'Tango and Juliet' Cessna 140 Crash

it's wednesday the 21st of april my name's juan brown you're watching the blanco lyrio channel and today with a very heavy heart i have to report that we have lost two very it's wednesday april 21st my name's juan brown you're watching the blanco lyrio channel and with a very heavy heart today i have to report that we've lost two very well loved individuals of the grassroots aviation community particularly the youtube aviation community timothy michael gill and joy lani roseanne camelou from vista california were found deceased in their cessna 140 aircraft near the williams airport near flagstaff arizona on a flight they were taking over this weekend we don't have a lot of information at this time i'm going to share with with you what little information we have and then we're going to have a little blank old area aviation safety stand down as we're rolling into the springtime flying season and aviation accidents particularly in general aviation seasonally ramp up the first bit of information is this press release from the coconino county sheriff's department john paxton this is uh posted april 19 2021 overdue aircraft located crashed near williams h a clark field williams arizona on sunday april 18th around 6 pm deputies from the coconino county sheriff's williams substation received a report of an overdue aircraft from vista california a family member of one of the overdue occupants indicated that the missing parties had not reported for work as scheduled on sunday the occupants have been identified as timothy michael gill 37 and joylani roseanne kameloo 38 of vista california the reported destination for the aircraft was the grand canyon airport for a scheduled appointment in the tucson era area at 9 00 am so but they don't say what day was at 9 00 am sunday morning having departed from the sedona airport investigators immediately focused on attempting to search for the aircraft at the sedona and grand canyon airports due to the potential for the aircraft being in multiple jurisdictions the state search and rescue coordinator was notified who in turn requested the assistance from the u.s air force civil air patrol to determine the last known direction and location of the aircraft this information from the u.s air force directed search efforts to the area northeast of the williams airport also known as h.a clark airfield deputies requested the assistance of the arizona department of public safety air rescue helicopter out of kingman on monday april 19th at 1 40 am dps that's the middle of the night dps air rescue located the aircraft crashed in a wooded area near the williams airport and the incident is currently under investigation by the ntsb and the faa local sheriff's office and medical examiner's office now from their instagram account we are beyond excited and extremely grateful to announce the new addition to our flying family meet our new baby cessna 140. it's been a long time coming for us with a lot of blood sweat and tears and we're super stoked to be able to take her on her maiden voyage out to sedona for juliet's 40th birthday not only is tim a private pilot but he's a well-known respected swing jazz musician in the southern california area the leader of his own big band swing swing band and trumpet player i don't know how many years tim had been flying but he started out the first aircraft he owned it looks like was a pete and pole air camper an airplane that i'm pretty familiar with a home built aircraft of marginal performance at best and and they documented that pretty thoroughly on their youtube channel they then got access to a cessna 120 aircraft flew that around for quite a bit of time and then decided to sell the peaton pole and then just bought this new to them cessna 140. the cessna 140 aircraft is much like the mighty luskim in fact it's often said that cessna kind of took don luskom's idea of a monocoque construction all-metal aircraft refined it a bit and came up with the cessna 140 series of aircraft the cesta 140 series is normally powered by an 85 horsepower continental i'm not sure what engine their aircraft had often times these these aircraft are modified like the mighty luss come here to a slightly larger engine like a 100 horsepower light continental or even a small lycoming engine now where they crashed is an area of concern for me we don't know the timeline i've heard reports that maybe they left sedona as long ago as thursday we don't know when exactly the crash occurred yet but regardless that section of the u.s right around flagstaff is is very treacherous for light let me say underpowered aircraft if you will these aircraft these aircraft do not have a whole lot of excess performance if you will especially on the 85 horsepower variety the train around the flagstaff area is about 7 000 feet it's fairly level terrain with the exception of mount humphries and a few mountains around there it's deceivingly treacherous in the fact that it's fairly level that seven thousand foot elevation means a lack of performance in light aircraft density altitude is what can easily get you into trouble in and around the flagstaff area when we're ferrying aircraft across the country we'll often take what's called the southern route and take that what used to be old route 66 or route 40 across the country because it gets well south of the rockies but the hardest part of that journey is right around the flagstaff area where the elevations are the highest we don't have a timeline on this accident but if you look back at the at the weather reports and this is very typical this time of year for that area the winds start out relatively calm in the morning the temperatures are nice and cool the density altitude is is relatively close to field elevation but very quickly after sunrise the winds start piping up and during and around the period of this accident the winds were piping up in the ur middle late morning early afternoon hours quite a bit out of the east and or northeast a northeast wind in this area by the williams airport can produce a lot of bad turbulence as that wind comes from the east and downdrafts beyond the mountain humphreys area there and create quite a bit of turbulence along their route of flight so some of the things investigators will be looking at was is the loading of the aircraft the weather and the winds at the time of the accident the power plant itself didn't suffer some kind of a power plant failure just looking at the pictures it looks to me like this was a stall spin accident into the ground now i want to take this time and do a blanco lyrio safety stand down on aircraft performance on antique aircraft for grassroots aviators i i nearly flunked my private pilot check right at 17 years old from old see carl harder down at lincoln california when i failed to correctly calculate density altitude then about a year or year and a half later i damn near lost my life in a density altitude incident at nervino airfield up in the sierra valley here in the sierra nevada mountains now fortunately in that case i got away with simply a bent prop and some busted bungee cords on that old 1942 dco65 taylor craft that was kind of the end of that airframe and uh i brought that airplane home on a truck and trailer as a result of the aircraft refusing to remain airborne after trying to depart it it's basically exceeding the performance limitations of the old aircraft too high of a temperature too much of a load and also the winds didn't help that day either so on these older aircraft you don't have a lot of performance data there's very little there's no virtually no performance data available in the owner's manual for these aircraft this performance data you have to empirically derive through experience or tough experience the owner's manual may give you a warm fuzzy saying it's got an operational service ceiling of eighteen thousand feet well that's unrealistic at best when you load these aircraft up and they do not have a lot of useful load their total gross weight may be around fourteen hundred pounds or so depending on which make and model you got your useful load may be down to four or five hundred pounds by the time you load up two people and fuel and some camping gear you may be at or above the gross weight of the aircraft over the years these aircraft typically have more additions and modifications done to them which also increases their empty weight as well thus hampering your performance so what are the four inputs to density altitude what is density altitude density altitude is the air in which the aircraft is flying that's the air that the aircraft feels just because your altimeter says seven thousand feet msl or eight thousand feet msl the air that the aircraft feels can be considerably higher elevation than that in other words the air density changes constantly the thickness of the air and one of the four inputs into density altitude your elevation your temperature your dew point and your pressure altitude these light aircraft are what's called naturally aspirated aircraft they don't have a turbocharger or a supercharger to help increase the horsepower of the engine as you climb in altitude so as you climb in altitude you have less oxygen for the engine to breathe so the engine is producing less power as you increase in altitude and temperature the air density continues to decrease so you have less lift for the wings to lift to fly on also same for the propeller you have less thrust coming from the propeller from the less dense air so how do you correctly calculate for density altitude this is what i flunked as a private pilot there first you input your outside air temperature you need to input your pressure altitude how do you find pressure altitude remember your altimeter is basically a barometer if you put standard pressure to 29.92 inches of mercury in the kolzman window the altimeter will now read the pressure altitude conversely if you put in the field elevation into the altimeter the kohlsman window will read out the current barometric pressure in the old days we put that in an e6b calculator a whiz wheel and came up with our density altitude nowadays that's often transmitted automatically on the a wasp or you can approximate it here on the density altitude chart note also this diagonal standard temperature line on the density altitude chart at 7 000 feet your standard temperature is about 35 degrees fahrenheit which means any temperature warmer than 35 degrees fahrenheit at 7 000 feet and your density altitude begins to rise above the field elevation as soon as that temperature starts warming up above 40 degrees your density altitude starts increasing dramatically and by the time you get to just 60 degrees fahrenheit your density altitude is already up to eight thousand four hundred feet so as your density altitude goes up your cruise your performance ceiling decreases your ground speed is going to go up as well you're going to need to add a few knots for all of your maneuvering and if in the event that you have any kind of emergency your defined minimum maneuvering speed is going to be pretty high and what's going to be especially astonishing if you have any kind of an emergency even just coming into land if you're not used to it is you your ground speed you will visually see just how fast you are cutting across the ground and your how high your sink rate is at these higher density altitudes now you're at this high density altitude setting get getting close to the performance ceiling of your aircraft and you add winds into the equation you just don't have a lot of excess performance to battle the winds and these winds can produce sink rates that easily exceed the performance of the aircraft and if you either get into one of these sinkers or some kind of an emergency situation and you get surprised by that astonishing sink rate and or ground speed the first human instinct to do in a panic type situation as you see that ground rushing up towards you is to pull back just accelerating the stall and spin into the ground so respect the performance limitations of your light aircraft use your superior judgment instead of your superior flying skills to avoid those kind of situations in the first place though we don't know what happened in this particular accident out of respect for those that have gone before us in similar situations let us learn from these examples and not try to continually repeat them the accident rate the current accident rate as it stands averages out to about 19 fatal general aviation accidents per month the month of april we were doing very well and then the weather got better and as typically happens this time of year we're seeing a the usual seasonal increase in aviation accidents in incidents that goes along with the improving weather so let's all learn from this take a time to to think about it talk about it amongst yourselves and let's continue to try to bend that accident record down lower that accident rate for general aviation thank you so much for your support of this channel out of respect for everybody involved in this latest tragedy i've turned all the ads off and let's all try to learn something from this together spread the word thanks for your support see you here [Music] you

Channel: blancolirio

Views: 453,183

Keywords:

Id: kcfD1kd1tH4

Length: 15min 59sec (959 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 22 2021