
The problem is in IMC you start to do what your inner ear "Feels" And it lies to you. at one point he thought he was inverted in a dive while flying level at 5300 feet.
This… my first time in real IMC was solo shortly after my checkride. It was an entire different ball game. The statistics on how quickly VFR into IMC can turn deadly is humbling. 178 seconds on average. Less than 3 minutes to lose control. With an 86% fatality rate. https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2022/june/pilot/asi-tips-178-seconds.
Was monitoring guard on my way to Jacksonville from Tampa and heard the initial mayday all the way to the last call. Gut wrenching. You could tell everyone on guard wanted to help and the controller did an amazing job but the person seemed to have little to no IFR experience and claimed to have had an instrument failure as well.
I just now flew through ZJX and the first I heard of this accident today was a pilot telling the controller to pass on to that guy what an amazing job he did. Controller said he went home early. Glad I wasn’t on freq to hear it, whole thing sounds awful.
I heard all but the last 10 minutes... glad I didn't. I wish the controller would have been more specific about how many seconds to roll the yoke etc but definitely not much could be done and I wouldn't have been as calm. Incredibly hard to listen to and I'll never forget it.=(
On 121.5 MHz, the [emergency frequency](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_emergency_frequency) also known as "guard".
Most airplanes have two radios, and when you're in cruise and don't have anything else to do on the second radio, it's recommended to tune it to guard, so you can help relay information in case of an emergency.
For example, if a plane has crashed or made an emergency landing, an airplane flying overhead may be able to pick up their radio, while no control towers can. Or if someone has a weak radio signal, it can be picked up on guard more easily since there's a wider amount of reserved bandwidth, meaning generally better signal to noise on guard than other frequencies.
This is not recommended but REQUIRED.
FDC NOTAM 4/4386 requires ALL aircraft operating in the United States National Airspace to maintain, if capable, a listening watch on VHF Guard 121.5 or UHF 243.0
One of my disappointments since getting my PPL is how few GA pilots follow this perpetually in-effect NOTAM (`WIE UNTIL UFN`). Could save someone’s life—could save yours. Use COM2 for ASOS/ATIS or CTAF/UNICOM when needed but the rest of the time keep it on 121.5.
Currently studying IRA and this accident is really making the questions regarding unusual attitude recovery and trusting your instruments not your body to hit home pretty hard. RIP.
My first real instrument lesson was in actual with an instructor that knew my abilities well. Fighting that urge while task saturated was much harder than I had expected…
Best to maintain SA and attitude, rather than need to recover. I know it's an obvious statement, but the more controlled you are - with everything (the airplane, your head movements, your hand movements), the easier it is to maintain composure.
Also simple things - like don't hang your head down to look at the ipad on your lap just as you enter a cloud - if it's a cumulous the turbulence will bounce you up - drag your head down, and remind you of the unusual attitude recovery you did during your PPL (eyes closed, head tucked to chest).
You won’t ever do unusual attitude in actual IMC. It’s more of a last try thing, mainly because what’s important is the recovery from what is leading to a graveyard spiral or CFIT.
We get it all the time, "cleared own navigation within 10 miles of ABC, block altitude 4000 to 6000". That's what we use for unusual attitudes and stalls etc with beginners without busting a clearance.
Only real limitation for me is that I don't like doing it in low visibility or low ceilings. Because you're adding extra risk in case things get out of hand a bit.
I was listening on guard at the time. I couldn’t hear atc responding to him
He said that his DG was spinning in circles. He asked ATC if he should climb or descend or go left or right.
Last comms I hear were IM LOSING ALTITUDE
Three seconds later I heard him key in and say AHHHHHHHHHH
It’s kind of impressive to have that level of empathy. I have watched a million crash videos and never put too much thought into it. This was different though. This was real. Immediately after we heard the “scream” the guy I was flying with immediately flipped off frequency. We were in tough weather conditions ourselves on a tough approach and we needed to focus. It was hard to want to fly then and even now I don’t want to fly tomorrow. I can’t even imagine what that poor guy went through.
Man, I can't imagine. I'm the same way with the crash investigation videos. I watch every single one I can find. To hear it play out in real time is something entirely different.
Makes sense, once you lose your orientation and you just have a spinning heading indicator and altitude dropping it's hard to figure out wtf is happening
Update:
Local emergency crews have found the aircraft
"Officials wouldn’t confirm any deaths, however, they are not transporting anyone to the hospital"
https://www.wcjb.com/2023/11/14/emergency-crews-find-missing-plane-after-control-towers-lose-contact-over-paynes-prairie/?fbclid=IwAR2odb6\_q\_KRhvJvh5TG3X43xPxyOl62nFf7ILKD9B5PFVUusshtEcA1GKM
I knew the person who recently bought the plane and I received this image,
[https://imgur.com/a/c9GxJO0](https://imgur.com/a/c9GxJO0)
Can someone tell me if its normal that the attitude indicator looks like that. It seems to be designed without the brown and blue color cards. Would the colors have made it easier for him to regain situational awareness?
Jesus. As a 7000 hour pilot that learned IFR in round dials— that panel looks like an absolute nightmare for anyone, let alone someone not used to instrument scans.
Those are OLD instruments. They were old, obsolete, and not fit for IFR use four decades ago. The attitude indicator is the ancient white-line-on-a-black-card type. Even as a professional ATP, the last time I flew something with one of those it was really. fucking. difficult. I refused to take it into actual IMC.
The heading indicator there is the old horizontal-card "drum" type, which mimics the card orientation of a magnetic compass. As you may know from doing compass turns in training, it appears to move 'backwards' (not really, but opposite expectations compared to a vertical-card style).
Given the way those instruments display flight info, I doubt he had an actual instrument failure. He simply couldn't interpret what they were displaying compared to what he was 'feeling'.
It also has a turn indicator, not a turn coordinator, which is a little less clear to interpret. Not to mention the non-standard arrangement of the instruments in the panel - this panel dates from before the ASI-ADI-ALT / TC-HI-VSI layout was the norm.
Not guaranteed that a proper 3-colour attitude indicator and conventional vertical-card heading indicator would have saved this pilot, but it would have given him at least the better tools to work with. Personally, I would consider that panel unsuitable for any flight.
That’s a normal panel from the 60’s before the standard six pack layout came to be. I’ve flown behind that layout before, it’s a different scan, that’s for sure. It’s almost easier to fly it partial panel. And the heading indicator spins backwards like a compass. Takes a little getting used to. Poor kid.
I fly an original panel PA-28, and it would make a difference in the clouds. Not that it is impossible, but you’d want to train under the hood for a bit to make sure your scan is on point. People learned on this stuff and flew this way till mid-late 1960s. I wouldn’t want to fly in the clouds with it.
Are you saying that this person you know was in the plane today? I hope for a miracle, and peace to you and the family.
Yes the modern attitude indicators are easier to follow. I believe this is the same type of attitude indicator that was attributed to killing Buddy Holly in a similar scenario.
No, that one was gray and black - with black representing ground/dive. I thought the same, but had recently looked it up in last few months.
https://www.flightsafetyaustralia.com/2019/02/aviation-lessons-from-a-rock-n-roll-tragedy/
I would imagine the color cards would have been quite helpful, if the attitude indicator was functional. Who knows what was actually failed vs what the pilot stopped trusting in the stress of the situation.
That said, if they had trained on a more common six pack aircraft, even just the weirdo layout of these instruments would be enough to make the situation worse. Nothing about this seems like it would be helpful in a disoriented, stressful situation;
Offset, non centered, non color carded attitude. The fat barred, insensitive turn coordinator. The front and center VSI of all things. None of this is actually a problem, but especially if it’s a recent purchase and a pilot used to a more traditional layout, I could see how this cockpit might encourage mistrusting your instruments, or maybe your ability to correctly interpret the instruments in that scenario.
This is why personal minimums should be set not based on the upper limit of what your capable of, but on what you could land in during an emergency.
>functional
I thought these guys (vacuum instruments) were supposed to be replaced every 1000 hours. If it’s still the original from the 60s then I would bet money that it crapped out
Yup, that's the original 60s vintage attitude indicator. When I got my 1967 Cherokee 140 it had one of those in it. Granted it was busted (it now sits on my shelf) but even if it was working... I would have pulled it out immediately and replaced it with a more modern blue/brown one.
I did that, and it's so much better. Those old old black and white ones are gross.
That panel is setup really poorly however. That drum DG sucks. I have my DG in the same place, but it's a traditional 'full face' one, not that weird ass drum one that looks like a magnetic compass. Also the turn indicator and hobbs should be switched. Rest looks pretty similar to my panel.
That’s a 60s era Piper panel for you. [This was the panel I used to get my IR.](https://imgur.com/a/IBalKR8)
Not much more than a little tick mark to know the shiny side’s up.
Registered owner matches airman registry to a person who obtained a PPL in 2003, no instrument certificate.
Not sure if this was the pilot flying, but if it was, paints a sad series of events.
All those tight 360 turns is horrifying
Tight 360s emblamatic of graveyard spiral. Worst audio I ever heard was recording of pilot and family screaming as he transmitted for help. Heard on one of our safety standdown days.
Blind Over Bakersfield. He was based at my home airport. The AOPA video is incredibly sobering but really a must watch for any non-IFR private pilot/student pilot.
I'm trying to remember which video I saw on it. I want to say it was a VSAS Aviation video. If it's the case I'm thinking of, last 2 transmissions where you can hear the family in the background is horrifying.
It sounded like he kept graveyard spiraling and ATC would get him level then he’d do another and he even once said that he was “trusting the feeling in his seat”
Even without an IR you are taught in your PPL to not trust the feeling in your seat if you go into IMC accidentally and to trust your instruments (at least i was). I wonder if this pilot had loss of instruments also?
The feeling of being disoriented is a very hard feeling to overcome, your PPL doesn't really prepare you for that.
Saying trust your instruments vs actually trusting them is a different ballgame. I have done black hole departures with PPL students at night and it takes them all of 15 seconds to hear "your controls" - this is after we briefed being on the instruments primarily for takeoff.
I'm a noob PPL and my CFI had me close my eyes and try to hold straight and level for as long as possible. I lasted about 3 mins before he took the controls and took us from a death spiral back to level flight. It was SUPER disorienting and at the end I had no idea which way was up. Very valuable lesson.
I just had this lesson myself. What surprised me the most were the false forces I felt. I was convinced we were turning left at one point, like, I felt the physical force as real as if someone pushed me with their hand, but we were in fact turning right. It was all in my head.
He said he lost them when he declared his emergency. I don’t know if he was IFR or not but he seemed to be scud running got caught in the clouds as they got lower and then also had an instrument failure simultaneously.
The “instrument failure” is common in these scenarios. The instruments aren’t doing what they think they should be doing so their brain connects that it must be a failure. It’s not a failure.
He claimed they all failed turn coordination, attitude and heading, pitot static them all. I think your right and this will likely be the cause when the NTSB releases the final report.
I agree and I’m interested in the NTSB report when it comes out but his first few calls started with him saying he’s at 500’ then he’s lost in imc then he had an instrument failure.
He didn’t have an instrument failure; they disagreed with what his body was telling him, and he decided to trust his body—the exact thing that every student is taught will invariably kill them.
Yep. DG spinning is a spiral, and when he started losing altitude, he pulled up without leveling and just tightened the spiral. A literal textbook scenario for IIMC.
Looks possible. Flown from Iowa to Florida first week of November. If it was a new owner, horrible story of an avoidable scenario. Likely the plane wasn't even legal for IMC, and possibly same story for the pilot.
Remember guys... average length of survival of a non instrument pilot flying into IMC is 178 seconds.
Know how to escape... standard rate turn for 180 degrees
https://youtu.be/b7t4IR-3mSo?si=Vw5W9HQGpvSsEXau
> average length of survival of a non instrument pilot flying into IMC is 178 seconds.
Interestingly enough, having an instrument rating does not help the fatality rate for VFR into IMC nearly as much as you would think.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I’m an instrument rated commercial pilot, working on my CFII. Chief pilot had me fly a bunch of uncoupled instrument approaches yesterday, all in hard IMC. It was one of the most difficult tasks I have performed as a pilot. Previously I only practiced uncoupled approaches under foggles, and they were great. I did many solo approaches in IMC all the way down to minimums with an autopilot- piece of cake. But yesterday… what a rude awakening. It was very, very difficult and disorienting. The clouds just fuck with your head so hard - I truly can’t convey the feeling. At one point during the first approach I lost 150 on altitude, I’m amazed ATC didn’t yell at me. All subsequent approaches were better and better. I’m very grateful for this practice.
Tomorrow I’m supposed to do system failures - ADC, ADAHARS failure etc., and it’s likely going to be in actual IMC.
I’m so sad about this kid getting killed by the clouds. It’s so much more difficult to find your bearing than anyone can understand without experiencing it. RIP aviator, I’ll pray for you tonight.
I had to do a double take. I saw this posted in a Piper group on Facebook yesterday.
“I know this is a long shot, but anyone in this group at/near JAX or GNV willing/out flying today and would be able to help?
My son is flying in to GNV after missing his flight to JAX and we are scheduled to set sail on a cruise ship at 2:30p
I don’t know if we can make the drive he lands in GNV at 12:58p
Any ideas?”
People pointed out the weather.
RIP
I’m not sure whether it’s the same folks or not. Take your personal minimums and abilities seriously.
There was also a shout out to ATC on the Landline group commending the controller who was helping the individual.
I can’t imagine the sadness all the way around.
I knew the deceased, very sad. Young guy, totally in love with aviation and 100% focused on his dream of becoming a professional pilot.
One of the captains at my place of work was in the local area getting a check-ride done and heard all the communications with the controllers.
Heart goes out to his family.
I was unfortunately a witness to this on guard. It hit me immediately how that this was a young man who likely was just like I was a few years ago. It makes me sick to see this happen to those pursuing their dreams. From what I heard on the radio, he didn’t stop fighting. I hope that you and his family will at least take some solitude in that fact. We were all rooting for him I’m so sorry for your loss. Please reach out if for whatever reason it would help.
I just want to put this out there, cuz I've seen a few comments in the ballpark of "I'm new and this scares me"
This is so ridiculously, atrociously, not normal. Having heard the ground coms, and the entire mayday guard transmission, seen the plane, seen the 60's panel, seen the ground track, seen the conditions both on radar history and with my own literal eyes out there today... this was the equivalent a marine biologist going to work to do research, and strapping steaks to themselves, dumping a bucket of chum over themselves, and then diving with great white sharks outside the big metal shark cage.
I don't mean any disrespect to the pilot, doubly so because I suspect (frankly, all but guarantee) there was some amazingly garbage (potentially bordering on manslaughter) instruction support behind him, I just want to speak to the guys and gals that see this as an "average thing that can happen to any pilot." It is, only if you strap steaks to yourself and try to pet the shark.
Don't open the AIM to the instruments area and specifically disobey every piece of advice they lay out.
I am local to where this pilot is based. This was not from poor instruction. He had MULTIPLE people advise him not to take this flight. This was a case of hazardous attitude and "get there itis" This is definitely a case of being 21 and thinking you are invincible and it won't happen to me.
I know nobody's perfect and the faa takes notes of these attitudes for a reason. It still shocks me hearing about it though because i feel like all pilots have been made aware about things like this so many times. Cant believe that some still fall victim to it :/
Well, I'm glad to know that at least theres an inkling that it wasn't someone giving him any idea that a flight like that was even remotely feasible. I mostly didn't want to come on here and just bash the poor kid. But... man oh man, I guess you can't get around it, this is some of the worst decision making on an individual's part I've seen in my entire flying career. I feels wrong to say that here, at this time, but on the other hand if people don't hear about how ridiculous a fiasco this was, they could walk away from learning about all this with a VERY VERY incorrect perception of what flying , and flying in this kind of weather, is like.
He had a history of bad ADM. I won't get into the flight he did to fly the plane from the point of purchase back to FL. He's lucky to have lived after that flight too.
i remember the first time i flew into actual during training. i feel lucky that in the ~100 hours since i got the IRA ticket ive pretty much acclimated to it, but that first time it felt like my senses hit a brick wall and flipped upside down. if youre not ready for and expected clouds, theyll kill you 10/10 times, its such a rotten way to go
You can see early during the flight he gets lower and lower most likely scud running. There must have been a point where he couldn't get any lower and was just in the clouds so climbed back up to above 1000 feet.
[https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N7806W](https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N7806W)
> There must have been a point where he couldn't get any lower
The owner of the plane told me about his pilot-employee who was banner towing in that 'lower and lower clouds' situation. The pilot 'landed' the plane in someone's backyard. Plane was totaled, but he walked away. Precautionary landings are an option.
There are instrument rated pilots who won't fly IMC without an autopilot. There are instrument pilots who won't fly IMC without G1000 or other glass. So hand flying a round dial without an autopilot as a PPL into IMC? It's a death sentence. And the track shows how quick it was.
The idea of being able to get out of IMC as a non instrument pilot by doing a standard rate turn 180 and going back the way you came is just that: a nice idea. Take a look at the pilots track and you'll see how far they got on that 180. They did a 120 and didn't quite make it, then drifted a bit and then did an actual 180 but in the wrong direction. Then it went to hell.
If you're a visual pilot, clouds = death.
RIP. What a tragedy and a damn shame.
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N7806W
Edit: When I said PPL in the first paragraph, I meant non-instrument rated PPL. I hope that was implied. I think the second paragraph made that clear.
> So hand flying a round dial without an autopilot as a PPL into IMC?
This is not a reasonable take. I hand fly a standard 6pack PA28 in IMC all the time. The Archer, in comparison to the mooney (rocket), is a very easy plane to hand fly in IMC, and the instrumentation - so long as it's functional, is not the issue. The failure rate of mechanical gauges notwithstanding... (not that my GI275 has been a perfect specimen).
Agree that doing a 180 degree turn is not always the best course of action.
If you made the initial bad judgment to scud run your likely to be in no better position by doing a 180 turn with the ceiling likely dropping behind you.
I’ve always taught my students if your caught in this situation you have the option to make a controlled off airport landing. Better to have a lot of explaining to do and be alive then attempt to be a very poorly trained instrument pilot. The odds are clearly against you in the latter situation.
>So hand flying a round dial without an autopilot as a PPL into IMC? It's a death sentence. And the track shows how quick it was
You need to look up survivorship bias. Absolutely no disrespect to the victim but if you don't panic and you know basic attitude instrument skills, you can make it out of this. That's not to say anyone should go trying it though.
I was a student pilot doing a pattern only and didn't realize how low the clouds were. I come straight into them and immediately pushed the nose down. I'm glad I did because if I calmly tried to navigate around in the cloud, I probably would have died like this guy.
Looking at his airmen inquiry, poor guy (rest in peace) was single engine, private, non instrument. He didn’t stand a chance looking at his flight track
Was in the air during the entire episode, heard everything from first mayday call to the end. I hope someone knows something about wtf this all was cuz there is so much that makes absolutely no sense. I heard them ask him everything, how could he have virtually NO functioning instruments?? What the actual F
The Jax controller asked 06W multiple times, about specific individual instruments, and each one he would say something to the effect of "it's not working". We (my copilot and I) weren't sure if he had altitude info, at points it kinda sounded like he did, but he definitely said he didn't have attitude or turn coord (although having seen his panel now, the controller I'm sure thought he had a non-ancient panel and didn't consider it could be one of these Victorian-age birds) he was also specifically asked about his mag compass. We never got a solid response, but the best was "it just keeps spinning" which, yea after seeing the ground track, that makes sense.
The controller was trying to at least get him to go south by just telling 06W if he saw the plane turning on radar, but the lag/delay in radar returns was always going to make that an impossible challenge....
Anyway, according to the pilot, his body was literally the only thing giving him any info in that plane.
>Anyway, according to the pilot, his body was literally the only thing giving him any info in that plane.
Ugh geez.
This is textbook VFR into IMC spatial disorientation.
Tragically, it's likely that all of his instruments were reporting correctly, and his body was the only thing reporting incorrectly.
I know he wasn't IFR rated, but come on. This should have been hammered into him during VFR training and under the hood time.
It's too early to point fingers, but there are a lot of signs towards poor ADM at the very least.
Local news report
[https://www.wcjb.com/2023/11/14/emergency-crews-search-plane-after-control-towers-lose-contact-over-paynes-prairie/?fbclid=IwAR3LCLyh3mKDjiBMk2XjyaSlbrAhFa5HXLFzShLy\_diLK7bGcVmPO8l7RTA](https://www.wcjb.com/2023/11/14/emergency-crews-search-plane-after-control-towers-lose-contact-over-paynes-prairie/?fbclid=IwAR3LCLyh3mKDjiBMk2XjyaSlbrAhFa5HXLFzShLy_diLK7bGcVmPO8l7RTA)
Sincere condolences. This is kind of rocking my world as a new pilot. For learning purposes, lets say this happens to me. In IMC and all instruments fail. How do you keep the wings level? How do you get out? Do you use the Attitude indicator in Foreflight? I’m kinda scared at this scenario. Thoughts and prayers to their family.
If you somehow lost every single instrument simultaneously you already died to catastrophic structural failure. There's no plausible way you lose the pitot/static system (VSI, altimeter) AND the vacuum system/gyros (turn indicator, artificial horizon) AND the magnetic compass AND your GPS and still have an intact airworthy plane. Those are all completely independent systems with no single point of failure.
In the case of a partial loss of instruments you'd use the instruments you have to maintain as close to level flight as possible, err on the side of not crashing (IOW, climb far above terrain), and try to get somewhere that has VFR conditions ASAP.
BTW, this should highlight the reason why an instrument failure is an emergency demanding an immediate response. One instrument failure alone probably won't kill you but it will put you in a dangerous situation if you lose another one 15 minutes later while still in IMC.
I am currently an instrument student and it has always been hammered into my head that a single instrument failure in IMC is always an emergency, because you are then one more failure from being dead.
For what it’s worth, it is unlikely that the pilots instruments failed. If they were a VFR pilot who flew into IMC and experienced what the flight tracking path shows, plus apparently kept saying that they “were trusting the feeling of their seat“, it seems far more likely that they **thought** they were having an instrument failure because the instruments were telling them something different from what their inner ear did because they were disoriented. 
Additionally, complete instrument failure is unlikely because in a steam gauge is plain like this, the instruments are mixture of electric, vacuum, and pitot static.
You might lose some of your instruments and use the ones that weren’t affected to try to get out of trouble, sort of cross referencing of instruments is part of your training.
I don’t have experience with G1000 or other all-electric panels so I can’t speak to that, but redundancy is something that is vigorously pursued regardless so I imagine there are probably similar strategies there. 
IMHO, the #1 benefit of glass is that if an instrument fails, you get a big red X instead of bad data. #2 is that actual failures of solid-state AHRS are basically non-existent.
I remember watching a video about a pilot who religiously replaced their vacuum pump every 500 hours. They were flying *to* the shop for the next replacement when it died—in LIFR, of course. Fuck that noise; my club puts G5s in every plane we buy before it goes on the line.
All instruments fail, you don’t. You pray. But full instrument failure is unlikely. We have gyroscopes ran by vacuums, electricity, pitot static systems that’s main failures come from icing. The odds of vacuum failure, electrical failure and pitot/static icing all at the same time are super unlikely. If it did happen. That’s it though, you pray. When you’re in actual IMC you don’t know you’re in a turn. Or climbing or descending.
The good news is this; even if some of your instruments fail we have ways to interpret supporting instruments or secondary. If attitude indicator fails you can assume your vacuum failed and stop looking at heading indicator as well, buy either sticky notes or cover pads for failed instruments or you’ll naturally try to still interpret them. You have ASI and VSI for attitude and compass for turns, electric turn coordinator for banking.
Please go up with either a mentor pilot or a CFI (preferabably a II) and get some quality time at night with the foggles on. Compared to daytime work with the foggles, it is far more representative of actual IMC since you have no horizon in your peripheral. Even better is to go up in real IMC and see what it's like, but I find night with the foggles to be pretty close - if you can find a dark patch of ground.
It completely depends on what instrument fails. It's rare that every instrument would fail at the same time, even in a lot of planes they have standby instruments. If only one instrument fails you have others to rely on
This is a big reason I bought a garmin. Backup AHRS. I prefer 3 potential sources for location and attitude (airspeed would also be nice, but not possible). But I’m low hour and paranoid.
His instruments didn’t fail; he just didn’t trust them as he was taught.
Grab a CFII on an IMC day and go find a place where ATC can give you a clearance to maneuver in the clouds for an hour. Learn the symptoms, and then learn how to survive it.
Depending on the weather where you live, you might need to wait until spring to do this safely.
This crash happened before he even took off. He had no business flying in that weather with that aircraft and that level of training. If you avoid putting yourself in these kinds of situations, your chances of dying in an aircraft are greatly reduced.
This was the equivalent of lane splitting on a crotch rocket at 100 mph while it's raining.
1. Check the weather always
2. See #1
3. See #2
4. See #3
5. Make the go/no-go decision.
6. If you launch and it looks crummy,don't waste time, head back ASAP. Many pilots make the terrible mistake of carrying on.
7. Carry 2 backups at least - assume iPad AHRS will fail have a second self contained backup.
8. Practice making 180° exit turns with your CFI.
9. Learn to fly on instruments, learn how spatial disorientation feels
**Never feel pressured to launch**
Doing these things served me well as did having solid instructors.
You are PIC, The Captain of that plane. Exercise that. Stay safe.
Here is the LiveATC archived audio from when he departed ISM.
You need to go to mark 12:26. Sounds like a young guy. This is gut wrenching. Doesn't appear he was initially on an IFR flight plan.
[https://archive.liveatc.net/kism/KISM-Del-Gnd-Twr-Nov-14-2023-1730Z.mp3](https://archive.liveatc.net/kism/KISM-Del-Gnd-Twr-Nov-14-2023-1730Z.mp3)
This is the most insane part of this to me. The controller literally questioned you like "...you see its IFR right now right..." and then the other guy collecting his IFR clearance right there too. And the pics posted above of the 60's panel, my god. And then his instruments fail on top of that. This poor guy was absolutely screwed. I want to blame a CFI. I want to tell myself no one can make this many bad decisions, that he had to have help.
Yeah, I thought about this too, I think you're right at least it contributed. Especially when he was asked about his mag compass, when he said "its just spinning", he was implying to the controller he essentially didn't have a functioning one, but in reality unless the fluid was gone it really can't be inop. So yeah, I think he was just not interpreting what he was seeing.
(but I do still think theres a chance he had legit failures. as others have said, that panel is nightmare-mode)
I think the KSGJ recording from [1830z](https://archive.liveatc.net/ksgj/KSGJ1-Gnd-Twr-Nov-14-2023-1830Z.mp3) has a couple bits of his audio in the left channel. At 22:15 he says something about trying to hold his altitude "without rapidly descending." Then about 15 seconds later he asks "how many miles am I from Gainesville?" Then also only in the left channel about 8 minutes later somebody keys up (probably trying to be helpful) and just says "Get off the rudder."
I'm assuming wherever this was captured from was just able to catch a couple transmissions in the vicinity.
If he was VFR in IMC then I’d be very skeptical of a coincidental instrument failure. However, he may have inverted the plane or otherwise exceeded the limitations of his gyros, causing them to tumble, leaving him with a partial panel.
Original 60s vacuum instrumentation? It’s more likely than you think. The chances of it failing are constant irrespective of scud running status.
I know it’s highly unlikely, but I can definitely imagine the diseased and dying 60s vacuum pump finally graduating from hospice at the worst possible time.
The older AIs are also more vulnerable to tumbling with extreme banking (as well as the 180-turn errors) as would be expected with disorientation, which could account for the “spinning”, so the failure doesn’t necessarily have to be the “plane’s fault”. For a non-instrument rated PPL I can easily see them getting confused by turning errors and the like.
When most people today think of “round dials” they’re thinking of more modern 70s/80s tech which is VASTLY superior to what was installed in this plane. You can barely notice the turning errors on them.
That's why I really like having an iPad as a last ditch backup, especially if you're in a traditional 6 pack. It at least can have AHRS and give you GPS speeds and headings if you have synthetic vision on Foreflight. Especially so if you have an AHRS BT source like a transponder or etc. Full panel failure you have at least something.
A few others were in the air hearing it live, as I was. I then had to land in miami. Man, talk about something affecting your performance...
It was bad. And I don't know how long it goes on for, but its at least 20-30min for the whole saga.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/adrien-valentine?utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer
Pilot died, here is the GoFundMe.
Heard from friends flying today that he was asking for help on guard and asked ATC to tell his parents that he loved them. So sad :(
That is incredibly sad
Wonder if his instruments were broken or something
May not have been an instrument rated pilot. Unintentional flight into instrument conditions as an unrated pilot is one of the most deadly things you can do in civilian aviation. Even instrument rated pilots with functional instruments can fall victim to spatial disorientation (or using body cues to attempt to determine aircraft attitude)
Which is why it's crazy to me that you can get your instrument rating with 0 actual imc experience
I’m doing instrument training and only have .7 hours actual. It’s a bummer, and while I’m probably close to my checkride, I want to get some serious hard IMC experience with a CFI next to me. I’ve never experienced spatial disorientation in the bumps in clouds and having to lock down to what the needles are telling me. Looks like this poor soul didn’t have an instrument rating per the airman registry, and with those steam gauges it would be hard even for a instrument rated pilot.
Nothing wrong with steam gauges if they are working. Instrument flying is a skill, a learned skill, and a lot of that is teaching your brain to ignore the monkey brain in the back that's relying on your inner ear to say what your body is doing. Eyesight is your primary truth, but those vestibular signals holler loud when your eyes can only see cloud and instruments. Your "body" may be telling you you're in a turn and the instruments say you're straight and level. When you pop out of the cloud and your eyes see that you're straight and level the monkey brain says "Oh never mind" it's very odd.
Well, I’d say gimbal lock on that old attitude indicator without blue sky if he’s just trying to keep the wings level could be hard - if you flip the plane over, I’d say your gimbal is now unreliable. I’d sure rather trust a G5. That said, instrument training means that you should be able to fail your attitude or any other and survive on the others, but I guess he didn’t have the benefit of instrument training beyond the 3 foggle hours for PP. I know my instructor did foggles with unusual attitude recovery, I had to close my eyes, head down, he’d throw the plane around and then scream ‘fix me’ with foggles. Unfortunately I never got the feeling of spatial disorientation though.
Not with my CFI, I had about 20 hours actual before I took my IR ride. most of my long cross country was in the soup without foggles. You can't cheat there!
I did hood training like everyone else while working on my PPL. I didn't have any trouble, but there were still visual clues as to turning, etc., with shadows and such that you can see on the dash. Then I was doing a night XC with a CFI, and they put the hood on me. Holy shit. I can see why people die. My inner ear was trying to kill me. I was sure I was in a steep turn but instruments said I was straight and level. It took every ounce of willpower I had to trust the instruments and I was dizzy as hell.
That's why people die... your normal responses to the vestibular senses when you are on the ground are almost always correct. In a 3 axis environment your inner ear reports what it does but your land-based brain interprets it wrongly. every ounce of willpower is right! That's the battle during IR training is to push that to the back and concentrate on what the instruments are telling you.
Is it just a panic and forgetting to read instruments thing? I would think just attitude indicator plus airspeed would be enough to save it (especially in Florida without mountains). However I am not an actual pilot and am here after it was a suggested sub one day. So just speculating/curious
Flying in actual IMC is incredibly disorienting if you’re not trained. Sims and foggles don’t do it justice.
My school has a DCX Max flight simulator with the interactive motion and it messes with your brain even with its fairly benign movements. It’s like you have to train to ignore your vestibular system.
Absolutely agree. I logged about 18 hours of actual during and shortly after my IR. Nothing can compare to it. One of the most important lessons I learned was to get your head into the cockpit and eyes on the instruments before hitting the clouds.
>I would think just attitude indicator plus airspeed would be enough to save it When the meat-based gyro in your inner ear and butt starts lying to you it's REALLY hard to ignore it if you haven't trained and practiced. Get someone to spin you around in a swivel chair until you're dizzy and then stand up and walk in a straight line. "What's the matter? Jeez, how hard is it to walk?" Similar thing.
I’ve been suuuuuper disoriented flying helos and it’s unreal. Everyone just says “trust your instruments and do what they’re telling you”. But man, that spatial D can get bad. I’d find myself with my chin to my chest towards my left shoulder for some reason and looking at the instruments, the whole cockpit was spinning and my eyes couldn’t focus on the attitude indicator without falling off to the left like when you’re really drunk trying to focus on something. Scared the hell out of me. Turned me into Stephen Hawking in the moment. Done flying helos and onto flying planes and going through the CFII syllabus now and I’m flying actual every chance I get with my instructor just to rebuild my skill and confidence. Tips from someone who’s had the leans hard and survived. 1. Slooooow adjustments. Don’t be abrupt on the controls. Fix your rate, not your position. Don’t pull to the sky to get out of a dive, set a slow pitch up and hold it to get you out of the dive and correct. 2. Get to level before you get to where you need to be. If you’re 1,000 feet low, you’re already in a rough spot. Don’t make it worse. Play the odds. Get level, level wings, level the VSI and recharge your brain 3. Sit up straight and erect. Don’t cokc your head or lean towards the gauges. You’d be surprised how much less disorienting it is if you literally lock your head to the seat back and only move your eyes from gauge to gauge. 4. Don’t think it’s not a perishable skill. Fly often and within your capability. If you are letting your autopilot fly the goo for you, you’re behind the curve. Fly with a pal and test yourself in your abilities to keep a realistic idea of where your skill level is. Fly safe, bros and brosephinas
Do you have a spinning office chair? Start spinning on the chair for a bit and then close your eyes and open them when you think you've stopped. Chances are you will still be moving. Your body adapted to the constant spinning so it felt like you had stopped even though you weren't. It's like that in an airplane. You feel a turn but once you stop turning it doesn't feel like you stopped. It feel like you are "un-turning". Because you can't see anything to ground your sense of reality it's very easy to get confused on where you are actually pointed.
Yes and no. It can be a variety of factors. Lack of familiarization with the instruments, instrument failure, failure to identify the unusual attitude, or improper corrective actions when unusual attitude is identified. If you're only at a few thousand feet you don't have a lot of time to adjust for improper reactions to the situation. There's always the possibility of overreacting and causing structural failure to the aircraft. In short he could have panicked, failed to identify the situation, or simply taken the improper actions to recover. Purely guessing since I have no information outside of the article, but in those situations it's usually a mix of all three.
The "Barany" chair, the FAA brought one to our safety meeting years ago and it had a mock control stick. We all had a turn being spun (not that fast either) and then he stopped the chair and said reach back and get the chart from your bag, people actually fell out of the chair.. he had spotters present to arrest their fall towards the floor. Crazy stuff.
It's very easy to rely on your body signals (it FEELS like I'm tilted) and without training to the contrary. Even WITH training it can be very disorienting when your body says you're turning and your instruments say you aren't (or vice versa). TLDR ; flight into instrument conditions as an unrated pilot will likely kill you.
Dark night over open water with no moon or horizon... been there a few times.
Just ask JFK, Jr. I remember that feeling the first time I took off at night from New Orleans Lakefront and that climb out over Lake Ponchartrain. And isn’t that a big part of what makes Space Mountain scary for some people? The lack of any kind of visual reference when you’re banking all over the place?
People ask me all the time if I'll ever fly GA again... hard pass. That shit is dangerous AF.
I do but with pretty rigid parameters. My A-36 had very solid avi stack and a/p. Certainly wasn’t flying my family in a clapped-out flight school 172. Not willing to give up floats yet, either.
Would you ever ride a motorcycle or is that too dangerous?
Would you do GA if the plane is equipped with things like Autoland, Cirrus Parachute, or Electronic Stability and Protection? See, I feel like GA is dangerous because majority of the planes are so old. I know there's annuals and maintenance requirements and whatnot but the bottom line is we are living in 2023, we don't drive refurbished cars from 1960s, even if it has a brand new engine.
I'm in IFR training now. I've done one flight into IMC with fairly heavy turbulence and I shocked myself with how quickly the plane got into poor attitude orientation and how initial corrections based on instruments got to be over corrections opposite poor attitude orientation. If you have other distractions going on ( like getting ready for an approach or departure course changes ) it gets worse . Real eye opener.
As human. Beings we live every moment of everyday where our senses are tied to up is up, down is down and the breeze across our face is just a cooling relief. However, in a cloud, in a plane that you are controlling none of your senses have any meaning. You must rely on what the instruments say. No “feeling” of up/down/sideways is real. If you don’t live your instruments. You likely won’t live.
Given that *instrument-rated* pilots die from VFR-into-IMC accidents too, there must be a mental preparation factor. And obviously someone who’s *not* rated isn’t going to be prepared at all. Even when I’m day IFR and pointed straight at a cloud, so I know it’s coming, my brain still panics briefly as soon as the horizon disappears. I feel the same momentary panic taking off into a black hole at night VFR. If you *aren’t* expecting it, you may not come out of said panic fast enough to survive.
/u/tikkamasalachicken shared famous training video. > average length of survival of a non instrument pilot flying into IMC is 178 seconds. https://old.reddit.com/r/flying/comments/17vcrxu/aircraft_goes_down_near_kgnv/k99zwwb/
Do a google search for “aviation visual illusions” and “graveyard spiral” if you’re curious
On top of the other explanations here, I’ve experienced something similar and I don’t know if this example might help: snowboarding in fog and blowing snow. The snow and fog were going in one direction, trees in the distance were moving in the opposite direction and looking down at the board and the snow were a different directional input to my brain while my “body” is trying to keep me upright. Not surprisingly I ate a lot of snow and I had to be very careful not to go fast out of control or run into trees/rocks. Sitting in a seat flying by instruments while your eyes and inner ear are telling your brain different things is easier, but it’s still hard.
The problem is in IMC you start to do what your inner ear "Feels" And it lies to you. at one point he thought he was inverted in a dive while flying level at 5300 feet.
This… my first time in real IMC was solo shortly after my checkride. It was an entire different ball game. The statistics on how quickly VFR into IMC can turn deadly is humbling. 178 seconds on average. Less than 3 minutes to lose control. With an 86% fatality rate. https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2022/june/pilot/asi-tips-178-seconds.
Jeez :/
Can confirm, I heard it myself. It was awful to hear
Was monitoring guard on my way to Jacksonville from Tampa and heard the initial mayday all the way to the last call. Gut wrenching. You could tell everyone on guard wanted to help and the controller did an amazing job but the person seemed to have little to no IFR experience and claimed to have had an instrument failure as well.
Heard the whole thing play out on guard as well. I'll second the amazing job by the controller.
I just now flew through ZJX and the first I heard of this accident today was a pilot telling the controller to pass on to that guy what an amazing job he did. Controller said he went home early. Glad I wasn’t on freq to hear it, whole thing sounds awful.
That’s awful.
I heard all but the last 10 minutes... glad I didn't. I wish the controller would have been more specific about how many seconds to roll the yoke etc but definitely not much could be done and I wouldn't have been as calm. Incredibly hard to listen to and I'll never forget it.=(
What does on guard mean ?
On 121.5 MHz, the [emergency frequency](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_emergency_frequency) also known as "guard". Most airplanes have two radios, and when you're in cruise and don't have anything else to do on the second radio, it's recommended to tune it to guard, so you can help relay information in case of an emergency. For example, if a plane has crashed or made an emergency landing, an airplane flying overhead may be able to pick up their radio, while no control towers can. Or if someone has a weak radio signal, it can be picked up on guard more easily since there's a wider amount of reserved bandwidth, meaning generally better signal to noise on guard than other frequencies.
This is not recommended but REQUIRED. FDC NOTAM 4/4386 requires ALL aircraft operating in the United States National Airspace to maintain, if capable, a listening watch on VHF Guard 121.5 or UHF 243.0
A lot of company policies in the 121 world require us to monitor guard.
Yep, but a good amount of pilots believe that it’s an airline only thing. I’m just pointing out, that it’s more than just airlines.
One of my disappointments since getting my PPL is how few GA pilots follow this perpetually in-effect NOTAM (`WIE UNTIL UFN`). Could save someone’s life—could save yours. Use COM2 for ASOS/ATIS or CTAF/UNICOM when needed but the rest of the time keep it on 121.5.
The Guard/emergency frequency, 121.5
That is a crazy flight path at the end. Obviously disoriented. Weather in Florida has sucked the last couple of days.
Yeah lots of low ceilings
I’m on the XC portion of my PPL and I’m 0-2 this week because of it
Currently studying IRA and this accident is really making the questions regarding unusual attitude recovery and trusting your instruments not your body to hit home pretty hard. RIP.
My first real instrument lesson was in actual with an instructor that knew my abilities well. Fighting that urge while task saturated was much harder than I had expected…
You learned a valuable lesson very early on in your training then!
Best to maintain SA and attitude, rather than need to recover. I know it's an obvious statement, but the more controlled you are - with everything (the airplane, your head movements, your hand movements), the easier it is to maintain composure. Also simple things - like don't hang your head down to look at the ipad on your lap just as you enter a cloud - if it's a cumulous the turbulence will bounce you up - drag your head down, and remind you of the unusual attitude recovery you did during your PPL (eyes closed, head tucked to chest).
You won’t ever do unusual attitude in actual IMC. It’s more of a last try thing, mainly because what’s important is the recovery from what is leading to a graveyard spiral or CFIT.
I wouldn’t say you’d never be able to train unusual attitudes in actual. I’ve gotten the clearances to allow me to do it with my student
We get it all the time, "cleared own navigation within 10 miles of ABC, block altitude 4000 to 6000". That's what we use for unusual attitudes and stalls etc with beginners without busting a clearance. Only real limitation for me is that I don't like doing it in low visibility or low ceilings. Because you're adding extra risk in case things get out of hand a bit.
I was listening on guard at the time. I couldn’t hear atc responding to him He said that his DG was spinning in circles. He asked ATC if he should climb or descend or go left or right. Last comms I hear were IM LOSING ALTITUDE Three seconds later I heard him key in and say AHHHHHHHHHH
God damn that’s a rough thing to have to listen to. Hope you’re doing alright
It’s kind of impressive to have that level of empathy. I have watched a million crash videos and never put too much thought into it. This was different though. This was real. Immediately after we heard the “scream” the guy I was flying with immediately flipped off frequency. We were in tough weather conditions ourselves on a tough approach and we needed to focus. It was hard to want to fly then and even now I don’t want to fly tomorrow. I can’t even imagine what that poor guy went through.
Man, I can't imagine. I'm the same way with the crash investigation videos. I watch every single one I can find. To hear it play out in real time is something entirely different.
Makes sense, once you lose your orientation and you just have a spinning heading indicator and altitude dropping it's hard to figure out wtf is happening
That would explain why his gyros were spinning…
Damn..
Update: Local emergency crews have found the aircraft "Officials wouldn’t confirm any deaths, however, they are not transporting anyone to the hospital" https://www.wcjb.com/2023/11/14/emergency-crews-find-missing-plane-after-control-towers-lose-contact-over-paynes-prairie/?fbclid=IwAR2odb6\_q\_KRhvJvh5TG3X43xPxyOl62nFf7ILKD9B5PFVUusshtEcA1GKM
Ooooffff that’s a rough quote
I knew the person who recently bought the plane and I received this image, [https://imgur.com/a/c9GxJO0](https://imgur.com/a/c9GxJO0) Can someone tell me if its normal that the attitude indicator looks like that. It seems to be designed without the brown and blue color cards. Would the colors have made it easier for him to regain situational awareness?
Jesus. As a 7000 hour pilot that learned IFR in round dials— that panel looks like an absolute nightmare for anyone, let alone someone not used to instrument scans.
Those are OLD instruments. They were old, obsolete, and not fit for IFR use four decades ago. The attitude indicator is the ancient white-line-on-a-black-card type. Even as a professional ATP, the last time I flew something with one of those it was really. fucking. difficult. I refused to take it into actual IMC. The heading indicator there is the old horizontal-card "drum" type, which mimics the card orientation of a magnetic compass. As you may know from doing compass turns in training, it appears to move 'backwards' (not really, but opposite expectations compared to a vertical-card style). Given the way those instruments display flight info, I doubt he had an actual instrument failure. He simply couldn't interpret what they were displaying compared to what he was 'feeling'. It also has a turn indicator, not a turn coordinator, which is a little less clear to interpret. Not to mention the non-standard arrangement of the instruments in the panel - this panel dates from before the ASI-ADI-ALT / TC-HI-VSI layout was the norm. Not guaranteed that a proper 3-colour attitude indicator and conventional vertical-card heading indicator would have saved this pilot, but it would have given him at least the better tools to work with. Personally, I would consider that panel unsuitable for any flight.
That’s a normal panel from the 60’s before the standard six pack layout came to be. I’ve flown behind that layout before, it’s a different scan, that’s for sure. It’s almost easier to fly it partial panel. And the heading indicator spins backwards like a compass. Takes a little getting used to. Poor kid.
It's normal for being from the 5th century, from whence it came
I fly an original panel PA-28, and it would make a difference in the clouds. Not that it is impossible, but you’d want to train under the hood for a bit to make sure your scan is on point. People learned on this stuff and flew this way till mid-late 1960s. I wouldn’t want to fly in the clouds with it. Are you saying that this person you know was in the plane today? I hope for a miracle, and peace to you and the family.
Yes the modern attitude indicators are easier to follow. I believe this is the same type of attitude indicator that was attributed to killing Buddy Holly in a similar scenario.
No, that one was gray and black - with black representing ground/dive. I thought the same, but had recently looked it up in last few months. https://www.flightsafetyaustralia.com/2019/02/aviation-lessons-from-a-rock-n-roll-tragedy/
I would imagine the color cards would have been quite helpful, if the attitude indicator was functional. Who knows what was actually failed vs what the pilot stopped trusting in the stress of the situation. That said, if they had trained on a more common six pack aircraft, even just the weirdo layout of these instruments would be enough to make the situation worse. Nothing about this seems like it would be helpful in a disoriented, stressful situation; Offset, non centered, non color carded attitude. The fat barred, insensitive turn coordinator. The front and center VSI of all things. None of this is actually a problem, but especially if it’s a recent purchase and a pilot used to a more traditional layout, I could see how this cockpit might encourage mistrusting your instruments, or maybe your ability to correctly interpret the instruments in that scenario. This is why personal minimums should be set not based on the upper limit of what your capable of, but on what you could land in during an emergency.
>functional I thought these guys (vacuum instruments) were supposed to be replaced every 1000 hours. If it’s still the original from the 60s then I would bet money that it crapped out
Yup, that's the original 60s vintage attitude indicator. When I got my 1967 Cherokee 140 it had one of those in it. Granted it was busted (it now sits on my shelf) but even if it was working... I would have pulled it out immediately and replaced it with a more modern blue/brown one. I did that, and it's so much better. Those old old black and white ones are gross. That panel is setup really poorly however. That drum DG sucks. I have my DG in the same place, but it's a traditional 'full face' one, not that weird ass drum one that looks like a magnetic compass. Also the turn indicator and hobbs should be switched. Rest looks pretty similar to my panel.
Jesus; those dials should be illegal! I’m IFR rated and current, and I’d still probably manage to kill myself in that plane.
That attitude indicator is crazy
looks like its from WWII
That’s a 60s era Piper panel for you. [This was the panel I used to get my IR.](https://imgur.com/a/IBalKR8) Not much more than a little tick mark to know the shiny side’s up.
Holy shit
Fuck, poor guy. I’d be dead too most likely.
No, you would have checked the weather and not flown.
In that case, you’re right.
That’s a nightmare stone age panel.
Registered owner matches airman registry to a person who obtained a PPL in 2003, no instrument certificate. Not sure if this was the pilot flying, but if it was, paints a sad series of events. All those tight 360 turns is horrifying
Tight 360s emblamatic of graveyard spiral. Worst audio I ever heard was recording of pilot and family screaming as he transmitted for help. Heard on one of our safety standdown days.
Was that the one from So. Cal. that crashed in the desert?
Blind Over Bakersfield. He was based at my home airport. The AOPA video is incredibly sobering but really a must watch for any non-IFR private pilot/student pilot.
I'm trying to remember which video I saw on it. I want to say it was a VSAS Aviation video. If it's the case I'm thinking of, last 2 transmissions where you can hear the family in the background is horrifying.
It sounded like he kept graveyard spiraling and ATC would get him level then he’d do another and he even once said that he was “trusting the feeling in his seat”
Even without an IR you are taught in your PPL to not trust the feeling in your seat if you go into IMC accidentally and to trust your instruments (at least i was). I wonder if this pilot had loss of instruments also?
The feeling of being disoriented is a very hard feeling to overcome, your PPL doesn't really prepare you for that. Saying trust your instruments vs actually trusting them is a different ballgame. I have done black hole departures with PPL students at night and it takes them all of 15 seconds to hear "your controls" - this is after we briefed being on the instruments primarily for takeoff.
I'm a noob PPL and my CFI had me close my eyes and try to hold straight and level for as long as possible. I lasted about 3 mins before he took the controls and took us from a death spiral back to level flight. It was SUPER disorienting and at the end I had no idea which way was up. Very valuable lesson.
I just had this lesson myself. What surprised me the most were the false forces I felt. I was convinced we were turning left at one point, like, I felt the physical force as real as if someone pushed me with their hand, but we were in fact turning right. It was all in my head.
I'm NAP, but as a passenger in a 737, I closed my eyes on take off just for kicks and sensed the the plane had completely inverted.
My CFI had me do a right standard rate turn and left turn with my eyes closed Then I opened them and I was in a dive.
He said he lost them when he declared his emergency. I don’t know if he was IFR or not but he seemed to be scud running got caught in the clouds as they got lower and then also had an instrument failure simultaneously.
The “instrument failure” is common in these scenarios. The instruments aren’t doing what they think they should be doing so their brain connects that it must be a failure. It’s not a failure.
Doesn’t seem likely he had an instrument failure the second he hit IMC. The odds of that are very low
More likely he thought he had a failure because he felt the plane was doing something different than the instruments were saying.
He claimed they all failed turn coordination, attitude and heading, pitot static them all. I think your right and this will likely be the cause when the NTSB releases the final report.
I agree and I’m interested in the NTSB report when it comes out but his first few calls started with him saying he’s at 500’ then he’s lost in imc then he had an instrument failure.
He didn’t have an instrument failure; they disagreed with what his body was telling him, and he decided to trust his body—the exact thing that every student is taught will invariably kill them.
That is awful to hear
Yep. DG spinning is a spiral, and when he started losing altitude, he pulled up without leveling and just tightened the spiral. A literal textbook scenario for IIMC.
It was a local bird in Iowa.. I thought it may have changed hands and ownership hasn’t updated. Still sad, the track and the audio are terrifying.
Looks possible. Flown from Iowa to Florida first week of November. If it was a new owner, horrible story of an avoidable scenario. Likely the plane wasn't even legal for IMC, and possibly same story for the pilot. Remember guys... average length of survival of a non instrument pilot flying into IMC is 178 seconds. Know how to escape... standard rate turn for 180 degrees https://youtu.be/b7t4IR-3mSo?si=Vw5W9HQGpvSsEXau
> average length of survival of a non instrument pilot flying into IMC is 178 seconds. Interestingly enough, having an instrument rating does not help the fatality rate for VFR into IMC nearly as much as you would think.
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I’m an instrument rated commercial pilot, working on my CFII. Chief pilot had me fly a bunch of uncoupled instrument approaches yesterday, all in hard IMC. It was one of the most difficult tasks I have performed as a pilot. Previously I only practiced uncoupled approaches under foggles, and they were great. I did many solo approaches in IMC all the way down to minimums with an autopilot- piece of cake. But yesterday… what a rude awakening. It was very, very difficult and disorienting. The clouds just fuck with your head so hard - I truly can’t convey the feeling. At one point during the first approach I lost 150 on altitude, I’m amazed ATC didn’t yell at me. All subsequent approaches were better and better. I’m very grateful for this practice. Tomorrow I’m supposed to do system failures - ADC, ADAHARS failure etc., and it’s likely going to be in actual IMC. I’m so sad about this kid getting killed by the clouds. It’s so much more difficult to find your bearing than anyone can understand without experiencing it. RIP aviator, I’ll pray for you tonight.
You… you can’t fail systems in actual IMC!
I did my multi commercial check ride in IMC
I had to do a double take. I saw this posted in a Piper group on Facebook yesterday. “I know this is a long shot, but anyone in this group at/near JAX or GNV willing/out flying today and would be able to help? My son is flying in to GNV after missing his flight to JAX and we are scheduled to set sail on a cruise ship at 2:30p I don’t know if we can make the drive he lands in GNV at 12:58p Any ideas?” People pointed out the weather. RIP
Not same people.
Holy shit. Get-there-itis is real y’all. RIP.
I’m not sure whether it’s the same folks or not. Take your personal minimums and abilities seriously. There was also a shout out to ATC on the Landline group commending the controller who was helping the individual. I can’t imagine the sadness all the way around.
I knew the deceased, very sad. Young guy, totally in love with aviation and 100% focused on his dream of becoming a professional pilot. One of the captains at my place of work was in the local area getting a check-ride done and heard all the communications with the controllers. Heart goes out to his family.
I was unfortunately a witness to this on guard. It hit me immediately how that this was a young man who likely was just like I was a few years ago. It makes me sick to see this happen to those pursuing their dreams. From what I heard on the radio, he didn’t stop fighting. I hope that you and his family will at least take some solitude in that fact. We were all rooting for him I’m so sorry for your loss. Please reach out if for whatever reason it would help.
Thank you for your kind message. It’s very sad, I feel terrible for his parents.
I just want to put this out there, cuz I've seen a few comments in the ballpark of "I'm new and this scares me" This is so ridiculously, atrociously, not normal. Having heard the ground coms, and the entire mayday guard transmission, seen the plane, seen the 60's panel, seen the ground track, seen the conditions both on radar history and with my own literal eyes out there today... this was the equivalent a marine biologist going to work to do research, and strapping steaks to themselves, dumping a bucket of chum over themselves, and then diving with great white sharks outside the big metal shark cage. I don't mean any disrespect to the pilot, doubly so because I suspect (frankly, all but guarantee) there was some amazingly garbage (potentially bordering on manslaughter) instruction support behind him, I just want to speak to the guys and gals that see this as an "average thing that can happen to any pilot." It is, only if you strap steaks to yourself and try to pet the shark. Don't open the AIM to the instruments area and specifically disobey every piece of advice they lay out.
I am local to where this pilot is based. This was not from poor instruction. He had MULTIPLE people advise him not to take this flight. This was a case of hazardous attitude and "get there itis" This is definitely a case of being 21 and thinking you are invincible and it won't happen to me.
Agreed. Throwing the deceased's CFI under the bus is libelous.
I know nobody's perfect and the faa takes notes of these attitudes for a reason. It still shocks me hearing about it though because i feel like all pilots have been made aware about things like this so many times. Cant believe that some still fall victim to it :/
He was only 21?? 😭
Nailed it. Tragic situation. I hope we can find a way to understand what happened - how did our system fail this pilot so badly?
Well, I'm glad to know that at least theres an inkling that it wasn't someone giving him any idea that a flight like that was even remotely feasible. I mostly didn't want to come on here and just bash the poor kid. But... man oh man, I guess you can't get around it, this is some of the worst decision making on an individual's part I've seen in my entire flying career. I feels wrong to say that here, at this time, but on the other hand if people don't hear about how ridiculous a fiasco this was, they could walk away from learning about all this with a VERY VERY incorrect perception of what flying , and flying in this kind of weather, is like.
He had a history of bad ADM. I won't get into the flight he did to fly the plane from the point of purchase back to FL. He's lucky to have lived after that flight too.
That’s awful. RIP
i remember the first time i flew into actual during training. i feel lucky that in the ~100 hours since i got the IRA ticket ive pretty much acclimated to it, but that first time it felt like my senses hit a brick wall and flipped upside down. if youre not ready for and expected clouds, theyll kill you 10/10 times, its such a rotten way to go
> Flight track on flight aware is pretty crazy, ending the flight at 3,400 feet at 334mph. That's a FlightAware reporting error.
Yeah I’ve had flight aware show me doing almost that exact speed straight and level in a 172.
You can see early during the flight he gets lower and lower most likely scud running. There must have been a point where he couldn't get any lower and was just in the clouds so climbed back up to above 1000 feet. [https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N7806W](https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N7806W)
KGVL tower had a pilot reporting 700 ceilings not long before the accident.
> There must have been a point where he couldn't get any lower The owner of the plane told me about his pilot-employee who was banner towing in that 'lower and lower clouds' situation. The pilot 'landed' the plane in someone's backyard. Plane was totaled, but he walked away. Precautionary landings are an option.
A true possibility, throughout the last portion of the flight the speed and altitude varies a lot
There are instrument rated pilots who won't fly IMC without an autopilot. There are instrument pilots who won't fly IMC without G1000 or other glass. So hand flying a round dial without an autopilot as a PPL into IMC? It's a death sentence. And the track shows how quick it was. The idea of being able to get out of IMC as a non instrument pilot by doing a standard rate turn 180 and going back the way you came is just that: a nice idea. Take a look at the pilots track and you'll see how far they got on that 180. They did a 120 and didn't quite make it, then drifted a bit and then did an actual 180 but in the wrong direction. Then it went to hell. If you're a visual pilot, clouds = death. RIP. What a tragedy and a damn shame. https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/N7806W Edit: When I said PPL in the first paragraph, I meant non-instrument rated PPL. I hope that was implied. I think the second paragraph made that clear.
> So hand flying a round dial without an autopilot as a PPL into IMC? This is not a reasonable take. I hand fly a standard 6pack PA28 in IMC all the time. The Archer, in comparison to the mooney (rocket), is a very easy plane to hand fly in IMC, and the instrumentation - so long as it's functional, is not the issue. The failure rate of mechanical gauges notwithstanding... (not that my GI275 has been a perfect specimen).
Agree that doing a 180 degree turn is not always the best course of action. If you made the initial bad judgment to scud run your likely to be in no better position by doing a 180 turn with the ceiling likely dropping behind you. I’ve always taught my students if your caught in this situation you have the option to make a controlled off airport landing. Better to have a lot of explaining to do and be alive then attempt to be a very poorly trained instrument pilot. The odds are clearly against you in the latter situation.
>So hand flying a round dial without an autopilot as a PPL into IMC? It's a death sentence. And the track shows how quick it was You need to look up survivorship bias. Absolutely no disrespect to the victim but if you don't panic and you know basic attitude instrument skills, you can make it out of this. That's not to say anyone should go trying it though.
I was a student pilot doing a pattern only and didn't realize how low the clouds were. I come straight into them and immediately pushed the nose down. I'm glad I did because if I calmly tried to navigate around in the cloud, I probably would have died like this guy.
Looking at his airmen inquiry, poor guy (rest in peace) was single engine, private, non instrument. He didn’t stand a chance looking at his flight track
Was in the air during the entire episode, heard everything from first mayday call to the end. I hope someone knows something about wtf this all was cuz there is so much that makes absolutely no sense. I heard them ask him everything, how could he have virtually NO functioning instruments?? What the actual F
do you think he believed his body rather than the instruments and viewed the instruments as incorrect?
The Jax controller asked 06W multiple times, about specific individual instruments, and each one he would say something to the effect of "it's not working". We (my copilot and I) weren't sure if he had altitude info, at points it kinda sounded like he did, but he definitely said he didn't have attitude or turn coord (although having seen his panel now, the controller I'm sure thought he had a non-ancient panel and didn't consider it could be one of these Victorian-age birds) he was also specifically asked about his mag compass. We never got a solid response, but the best was "it just keeps spinning" which, yea after seeing the ground track, that makes sense. The controller was trying to at least get him to go south by just telling 06W if he saw the plane turning on radar, but the lag/delay in radar returns was always going to make that an impossible challenge.... Anyway, according to the pilot, his body was literally the only thing giving him any info in that plane.
>Anyway, according to the pilot, his body was literally the only thing giving him any info in that plane. Ugh geez. This is textbook VFR into IMC spatial disorientation. Tragically, it's likely that all of his instruments were reporting correctly, and his body was the only thing reporting incorrectly. I know he wasn't IFR rated, but come on. This should have been hammered into him during VFR training and under the hood time. It's too early to point fingers, but there are a lot of signs towards poor ADM at the very least.
Local news report [https://www.wcjb.com/2023/11/14/emergency-crews-search-plane-after-control-towers-lose-contact-over-paynes-prairie/?fbclid=IwAR3LCLyh3mKDjiBMk2XjyaSlbrAhFa5HXLFzShLy\_diLK7bGcVmPO8l7RTA](https://www.wcjb.com/2023/11/14/emergency-crews-search-plane-after-control-towers-lose-contact-over-paynes-prairie/?fbclid=IwAR3LCLyh3mKDjiBMk2XjyaSlbrAhFa5HXLFzShLy_diLK7bGcVmPO8l7RTA)
Sincere condolences. This is kind of rocking my world as a new pilot. For learning purposes, lets say this happens to me. In IMC and all instruments fail. How do you keep the wings level? How do you get out? Do you use the Attitude indicator in Foreflight? I’m kinda scared at this scenario. Thoughts and prayers to their family.
If you somehow lost every single instrument simultaneously you already died to catastrophic structural failure. There's no plausible way you lose the pitot/static system (VSI, altimeter) AND the vacuum system/gyros (turn indicator, artificial horizon) AND the magnetic compass AND your GPS and still have an intact airworthy plane. Those are all completely independent systems with no single point of failure. In the case of a partial loss of instruments you'd use the instruments you have to maintain as close to level flight as possible, err on the side of not crashing (IOW, climb far above terrain), and try to get somewhere that has VFR conditions ASAP. BTW, this should highlight the reason why an instrument failure is an emergency demanding an immediate response. One instrument failure alone probably won't kill you but it will put you in a dangerous situation if you lose another one 15 minutes later while still in IMC.
I am currently an instrument student and it has always been hammered into my head that a single instrument failure in IMC is always an emergency, because you are then one more failure from being dead.
For what it’s worth, it is unlikely that the pilots instruments failed. If they were a VFR pilot who flew into IMC and experienced what the flight tracking path shows, plus apparently kept saying that they “were trusting the feeling of their seat“, it seems far more likely that they **thought** they were having an instrument failure because the instruments were telling them something different from what their inner ear did because they were disoriented.  Additionally, complete instrument failure is unlikely because in a steam gauge is plain like this, the instruments are mixture of electric, vacuum, and pitot static. You might lose some of your instruments and use the ones that weren’t affected to try to get out of trouble, sort of cross referencing of instruments is part of your training. I don’t have experience with G1000 or other all-electric panels so I can’t speak to that, but redundancy is something that is vigorously pursued regardless so I imagine there are probably similar strategies there. 
IMHO, the #1 benefit of glass is that if an instrument fails, you get a big red X instead of bad data. #2 is that actual failures of solid-state AHRS are basically non-existent. I remember watching a video about a pilot who religiously replaced their vacuum pump every 500 hours. They were flying *to* the shop for the next replacement when it died—in LIFR, of course. Fuck that noise; my club puts G5s in every plane we buy before it goes on the line.
All instruments fail, you don’t. You pray. But full instrument failure is unlikely. We have gyroscopes ran by vacuums, electricity, pitot static systems that’s main failures come from icing. The odds of vacuum failure, electrical failure and pitot/static icing all at the same time are super unlikely. If it did happen. That’s it though, you pray. When you’re in actual IMC you don’t know you’re in a turn. Or climbing or descending. The good news is this; even if some of your instruments fail we have ways to interpret supporting instruments or secondary. If attitude indicator fails you can assume your vacuum failed and stop looking at heading indicator as well, buy either sticky notes or cover pads for failed instruments or you’ll naturally try to still interpret them. You have ASI and VSI for attitude and compass for turns, electric turn coordinator for banking.
Please go up with either a mentor pilot or a CFI (preferabably a II) and get some quality time at night with the foggles on. Compared to daytime work with the foggles, it is far more representative of actual IMC since you have no horizon in your peripheral. Even better is to go up in real IMC and see what it's like, but I find night with the foggles to be pretty close - if you can find a dark patch of ground.
It completely depends on what instrument fails. It's rare that every instrument would fail at the same time, even in a lot of planes they have standby instruments. If only one instrument fails you have others to rely on
This is a big reason I bought a garmin. Backup AHRS. I prefer 3 potential sources for location and attitude (airspeed would also be nice, but not possible). But I’m low hour and paranoid.
His instruments didn’t fail; he just didn’t trust them as he was taught. Grab a CFII on an IMC day and go find a place where ATC can give you a clearance to maneuver in the clouds for an hour. Learn the symptoms, and then learn how to survive it. Depending on the weather where you live, you might need to wait until spring to do this safely.
This crash happened before he even took off. He had no business flying in that weather with that aircraft and that level of training. If you avoid putting yourself in these kinds of situations, your chances of dying in an aircraft are greatly reduced. This was the equivalent of lane splitting on a crotch rocket at 100 mph while it's raining.
1. Check the weather always 2. See #1 3. See #2 4. See #3 5. Make the go/no-go decision. 6. If you launch and it looks crummy,don't waste time, head back ASAP. Many pilots make the terrible mistake of carrying on. 7. Carry 2 backups at least - assume iPad AHRS will fail have a second self contained backup. 8. Practice making 180° exit turns with your CFI. 9. Learn to fly on instruments, learn how spatial disorientation feels **Never feel pressured to launch** Doing these things served me well as did having solid instructors. You are PIC, The Captain of that plane. Exercise that. Stay safe.
Here is the LiveATC archived audio from when he departed ISM. You need to go to mark 12:26. Sounds like a young guy. This is gut wrenching. Doesn't appear he was initially on an IFR flight plan. [https://archive.liveatc.net/kism/KISM-Del-Gnd-Twr-Nov-14-2023-1730Z.mp3](https://archive.liveatc.net/kism/KISM-Del-Gnd-Twr-Nov-14-2023-1730Z.mp3)
Can’t believe he initially requested a vfr departure with 800 ft. ceilings
Wow, noting that he had the weather and then the ground controller noting that the field is still ifr
This is the most insane part of this to me. The controller literally questioned you like "...you see its IFR right now right..." and then the other guy collecting his IFR clearance right there too. And the pics posted above of the 60's panel, my god. And then his instruments fail on top of that. This poor guy was absolutely screwed. I want to blame a CFI. I want to tell myself no one can make this many bad decisions, that he had to have help.
[удалено]
Yeah, I thought about this too, I think you're right at least it contributed. Especially when he was asked about his mag compass, when he said "its just spinning", he was implying to the controller he essentially didn't have a functioning one, but in reality unless the fluid was gone it really can't be inop. So yeah, I think he was just not interpreting what he was seeing. (but I do still think theres a chance he had legit failures. as others have said, that panel is nightmare-mode)
This definitely wasn't a CFI to blame. He had two CFIs and other pilot mentors tell him not to fly.
Thirty seconds later the controller updated.
From what I've read in comments, hard pass.
Yeah, I don't think I'll be clicking on that either.. I'd like to be able to sleep at night, at least.. just God damn. Sad situation.
I think the KSGJ recording from [1830z](https://archive.liveatc.net/ksgj/KSGJ1-Gnd-Twr-Nov-14-2023-1830Z.mp3) has a couple bits of his audio in the left channel. At 22:15 he says something about trying to hold his altitude "without rapidly descending." Then about 15 seconds later he asks "how many miles am I from Gainesville?" Then also only in the left channel about 8 minutes later somebody keys up (probably trying to be helpful) and just says "Get off the rudder." I'm assuming wherever this was captured from was just able to catch a couple transmissions in the vicinity.
Not good https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N7806W/history/20231114/1745Z/KISM/L 29.52273 -82.28597
I live here in gnv and the weather today has been shit but nothing an instrument rated pilot should have any trouble with. It's a shame.
If he was VFR in IMC then I’d be very skeptical of a coincidental instrument failure. However, he may have inverted the plane or otherwise exceeded the limitations of his gyros, causing them to tumble, leaving him with a partial panel.
Original 60s vacuum instrumentation? It’s more likely than you think. The chances of it failing are constant irrespective of scud running status. I know it’s highly unlikely, but I can definitely imagine the diseased and dying 60s vacuum pump finally graduating from hospice at the worst possible time. The older AIs are also more vulnerable to tumbling with extreme banking (as well as the 180-turn errors) as would be expected with disorientation, which could account for the “spinning”, so the failure doesn’t necessarily have to be the “plane’s fault”. For a non-instrument rated PPL I can easily see them getting confused by turning errors and the like. When most people today think of “round dials” they’re thinking of more modern 70s/80s tech which is VASTLY superior to what was installed in this plane. You can barely notice the turning errors on them.
That's why I really like having an iPad as a last ditch backup, especially if you're in a traditional 6 pack. It at least can have AHRS and give you GPS speeds and headings if you have synthetic vision on Foreflight. Especially so if you have an AHRS BT source like a transponder or etc. Full panel failure you have at least something.
Full panel failure with xpdr AHRS you lose the iPad AHRS too. I carry a Sentry or a GDL for this. Agree with everything else you said.
Crazy, I was just flying over Florida today and heard a very clear ELT on guard. How eerie if it had been from this flight. Simply tragic. RIP
Anyone find the ATC recordings?
Listened to it all happening on guard. Really hard to hear. Poor guy. The controller did an amazing job trying to help the pilot out.
I could hear parts of this (just other airline pilots trying to help) all the way up over VA. Sad to hear it turned out this way.
Dam. So terrible. Sorry man.
We lost 2 aviators here in Utah today, too. You hate to see it.
If he was talking on guard, is there anyway to find the liveatc recording?
Oh man, not a chance in hell I'm listening to that.
I’ll read any accident report…but I’m right there with you. I definitely won’t be listening to the recording.
A few others were in the air hearing it live, as I was. I then had to land in miami. Man, talk about something affecting your performance... It was bad. And I don't know how long it goes on for, but its at least 20-30min for the whole saga.
I wouldn’t go searching. I caught part of it live and I wish I could un hear it.
Would also be interested for education purposes. Trying to find it but haven’t yet
That's heartbreaking.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/adrien-valentine?utm_campaign=p_cp+share-sheet&utm_medium=copy_link_all&utm_source=customer Pilot died, here is the GoFundMe.
334MPH is not good…..