slingsby firefly

[snapper41]

Well, the RAF uses them:

http://www.raf.mod.uk/equipment/firefly.cfm

Probably not a bad recommendation!

[micromalc]

firefly

hi guys,
thanks for all the imput...looks like thruxton 4 me.
it seems to me that aircraft are just like everything else in life...use the right tool for the right job.
I"m into nice, gentle, graceful aeros and it seems that the firefly will do the job.
If i need anything more "exciting" i"ll try a YAK52.....thanks

[matspart3]

Tiger Airways at Gloucester have one. Googling will do the trick

[alvin-sfc]

So what would a typical hourly rate be?

[Merritt]

So what would a typical hourly rate be?

Thruxton charge 144.53 inc VAT, wet with instructor or £119.85 inc VAT wet without.

Steve

[Re-Heat]

Not bad value...!

[SNS3Guppy]

Guppy, get the facts straight. After a very thorough investigation, they could find nothing wrong with the aircraft. The decision to discontinue use was a political one, not backed by those in the know at the USAF.

I had a long discussion with one of the instructor pilots who had lost friends and two students in those crashes, and was head of the investigation team...and who was part of the decision to stop using the Firefly.

He certainly wouldn't agree with your position, which is incorrect. Then again, he was in a position to know.

[A and C]

Guppy

I find your statment some what at odds with the findings of the UASF test pilots, who did a lot of testing after a number of these accidents happend.

Veiwing from this side of the Atlantic the political "not made in the USA" lobby seemed to have more to do with the USAF withdrawing the T67 from service that good opperational reasons.

The fact that in terms of value the aircraft was over 50% built in the USA seemed to have slipped the mind of those in power.

[Mikehotel152]

Brown pants moment!

[SNS3Guppy]

I find your statment some what at odds with the findings of the UASF test pilots, who did a lot of testing after a number of these accidents happend.

You might, but the USAF didn't.

The aircraft which the T-3A replaced was the T-41 (several versions of the Cessna 172 XP), and it's purpose was the flight screening program; see if the applicant had any aptitude with a short introduction to flight.

The introduction of the firefly was also the introduction of an expanded program in which one obtained a private pilot certificate, and the training time was expanded from 40 hours to 50 hours. The T-41 was relegated to the Civil Air Patrol, a civillian branch of the USAF tasked with search and rescue, and to flying clubs at air bases around the country.

The USAF experienced 66 engine failures with the firefly, and grounded the fleet 10 times due to various problems. Half the fleet was flown at Hondo, TX, for initial pilot screening, and half at the US Air Force Academy (Colorado). Three fatalities occured at the USAFA. It was those fatalities, two cited as pilot error and one as unknown, the results of spins, which brought the program under scrutiny and eventually closed it. And no, it wasn't politics based on a British aircraft.

I will say that most people, myself included, thought the aircraft should never have been purchased.

In the 30 years of T-41 use preceeding the firefly, there had been NO fatalities.

Everybody who flew the airplane felt that it's general flight characteristics were fine. It was other things that they didn't like. Neither did the top brass, nor Congress. The program was a big waste of money, a fiasco. They should never have switched from the T-41.

[Carvair]

Mine at Sherburn is too far, but it's a delightful aircraft to fly - a real "stick & rudder" aeroplane. Fly one on the higher power models - the T67C, or any "M" version. Great aeros too!

[karl414ac]

T67 in the UK

There is a T67A at blackpool for hire on a no equity share scheme unsure of the prices as yet adn they have a good aero's instructer aswell

[Life's a Beech]

My CPL instructor was flying for EFT when the only UK military training Firefly crash happened. The instructor in that one admitted taking over too late when the student made the wrong recovery action (which worsens the spin in some way in the Firefly). He thinks it would have recovered without a problem, but standing orders to leave the aircraft at 3000 feet if still spinning, so they did.

Nothing wrong with the aircraft. Like any with decent performance it can bite you, and it was mishandled.

Guppy

The 172 is a docile machine to the point of tedium. Its handling is horrible, but safe, so it is no surprise there were no deaths. The surprise is that anyone learnt anything from it! A terrible training machine, worse than the 152, for anything but a future commercial pilot flying on instruments.

The T67 is an aerobatic aircraft. It was also possibly not well suited to flying over high terrain and with air conditioning (UK never fitted AC), so perhaps the procurement was not correct, but there was nothing fundamentally wrong with the design. Several military schools have had great success, and it is a popular aircraft at civvy clubs for increasing skills.

[robrob]

If you fly or plan to fly a Firefly you should read this: Aviation Safety Network list of T67/T-3 accidents. There's some interesting reading in those reports.

Keep in mind that pretty much every one of the dead Firefly pilots thought it was a safe airplane until just before impact so don't tell me, "I fly the T67 and it's a safe airplane." It's not. It's statistics are shockingly bad. It's got to be right up there with the F-104 Starfighter.

From a UK Fatal Stall or Spin Accident summary (1980-2008) report:

The accident rate for the Slingsby T67 was throughout the period much greater than any other certified type and has been treated as a special case.

The Slingsby T67, (8 fatal accidents) was excluded from the main numerical analysis but was studied as a special case. (See Appendix 2 of the full Report).

Over 10% of every T67/T-3A has been destroyed in an accident and 35 souls have been lost to date (May 2016).

I flew the T-3A at the Air Force Academy and I call it the "Plastic Coffin."

[rotorfossil]

karl1414ac. I bought a share in a T67a and was very concerned when I investigated the complexities of the CofG considerations apart from the required low fuel loads for max weight for aeros. Because of the sliding seats, two long legged heavyish people put the CofG outside the the rear limits with possible spin recovery difficulties. My impression was that it was very important that the spin recovery was done in the right sequence, that is full rudder, pause, stick centrally forward. I also felt that some failures to recover were due to getting into an unrecognised inverted spin.

[robrob]

If the failure to recover was from an inverted spin they would have hit the ground inverted, right?

This is an interesting post I found Found on an online aviation forum archive:

---------------------------------------
Karl Bamforth
5th Jun 2009, 06:24

I remember an instructor and student getting into trouble trying to recover from a spin in a T67 in the UK.

Its a few years ago but when the Instructor told me what happened I could see how a student could get themselves into serious trouble. Thankfully both student and instructor survived the incident.

To the best of my fragile memory.
The instructor demonstrated a spin and recovery with no problems.
Handed control to student, the spin and recovery was normal until the "pull out from ensuing dive" part, they started to pull out of the dive but suddenly and violently departed and flicked hard into another spin.

The instructor took control and initiated recovery, once again the recovery was normal but in the later stages the aircraft once again flicked into another spin.

The instructor thought the problem was they were pulling too hard during the recovery causing the pitch angle to increase rapidly causing a further stall spin. On the last attempt he was much gentler in the recovery from the dive. The aircraft recovered normally.

Now if this had been a low houred pilot watching the ground getting ever closer and with a certain amount of panic setting in I think it would have ended in disaster.

Its the only first hand account I have come accross and it seems to fit the other failure to recover stories I have heard.
It certainly cured me of wanting to spin a T67.
--------------------------------------------

Because the T67/T3A spins so nose low the spin recovery is very nose low and it is common to pull the elevator too hard and get a secondary stall or buffet during the dive recovery. If there is any rudder displacement during a stall or buffet the T67/T3A will snap roll into a spin. If the rudder was rigged so the rudder was NOT neutral when the rudder pedals were neutral then it would be easy to encounter the behavior described in this post. Also, in the heat of the moment during the dive recovery it is easy to forget to neutralize the rudder or simply misalign your feet and leave enough rudder displacement to cause a snap roll spin.

[Genghis the Engineer]

An inverted spin is one where roll and yaw are opposite to each other. That means that it's upside down for a period of the time, but a snapshot moment may still find the aircraft upright, particularly if the mode is very oscillatory. That said, it's indeed most likely it would be inverted.

G

[robrob]

I did one inverted spin in the T-3A and it rolled right-side up upon entry and I thought it was over--that we didn't enter a spin. We then continued rolling and developed into a stabilized inverted spin. During the recovery with full anti-spin rudder I brought the stick from full forward to toward the rear and the aircraft popped out of the spin with just a little aft stick movement. The recovery dive was a pull from more than vertical so extra altitude, I would guess about 300 feet, was needed for the recovery. The lower rear of the rudder had a small puncture after the flight but we couldn't tell what could have caused the puncture damage.

Here is an interesting tidbit about the T67 and T-3A aircraft. T67's come with a small or large rudder. All the T-3A's came with the small rudder.

T67 with "Big Rudder"


T67 with "Small Rudder"


T-3A with "Small Rudder


Note how bottom edge of the T67 "big rudder" (first photo) follows the angle of the bottom of the empennage and so has about two inches of rudder below the trailing edge position light. The T-3A on the right has a smaller rudder that angles up to the position light.

If we estimate the bottom length of the rudder to be 14 inches that gives us: (14 x 2) / 2 = 14 square inches. Fourteen square inches of additional rudder that's in the best possible location--mostly at the trailing edge below the elevator in clean airstream during a spin. If I owned a T67 with the small rudder I'd look into replacing it with the larger rudder.

I noticed the April 2016 spin crash T67 has a small T-3A style rudder.



Another T67 fun fact:

Review of UK General Aviation Fatal Accidents 1985-1994

[abgd]

That makes a Firefly look a much better bet than a Pitts... If you compare like with like rather than comparing an aerobatic aircraft with something non-aerobatic.

[Jetscream 32]

robrob,

Healthy debate on a rumour forum is good but outright scaremongering is not really game!

small fin big fin is related the C or M model - BONSO was a C model and had the smaller rudder = standard and nothing wrong with it. The M model 260 has a larger fin as per the photo you present... You cannot put a M rudder on a C model!

You bleat on about the aircraft being unsafe...... actually what you are saying is that aircraft should never hurt anyone, and no one should pay any attention to the POH and pay no attention to weight and balance or any of the very very clear notes in the POH about aerobatics and in particular spinning.

The T67 is no different to the North American Harvard, bit of a handful when spinning and happy to flick and depart controlled flight, so don't self-teach yourself aerobatics - it will only end one way - unhappy!

The constant issue I have found when teaching spinning in the T67 of ALL variants is the students understanding the correct recovery technique and clear understanding that just because you have stopped the spin from entry direction you cannot simply just unload the stick a little bit and then start trying to recover from the inherent nose down attitude..... and large height loss, you have to UNSTALL the aircraft and let POSITIVE airspeed build, in the M model for a fully developed spin you can lose up to 800ft per turn allowing for recovery, don't go thinking you can nip up to 3000 and practice spinning in a T67 unless you do it every single day and are well within the CG limits..

Spinning a T67 should only be done ABOVE 5000 ft AGL (check density) and always wearing parachutes.... There is NOTHING wrong with the aircraft - its certified and there is nothing wrong with it.... Pilots of all abilities and experience often think they know best and maybe not pay attention to ALL information pertaining to the flight they are going to undertake... which occasionally then creates some sticky situations.