Jonzarno
I acknowledge your undoubted skill in doing three dead stick landings into fields. I'd be interested to know what you were flying (and who does your maintenance! ). You are obviously a far better pilot than I am, and certainly a far bolder one, although to paraphrase Lady Bracknell: “to lose one engine may be deemed unfortunate, but to lose three......”
I really don't want to get into a personal slagging match with you. I suppose if I'm honest my replies aren't always completely accurate or analytical. They're often after a glass of wine or two in the evening when I treat this forum as a bit like an place to have informal discussions with fellow aviators. That said, I still hold with what I've said.
I've never pretended to be a "far better pilot" than anyone and that wasn't my intention when I'd said about my three forced landings. I was responding to a post where someone had said that once the engine failed a crash was pretty much inevitable ... I was trying to demonstrate it was not. If you'd read carefully I didn't even say they were all dead stick into fields either. I actually said two resulted in landings back onto the airfield and one was into a field. If you must know, the types they were a Jurca Tempete, an Evans VP2, and a Falconar F11. Not high performance types I know (before you jump on that too for obvious reasons). If I'd had three engine failures in one particular aeroplane then I'd agree that I'd need to be bold or stupid to keep flying it! The point is that engines fail and we shouldn't assume a forced landing will be a crash! If you do believe that (and I don't mean you personally) then you will likely throw your hands up and pull the chute no matter what ... Which brings us back to the OP and was it necessary to pull the chute at 5000' over bloody great fields?
SS