I watched Two very lucky people come within an ace of killing themselves.
Luckily what appears to be only slight damage to the aircraft where they demolished a sign at the end of the trip. Another meter and it would have been the fence, another Two meters a power pole. If they had got off in ground effect the next obstacle was high voltage power lines about 500 metres away.
Cirrus, thousand meter soft wet grass strip and a downwind takeoff with at least Twelve knots of tailwind. It got airborne in ground effect to about Ten feet halfway along, stalled back on and drifted right before the pilot had the good sense to abort. "The tailwind came out of nowhere" was the comment.
I happened to be driving home with the shopping at the time and the road runs beside the strip. I say again, very, very lucky.
I assume the pilot reported it and will get a permit to fly to recover the aircraft.
Last edited by Sunfish; 6th Sep 2015 at 20:21.