Just some observations of the picture posted above by FoundationMetro (post 162) and particularly the trim tab and elevator position. The aircraft is in a left turn not disimilar to its last turn before the abrupt pitch up. The elevator appears to be in the slightly nose up position as would be expected to keep the nose up during the turn. But the trim tab looks to be in a nose down trim position suggesting that in high speed level flight (racing) nose down trim is required to maintain level flight and give the pilot a rest as he is always pulling in the turns. This means the tab is always in the high speed airflow and with the loss of the tab, an immediate pitch up could be the result due to the loss of nose down trim force.....not to mention a large change is static and dynamic balance of the elevators.
The other telling thing about this pic is the HORIZONTAL reflection of the ground in the spinner ! As mentioned previously, the reflections in the picture of the aircraft supposedly in a dive do not match up. The same photo was shown in one of the links to a news website but the photo was shown with the aircraft horizontal and it looked correct there. I think that pic might be genuine but turned through 90 degrees to make it more 'dramatic' !
Last edited by Von Klinkerhoffen; 22nd Sep 2011 at 16:14.
Reason: bad english !