Does anyone remember?

[MaxTOW]

Hi all,
Does anyone remember an Australian Aerobatic pilot that landed his aircraft, a Pitts, inverted at night some time back? He was warming up for a inverted ribbon cut (at night), and went a little too low. He made the best possible result of it though - holding level in lateral and pitch axis, and simply scraped along on his canopy. The video could only show the sparks as they flew off his vertical fin I guess. I had just been & seen the same pilot at Australia's first pylon racing at Launceston.

[Volumex]

Is this him? Chris Sperou (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Sperou)

He used to do that roll around a Beech Debonair as well.

[MaxTOW]

Yes, Chris Sperou. The fact left me amazed at his skill. You know, a lot of pilots take stuff like that as a downer, that it was an incident or whatever. But I have always looked upon it as, if you stay in aviation long enough, something is bound to happen. Chris made probably the most unbelievable recovery (both laterally & longitudinally stable while 'rolling out' inverted) from a situation which was that testy, that it puts him up there with the best in aviation, in my books anyway. :ok: Who in the world has ever done this, and managed to do it so perfectly that they got away with basically just scratches on the top if the canopy? It rates up there with the British aerobatic pilot (Neil Williams - PCBDESIGN007 Timing is Everything in Controlled Impedance Fabrication (http://www.pcbdesign007.com/pages/columns.cgi?clmid=35&artid=69913&_pf_=1)) that had a wing start to detach and recovered to fly inverted to the field, 1/2 snap roll at last second in flare to survive. Do you remember seeing it? Chris Sperou's experience that is.

[Volumex]

I saw him at Valleyfield the year he parked it inverted there - but I wasn't watching at the time - turned around to see the dust settle.
IIRC, he got into another plane that same day to try again.

[Centaurus]

Chris made probably the most unbelievable recovery (both laterally & longitudinally stable while 'rolling out' inverted

Sounds perfectly feasable to me. After all, it was said a long time ago that the best way to ditch a Winjeel (which had a large curved sliding canopy), was roll inverted at the point of flare before you hit the water. The canopy acted like a boat and after touch down, all you had to do was pull the canopy jettison handle to jettison the aircraft and simply row away on the canopy. There was a warning however that the small E2 type magnetic compass was subject to gross errors when the canopy was inverted. :ok:

[topdrop]

Wasn't Chris an insurance assessor - wonder if he claimed the damages :}:}

[MaxTOW]

I only saw the news article, but was fairly stunned that he was able to 'keep it steady' so to speak on top of the canopy. The aileron and elevator control of Pitts aircraft is something to behold, so he could keep his composure and get such a good end result. Thanks for relating these stories you blokes. :D