Dora 9 If it left the factory with different doors and fixed gear it wasn't a C210. It was as you say a C210-5 and soon after just C205.
Over the years many people have mistakenly believed that 210s with fully enclosed gear (before the N model) had fixed gear until T/O and the wheels disappeared.

I have flown almost that exact route in a c210 and distinctly remember one wet season (2000?) being forced lower and lower down to below 500 feet under cloud with two big black columns of water from cells many miles wide each side of my track. It was north of the Fitzmaurice. I was heading for the gap between the rain columns - where it was light on the other side. It was getting darker and darker under the thunderheads, I felt like a moth to a light.

As I got closer, two huge lightning bolts arced into the ground in the gap, and it seemed to narrow quickly. Bugger this I thought.

I still had an out behind me - and the fuel - and turned around getting buffeted by the blast coming out the bottom of the cells. I headed south and then picked my way eastwards then northwards getting to Darwin with an extra 0.8 on the tacho.

RIP fellow flier.

Take it easy guys, nobody knows it all here so lets have a little respect discuss the known facts (WX & the abilities good or bad of the C210 for Eg) & keep it civilized otherwise the Mods will slam this thread shut & then no one learns anything other than the high levels of testosterone that runs rampant on PPRuNe

Aviation is a risk we all know that, we accept the risks & we mitigate them the best we can by being clever & learning from others, lets do that here okay?

Wmk2

Rutan.

PM sent....

I think VH-EFB has parked in PDN quite a bit (brown livery down the sides, or maybe blue?), over near Air Frontier and AV8.

If its the same one that i am thinking of, it was well kitted out with a full glass panel and dual 540's etc. Looked like it had been refurbed really nicely. A really nice bit of kit. Assuming its the same machine.

Unfortunately all that gear is great to have but still wont save you if the **** hits the fan and the options vanish quickly.

Churn away Bingsta, I for one would love to hear your thoughts on this?

(P.S. we won't mention Whyalla)

"As I got closer, two huge lightning bolts arced into the ground in the gap, and it seemed to narrow quickly. Bugger this I thought. "

That was the best thought you had that flight.. Possibly in your life..

Who knows exactly what happened this flight, or in many others. As Ernest Gann put it , many great pilots are not here to put up their own argument..

What I will say is this. When we lose people that we care about, it can be hard to admit they may have been all or in part at fault, or made decisions that led to the outcome, but in aviation we have to be open and honest particularly with ourselves to try and limit the number of these accidents. Blindly protecting anyone will lead to more disasters of this nature, and the facts will come out in time whatever happened.

This is not the place to come if you have recently lost someone, because we will discuss what may have happened here on a rumour network. There is nothing wrong with this.. It is important to speculate because it opens up other avenues of thought that may save one single person and that would surely be enough. The truth in this incident may or may not come out in time. I hope it does.

Sorry to those who are experiencing the loss..

I have had to turn back on the odd occasion, but I don't enjoy turning back. There have probably been more than one occasion where I didn't turn back and should have, but successfully made it through. What seems like such a big reason to press on at the time, in reality, can always wait until later or the next day. Processing those reasons at a time of duress puts us under even more stress.

I've also had many a boating experience where many would set off and not make it and had to turn back. Sometimes you might be stuck for days whilst waiting for some better weather, so you just have to deal with it, seek alternatives and ride it out. A day off work at short notice is better than never showing up again.

PS: Not suggesting that this has anything to do with this tragic accident, am just adding to the pressing-on posts.

Have turned back in the same area in a C210 at 400ft due to the same conditions. Easier to wait it out at Kunna's or track east until you get clearer skies. Also have been 35nm over water west of Port Keats in a C310 and called it quits due to weather. The C208 with radar made it to about 10nm from Ypkt and followed me back to Darwin.Have also been 80nm west over water in a C310 Darwin to Truscott due to similar weather.
My point being.- Know when to turn back and have options. Wet season in the Top End, Don't fly without a current IFR rating even if the plane is vfr. It can mean the difference between life and death. Maybe it might have helped these people.

How much time ?
 

C Stall raised a good point, that being that all it cost him was 0.8, not much in logbook terms or MR time.

Once upon a time I did a survey of revenue hours "lost" due to Wet season WX diversion and plodding around looking for VMC, for our Arnhemland 206 / 210 / BE58 'fleet'. It was..... 1% of total MR hours, so it's financial cost was zip, proving there is no excuse for financial pressure to be a reason to 'get through'. That 1% would also have been a great learning experience for the PIC, in teaching them how to locate more VMC by reading the cloud / rain / ground around them.

The other side of that is that starting a marginal flight, for an extra hour in the book, is pointless if that hour carries 90% of all the risk you carried in that entire logbook.
So we DID 'lose' more through not actually incurring MR time, by staying on the ground watching the trees 500m away turning gray and disappearing. Of course, no other company got the work because they weren't flying either ! Even MAF; they asked God and God told them to f**k off.

Most pressure to fly is self induced. Who really knows what happened in this PIC's mind before and after he left Bullo. A commercial pilot in the chaotic bush environment may have a mixture of adrenaline, fatigue, task orientation and greed, but that is a different paradigm to what happened here.

Someone mentioned staying over land in the Dry and over water in the Wet. Yeah ok, but its a long way to East Timor or New Caledonia. Also if you are trying to get to Milingimbi but all you can see is North Crocodile Island from 500', then that's Nature's way of saying you've (actually me !) really f**ked up :)

210's slapping wings ? So, who knows if that hard landing in Dogs Dick, Arkansas, in 1979 cracked the spar or not ? The thing has a current MR and your endorsement taught you how to fly it, so just FLY IT - the rest is academic; you're a pilot not an aerospace engineer, and you've chosen that. To a certain extent, it will always be 'mine to chose; fate to decide.'

Yo....

Binghi, seriously you have a problem, you have made well over a thousand posts in half the time I have made 250, I am who I say I am, learnt to fly at the NQAC in 1987, and have spent the last 30 years learning. If this discussion was related to the road user, culpable driving causing death could be the outcome from the investigation. Not knowing at this time what was the cause of the accident we mere mortals can only look into ourselves and ask what would WE do in the same situation ... One hopes the answer is to be certain those lives under our charge were not put at any risk whatsoever. As I said in my previous post you may not like it but you will have to live with it.

When you fly into that funnel and know you need to do a U-turn at 500ft.
Use the autopilot if you have one, or keep a eye on your altimeter.

Don't worry about your wings falling off - most unlikely thing ever to happen to you.

But the water/ground will certainly kill you at 0 feet every time.

The Bingsta is a very average individual whose credentials are questionable. Don't get roped into his skulduggery lest you lower yourself to his level. :cool:

"hear your thoughts", "skulduggery"...:confused:

I think i best leave you with that Jack Ranger.


My "credentials" as i have posted before, several times, is i'm just a dumb ol barely literate hill farmer who just happens to fly. And, i'm a barely average pilot at that.




.

err..:confused:

Whatever, ATSB have opened a file on this accident. We will know some more in due course.


Investigation: AO-2013-063 - Collision with water involving Cessna 210, VH-EFB, approximately 100 km NNE Wadeye, Northern Territory on 1 April 2013



.

Recent stuff has shown than ASTB is not BASI so that "'We will know some more in due course" is like anything from Canberra ie " We will get more meaningless s**t"

edited to add

means "maybe sometime"

The ATSB & I do not share the same definition of "in due course"

Strange day...

"in due course" is a term i used - Not ATSB

I can't recall the person who made this quote or the exact words of the quote itself, but it is one that I always kept in the back of my mind when flying VFR.

The quote from an air safety investigator (nationality unknown) went something like this when commenting on aircraft accidents involving inadvertent VFR flight into IMC: Maybe somebody can source and post the exact quote because it is a good one for VFR pilots to remember when making go/no go decisions (and for clarification I'm not relating this quote as necessarily being the cause of the current accident situation. Other more qualified people than I will make that determination).

I recall that line following a CFIT loss of an aircraft (Cherokee ?) in poor Wx west of Scone late afternoon and when the accident site was found soon after, it was CAVOK. Female pax died and pilot survived overnight ordeal I recall.

Same applies to floods, mostly rescue efforts are in sunshine.