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Old 7th Oct 2002, 19:28
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Genghis the Engineer
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I've flown with these on a number of small FW aircraft for flight test work. They're preferable to a spin-chute for a lighter aeroplane, because they don't alter the ratio of rolling to yawing rotational intertias. They're also preferable to personal parachutes for anything with a hard-to-escape-in-a-hurry cockpit, which is quite a few types of my intimate acquaintance.

The main manufacturer (responsible for the device in the Cirrus I believe) is BRS inc. in the USA. I've looked through their literature, which includes a huge number of successful saves in American homebuilts and ultralights. Great credit to the device, which has a near 100% save rate, but the vast majority of operations seem to be low ability pilots who had they been properly trained and current should have sorted themselves out with a proper forced landing / spin recovery / spiral dive recovery / etc. In this instance, I've not flown the Cirrus, but would be surprised if in reasonably benign conditions a FW aircraft of that sort of size and shape couldn't reasonably be navigated to an airfield and landed without use of ailerons unless the system was actually jammed into a continuous roll which -given he had time to call a Mayday - seems unlikely.

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