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Old 27th May 2014, 19:23
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Blind Squirrel
 
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My guess is he could have made it, even given the mid-field starting point (perhaps it was too boggy behind). What really did a number on the take-off run, it seems to me, is that twice (at 0:07 and 0:15) he dragged his tail along the ground, killing whatever possibility of accelerating to flying speed he might have had.

The extraordinary thing is that he ever believed that this is how one takes off from a soft surface. Perhaps his technique might have worked if there had been a howling headwind of 30-40 kt, but otherwise the likelihood of avoiding a pile-up was effectively zero. Given identical control inputs, that would probably have been true even if he had been departing from a paved runway.
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