http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=60d_1441670499
Pretty good control. Part of the Scalaria Air Challenge
That’s Ireen Dornier’s restored Do-24 and it was an accident. He hit some wood in the water. The airplane is severely damaged.
Neat trick. Those huge sponsons work pretty well! What a beautiful plane.
Was that accident recent? I suppose always the danger for the seaplane guys, debris lying just under the surface, almost impossible to see, particularly when attempting his STOL performance. It was a rating I always fancied, but have never got around to it.
Did I hear a rumour of the same aircraft suffering another “landing” accident at the same spot, a couple of years ago? What I heard was “came down on water with the wheels extended, plane turned over” but it was heard at really the least reliable place for rumours – an airfield bar.
@BeechBaby: the article referred to is dated 19 July 2015, with an update on the 22nd.
The rudders were hard over left the entire time in the direction of rotation. I don’t doubt that the airplane was damaged.
I have no knowledge of this event, other that what I can see in the video, but I have a lot of experience with flying boats on the water. I don’t know what the pilot’s intentions were, but a very nose low touchdown, and full left rudder are a recipe for a waterloop, and damaging event. Surprise! That’s what happened. This is the same as a wheel landing, followed by full rudder application – whadda you expect to happen?!?
This is an embarrassment to disciplined water flying, particularly in such a special aircraft. This pilot lost control of his aircraft.
Yes hindsight is a wonderful thing. My understanding of the event was that it was initially promoted as ‘he meant to do it’, then the story changed too, ‘he did not mean too do it’. Some of us did not get the update to the original story. Ah well, my faith in water borne jockeys, doing ‘stunts’, dissipated partially.
Beautiful aeroplane, with great quality video though
Pilot_DAR wrote:
I have no knowledge of this event
Always helpful when criticising a pilot.
The title of the video is plain wrong. The intended manoeuvre was a “touch-and-go” – hence the relatively high speed and associated attitude – and the hull was damaged and holed by a log or somesuch, leading to water ingress and the loop.
It is difficult to see because it happens so fast, it is not obvious when the rudder starts to move, but the tail comes around very quickly and that alone will deflect the rudder, which does not normally have a static balance, and it also throws the pilot about in the cockpit, which can lead to inadvertent inputs. If the rudder input was first, it would take a bit longer for the rudder deflection to result in the aircraft whipping around THAT fast.
This accident reminds me a lot of another involving a Beaver float plane in Lake Lovely Water, BC Canada. I believe that there was quite a bit of contention regarding the Beaver accident… or was it intentional? The movie cameras were rolling!
Regardless, in both cases you can see the dynamic instability of touching down too fast on the fronts of the floats (or hull). I second Pilot-DAR on this one, very poor flying indeed.
