Originally Posted by
Concours77
rnzoli. Yes CFIT. Hence my muse about his "plan". Flying Binghi, I referenced post 28 above, the maneuver looks pretty vanilla, and not that risky when done with good timing.
You also brought up right rudder at impact. I saw that also, so a conclusion of "late" timing would be a reasonable explanation for the accident?
Inexperience may have allowed him to get too low, misjudging the rate of descent in knife edge. Assuming his plan was similar to Kulver's surmise....
Concours77, you may very well be right, though the right rudder input suggests to me a possible jammed control. (Note, my AN2 cockpit time is under an hour flying level around a circuit at slow speed, and that were a long time ago. I did own a Yak52 for a number of years so have some Russian equipment exposure)
I don't like blaming pilots for anything unless there is an accident report suggesting otherwise, so...
Looking again at the #28 video of a prior airshow: As the aircraft recovers from the turning dive and rolls right to the wings level altitude the smoke from the exorst stays close to the fuselage - the ball would be centred. Suggests to me a co-ordinated rudder and aileron input. What i carn't see is if the exorst outlet is the same as the modified extended one shown in the accident aircraft video.
In the accident video it appears to me that the exorst smoke trail gradually veers further away from the aircraft as it would entering into a controlled 'knife edge' flight. (AN2 would probably need another ten thousand horse power to do full knife edge) Going off the videos of prior airshow displays the pilot was not doing anything near a knife edge flight at that part of the display though was doing a rolling right turn to fly wings level and parrele to the flight line before entering the next manoeuvre.
As the AN2 is not designed for aerobatics as such (It is a heavyweight ag plane though) I would surmise that the flight controls would get fairly heavy as the airspeed increases. The accident pilot would from prior display experience expect to be 'strong arming' the controls as the aircraft came out of the left turning dive doing a right roll. If the controls were jammed in any way, because of prior expectations of heavy control inputs it may not become immediately apparent that there is a problem - it would likely be several seconds of confusion before the issue became apparent.
I'd suggest that the gradually veering smoke trail indicates the pilot was attempting to do the normal co-ordinated aileron and rudder right roll recovery though did not pick up on a jammed aileron until it were to late.
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