It would be hard to believe that someone would deliberately fly at such low airspeeds under the banner of a risk taker. A risk taker would be joining the circuit at 150 knots, holding that till late down-wind and wiping off the airspeed on base and final and side slipping in for a landing.
Look at the graphic on page 6.
https://www.atsb.gov.au/media/574763...nal_report.pdf
- 147 knots inbound to the airfield
- 97 knots in the figure-eight orbit
- 87 knots on the mid-field crosswind join
- 72 knots on downwind
- 57 knots on base
- 59 knots on final
Those numbers sound to me like someone flying smoothly and sedately with their loving wife on board.
You'd have to believe that nobody would consciously fly that slow on so many occasions if they knew that they were so close to stalling speed. That would be the sort of thing that should get picked up in an AFR. It sounds more like that he either didn't realise he was so close to the stall or his instrumentation was over-reading. As for the regular low circuits? That one is a bit of a mystery.
Too little margin, too many times.