PPRuNe Forums - Microlight Crash in Scotland

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- - Microlight Crash in Scotland - 2 Fatalities (https://www.pprune.org/private-flying/485251-microlight-crash-scotland-2-fatalities.html)

As I said earlier.

The group that flew out that day were aware of the possibility of severe turbulance and had planned to track south of the hills. Why Dave went against his own judgement once airborne is anyones guess. RIP.

D.O.

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On the contrary - I think it was a very windy day.

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A witness on top of Ben More saw the last moments of
the aircraft’s flight but did not see or hear the impact.
He described the wind at the summit as “very strong”
and that when he removed an item of clothing from his
rucksack it was nearly “ripped” out of his hand by the
wind.

Over Scotland, the surface
wind observations valid at 1100 hrs UTC show westerly
winds of 10-15 kt with a 2,000 ft gradient wind of
310° at 25-28 kt. At Glen Ogle, near the crash site, the
surface wind between 1000 and 1200 UTC was westerly
16‑19 kt with gusts of 24-26 kt.

Certainly nothing unusual about those sort of winds in Scotland and Dave would have done a great deal of his 800hrs+ flying in those sort of conditions.

I was always taught that if the wind is over 15kts on the ground that you stay the heck away from the lee side of the hills, obviously thats a very rough / approximate rule but its worked for me all these years and I intend to stick to it....

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Certainly nothing unusual about those sort of winds in Scotland and Dave would have done a great deal of his 800hrs+ flying in those sort of conditions.

Peters point was to state that the winds were forecast and, easily predicted. The rest of the flying group knew this, and planned to transit well clear of this particular route.

That is why it is all the more baffling as to why Dave, with his experience, and with the Met facilities available at Perth, decided to do what he did.

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That is why it is all the more baffling as to why Dave, with his experience, and with the Met facilities available at Perth, decided to do what he did.

It's a human psycological glitch which many of us have.

Example: Someone spends time scraping the ice off his car, jumps in and drives off then is surprised when he slides off the road.

There's probably a medical name for it. We can all be guilty of knowing something may cause a problem but not acting on it.

D.O.

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It's a human psycological glitch which many of us have.

Precisely.

Having chatted it through with my microlighting pal, that is the human factors thought I left him with:don't ask yourself why he did this, ask yourself why you won't one day do something similar. And if your answer is, I'm not that dumb...you're kidding yourself.

Read enough accident reports and hopefully, hopefully just as you are about to do something you shouldn't be doing, somewhere deep in the grey matter a warning bell will sound and you'll wave it off. Probably accompanied with a big dose of "WTF was I thinking".

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"On Wednesday 30th of January, Dai Heather-Hayes will lead a safety briefing on Mountain Flying - to which you are all invited to attend. This invitation is open to pilots from other clubs to whom we extend a warm welcome. Starting at 19:30, I urge all that take to the skies to attend.

It was a very well presented and attended briefing, I learned a lot. Big thanks to Heather-Hayes and SAC Perth

Much enjoyed & learned, SAC & Dai, take a bow!!! SAC need a bigger hut:ok::ok::ok: