Originally Posted by
colled
I was at Brimpton that day and was stood next to the lady that got hurt only a few minutes before the accident, admiring her husbands Ford GT40. I am a pilot and my perception of that particular location was that it was a safe place to stand being right at the end of the strip, off to the side and shielded by the club house and metal barriers. Luckily I then moved to get a burger from the bbq and stood closer to the clubhouse. I was aware the Tiger Moth was about to take off so watched intently as I love vintage biplanes. I'm not sure if he hit a bump (I took off later once the field reopened after the crash and didn't feel or see it anyway), it looked to me like he dragged it off way to early after about 100 metres. It was then very clearly on the back of the drag curve and wallowing from side to side on the stall. I shouted a warning out loud as I thought it was going to go into the line of parked aircraft much further down the strip, but it continued to swing from wing tip to wing tip both ways across the strip about 4 times and over a distance of about 200 metres before it approached the clubhouse. I couln't believe he was still trying to drag it into the air and had not cut the throttle and dumped it much earlier on. I really thought he was then going to hit the front of the clubhouse and take out around 30 people standing outside. It then started it's final stall to the right hand side just missing the clubhouse and aiming towards the car enclosure. I was not aware of any cutting of the power and think he was still attempting to get it off using the final 50 metres of runway available. It was no ground loop, just uncontrolled flight off the side of the runway. I was 20 metres away from that unfortunate lady and saw what happened to her, which made me upset and angry. I went over and over it in my head that night and still cannot think why he did not abort right at the start instead of coninuing for what seemed like around 10 seconds and several hundred metres more to the inevitable conclusion. It was clear right from the start that it was not going to end well.
So there wasn't even a bump in the runway. Re-reading the report, it says a "prominent hump" in the runway. Perhaps the full aft trim was the reason for getting airborne early. I suppose one could abort in that situation he was in, but I don't think closing the throttle will help much in this situation. The most important thing is to push forward. Basic soft field takeoff flying skills I'm afraid(if as mentioned earlier, full aft trim should still allow fairly easy control). But he didn't want to touch down again according to the report. Under normal circumstances, touching down again should not be a problem if still under control. Once out of control, and drifting, the risks increase.
At over 10,000 hours, one could assume that most of it was in airline flying. According to several flying instructors I have talked to, this can lead to very rusty skills in general aviation flying if one has been away from it for a long time(or never experienced it at all). But apparently he had over 120 hours in the Tiger Moth. Glad he didn't hit the 30 people.