As regular readers will know, I'm up in Alaska at the moment, enjoying summer in one of the most beautiful States in the USA.
Lake Hood, just next door to the international airport in Anchorage, is the world's largest floatplane base in summer, with up to 200 floatplanes based there. In winter, when it freezes over, many of the floatplane owners simply switch to skis, making Lake Hood the world's biggest skiplane base!
Just last month, there was a nasty accident on the lake, from which fortunately all occupants walked away unhurt. I'm told that the pilot's wife had just bought him the de Havilland Beaver aircraft involved, which would be in the half-million-dollar-plus range: and he'd only just taken his floatplane license. He certainly didn't know what he was doing when he tried to take off from Lake Hood, with results as shown in the video below.
Ouch!
There's a discussion of the accident on the Studentpilot message board, which provides more information for those who are interested.
Peter
5 comments:
Gotta hand it to the camera man, he stood there a lot longer than I would have.....
So damn painful to even watch. Sad end for a beautiful and noble aircraft.
Did the novice pilot not remember "If lift plus thrust is greater than load plus drag, a thing will fly" ........................ ;-)
Semper Fi'
DM
Damn... Those Beavers are tough! Didn't sound like he had full power, and yeah DM has it right, it's that old L/D thing...
Looks to me like his feet failed badly on ruddering down the takeoff lane. Lucky folks must be Irish blood somewhere.
From a happy footed pilot in Montana.
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