Hi homesick,
I think you would find that most fire services would not have a clue when it comes to rescue of aircraft with caps ( definitely the case with my local services)
There is a first responder instruction list from the caps website, from memory you have to physically cut the actuation cable at the baggage door
with special cutters if possible.
I read Recently in the US a cirrus pilot pulled his caps handle only for the rocket to fire but did not pull the chute out, he still managed to land but with a 30 ft cord and spent rocket casing dangling behind. Inadvertent flight into IMC I think it was

Whata bout this one...








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Binghi - That's a very sobering video - but isn't it an excellent reminder about "situational awareness" (read - other aircraft in your vicinity)?
No-one is going to survive a mid-air that results in a fireball - parachute or no parachute. :(

Survivors of midair plane crash horrified - People: Tales of survival - TODAY.com

Its amazing that the parachute lines didn't burn through

No, that presumes you can really sensibly judge landing sites from 2000 feet above. Statitics clearly show you can't. Well, YOU, of course, can, being the superior aviator we know you as. But Joe Average Pilot can't. I can't, for sure.

You can make up hypotheticals all day long. So far, the numbers are quite cleary against you. But you knew that...

Binghi,

it is believed the chute was triggered by the mid-air crash, not by the occupants who died instantaneously.

Mark, just for accuracy sake, this occurs at aroun 35-50dF ROP, past 75 it starts dropping.

:ok:

Before making my post I did have a look on G E. There's a pretty handy looking golf course nearby.

Yep, there's a bit of tiger country around. If I used the chute I'd be concerned about ending up in a location where it was very difficult for SAR to get to. I'd rather have some control over where I ended up.

While I don't think it was the case in this incident I still stand by my comments about "safety" features like the BRS system on the Cirrus giving many pilots the confidence to go where they might not normally do so. To illustrate my point I can think of some VFR loss of control and CFIT accidents where pilots probably pressed on poor wx on using GPS to navigate by when they wouldn't have done so with out GPS. That doesn't make GPS a bad thing to use, but common sense needs to apply.

I'm not saying a BRS system doesn't have it's very real benefits just that it gives some people a false sense of security. I'd be willing to bet the incident rate is higher in such aircraft.

Not many places to land
 

"What happened to the forced landing?"

Are people serious? Have you been to the Blue Mountains.
There is practically NOWHERE to do a forced landing.

I think some people's egos over take their brain capacity sometimes.

Cirrus is required to have a BRS for certification because there is no other spin recovery. The rest is all propaganda.

Knowing my luck I'd pull the Shute and end up landing on high tension power lines or on a railway track.............:eek:

For your average Cirrus owner...

There are plenty of pilots reading this that could arrest a spin in a Cirrus.

However, correct you are, that is why it's there - certification.

Desmotronic:
Close, but not quite correct. There is a bit more to it;
When the Cirrus SR20 was first certified, the FAA accepted the wing design (stall inhibitor features) as well as the chute was considered to be an equivalent level of safety with regard to spin recovery.
EASA did not buy into that position and required additional testing from Cirrus which (from memory only - Flying Mag feature?) involved 60 or so spin recovery tests as well as a POH change.
Therefore, the Cirrus did actually comply with spin testing due to EASA demands, however, the POH still requires the chute to be used as the 'official' sole means of spin recovery.

So, is anyone experimenting with steerable CAPS systems? Surely given the technology in today's jump parachutes and paragliders etc, it would make some sense to use the technology to improve the glide ratio rather than just opting for an uncontrolled, straight-down approach...?

I was thinking about this earlier keeping in mind the old fashioned round Army parachutes which I didn't think were steerable.

Then I found this:

How to Steer a Parachute | eHow

Tips & Warnings

Round parachutes are usually not steerable and you have little input on the direction of flight.
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To turn that sized chute I can imagine you would need to pull the "toggles" quite a distance which wouldn't easily be achieved. Hooking it up to the rudder wouldn't give enough throw unless the steering lines were geared.

Interesting question though... I would think it would add complexity that could cause it to all go horribly wrong.

If you kept enough forward speed and hung the airframe with a suitable alpha, you could pull the right toggle/cord by manipulating the original airframe control surfaces and changing the attitude of the airframe relative to the chute, perhaps?

nitpicker330 - You'd have to be completely out of luck to land exactly on a railway track, the odds would be very low indeed.
Powerlines do pose a bigger threat, because there's a lot more of them than railway tracks.

One of the advantages of HT lines is that the circuit breakers are very swift in operation, and of very low amperage (about 5 amps for a 132kV line).
However, the initial high voltage zap through a human conductor, before the circuit breakers kick in, is where the damage occurs.
The circuit breakers on HT lines are designed to prevent system damage, not save lives, as RCD's are designed to do.

The still-intact aircraft cabin in a parachute landing on HT powerlines, would prevent occupants from being zapped with initial high current levels - unlike a regular forced landing, where the cabin is usually severely damaged, and the occupants can be exposed directly to still-live powerlines.

LT powerlines actually pose a bigger threat in crashes, because it takes a higher level of short-circuitry to make pole fuses burn out.
That's why you must always treat downed LT powerlines as live, until you are certain they have been de-energised.

I chuckled when I read the AVWEB headline, I thought they were going to say he did it as a demonstration !

Quote:

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Cirrus Salesman Pulls Chute During Demo Flight

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http://cdn.avweb.com/media/newspics/...ruspullaus.jpg

Cirrus Salesman Pulls Chute During Demo Flight - AVweb flash Article

Any word on why the engine stopped?

Fuel, mechanical failure?

So you would, without any hesitation, just simply pull the ripcord and forget about what mayhem and carnage you might cause from your totally random and uncontrolled impact in a semi-populated area??

Wow....:ugh::ugh: