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Shoes are not the Point
While landing at Bankstown in gusty, crosswind conditions, a Piper PA-24 blew out both main wheel tyres and came to rest to one side of the runway. The pilot said afterwards that, in correcting cross-wind drift just before touchdown, he made fairly heavy applications of rudder and believed that the pointed toes of his shoes had touched the toe pedals of the rudder controls causing the brakes to be applied just before the aircraft touched down. The starboard tyre blew out first and then his sudden corrective action on the port rudder pedal caused the port tyre to blow. No other damage was done to the aircraft.
Despite the views expressed by the pilot, it is very doubtful whether the type of footwear being worn by the pilot has very much bearing on accidents of this sort. Most instructors would probably agree that this type of accident can happen if a pilot has his feet high enough up on the rudder-brake pedals to unintentionally apply braking during the stress of making a landing in difficult conditions. Pilots of aircraft that employ this type of braking system can normally guard against braking too early, by ensuring that their heels are resting on the floor until the aircraft has touched down. In this position, the pressure of each foot is against the lower portion of the brake pedals and the toe brakes cannot be depressed without a deliberate ankle movement.
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Most Ppruners of a certain age will remember Macarthur Job who was the editor of the highly regarded DCA flight safety magazine Aviation Safety Digest between June 1964 to 1976. ASD was discontinued at Digest No 150 in 1991. The current CASA flight safety journal is Flight Safety Australia and now only available in electronic form.
Mac Job is still around and continues to pen on-request flight safety articles for Flight Safety Australia, as well as for other Australian aviation journals. Over recent years, older Ppruners have compared the present FSA layout with that of Mac Job's Aviation Safety Digest style of writing and universally expressed their opinion that the old ASD was the best of them all. Some even boast they have hoarded old copies of Aviation Safety Digest in their sheds for nostalgic reading in their dotage. Guilty, Your Honour.
In the days of his editorship, Mac was given practically free reign over the content of ASD. As an experienced outback commercial pilot having flown aerial ambulance and charters in old biplanes like the DH Dragon, Mac was eminently qualified to sometimes add his own comments at the end of each story. This rarely happens in FSA nowadays, perhaps because of legal restrictions.
There was no advertising in Aviation Safety Digest. The magazine was usually set at 28 pages each packed full of interesting and highly informative incident and accident reports accompanied by relevant drawings or photographs. The majority of today's airline and GA pilots were not born when Mac was writing for Aviation Safety Digest and his name and reputation means nothing to them. Like all of us, Mac won't be around for ever and I thought it would be a good idea to reproduce one typical example of Mac Job's style of writing about an incident. Hence the story above. I apologise for the ill-fitting photo inserted with much swearing at my fumbling attempts using photobucket picture hosting website.
I had the pleasure of talking to Mac Job a few days ago. A full description of his history is at
Airways Museum / Civil Aviation Historical Society Mac is in his late 80's now and lives at Olinda in Victoria. I asked him if I could put something on Pprune about him and he said no problem. But unfortunately there is a problem and that is Mac Job has recently been diagnosed with cancer and the prognosis is not good at all. I am sure everyone who knows Mac will cross their fingers for him and wish him all the best.
Centaurus.