LD Max
26th Mar 2005, 09:54
A friend of mine mentioned a microlight accident over his village of Wigginton near Tring, Herts on 25 March 2005.
By the sudden cessation of engine noise and the fact that something large and reflective immediately separated and fell to earth my guess is that the engine seized and the prop then sheared off.
An unlikely scenario I think, and my friend is not a pilot.
Does anyone have any more info on this?
Of course the instant I clicked "send", I received another e-mail from my friend on the subject as follows. Any further details would be of interest.
There were two microlights which had, for a while, been doing circuits of the village (Wigginton) at a relatively low height (300-500ft?), rather anti-socially I thought. I didn\'t witness the moment at which the failure occurred, but became aware of the engine sounding normal then a brief, odd noise followed by sudden complete lack of any engine noise from that microlight. This of course attracted my attention so I looked up to see a silvery looking object of significant size falling straight to ground a little way over in the village. The pilot maintained control and headed off presumably gliding to land somewhere towards the other side of the village, there are plenty of open spaces around here. The landing itself was hidden from my view by houses and trees. I didn\'t note the exact time but it was mid afternoon yesterday, Fri. 25th March. His buddy stayed around for a while, circling at increased height, (500-1000ft?). Having finished what I was doing I came down off the roof after that. If you think that may be of help feel free to pass it on to the AAIB, but I don\'t see it says any more than the pilot must know, assuming he landed safely and I\'d be surprised if he didn\'t.
By the sudden cessation of engine noise and the fact that something large and reflective immediately separated and fell to earth my guess is that the engine seized and the prop then sheared off.
An unlikely scenario I think, and my friend is not a pilot.
Does anyone have any more info on this?
Of course the instant I clicked "send", I received another e-mail from my friend on the subject as follows. Any further details would be of interest.
There were two microlights which had, for a while, been doing circuits of the village (Wigginton) at a relatively low height (300-500ft?), rather anti-socially I thought. I didn\'t witness the moment at which the failure occurred, but became aware of the engine sounding normal then a brief, odd noise followed by sudden complete lack of any engine noise from that microlight. This of course attracted my attention so I looked up to see a silvery looking object of significant size falling straight to ground a little way over in the village. The pilot maintained control and headed off presumably gliding to land somewhere towards the other side of the village, there are plenty of open spaces around here. The landing itself was hidden from my view by houses and trees. I didn\'t note the exact time but it was mid afternoon yesterday, Fri. 25th March. His buddy stayed around for a while, circling at increased height, (500-1000ft?). Having finished what I was doing I came down off the roof after that. If you think that may be of help feel free to pass it on to the AAIB, but I don\'t see it says any more than the pilot must know, assuming he landed safely and I\'d be surprised if he didn\'t.