Dayton Air Show

[Maro]

I am going tomorrow for my Company Picnic and I am really exicted.

 

Unfortunately... I just heard that one of the Aerobatic pilots, Jim LeRoy, struck the ground in his "Bulldogg" airplane today and was killed.

 

This is after an accident on Friday between 2 P-51 mustangs at Oshkosh... killing one of the pilots.

 

Not a good weekend for pilots....

 

The show tomorrow is still on. I hope everything goes off without a hitch.

[Mitch]

Solemnly, I read the report of the accident. It is truly a shame. The missing man formation shall be flown tomorrow, Godspeed.

[Science Abuse]

My 2 year-olds first air-show. Luckily he wasn't aware of what happened. I can't get it out of my head, I was watching the act closely, and knew it was going to happen at about the same time the pilot did. Elena was sitting in front of me on the ground, with my hands on her shoulders. When I saw it happening, I apparently griped her tight enough that it hurt. It hurt to watch. The guy wasn't chasing a trophy, glory, or even a particularly large paycheck. He was an entertainer, out to amuse us. I've been to many of these shows, and Aerobatic acts generally bore me. I can honestly say that this one was incredible. I was vocal from the time they took off, the act was the best I'd seen, and better then I thought could be done. It began with the two planes facing each other on the runway, taking off at each other. The got airborne about 2000 feet away from each other, and did a knife-edge pass of each other, their tails couldn't have been more than 10ft off the ground, incredible. That is why I was watching so closely, it was badass. Sad that it was during a fairly common maneuver that things went wrong.

For those who caught bits of bad news coverage, here is what happened:

They were working very close to the ground, this may have been an adjustment for cloud cover. It was two planes mirroring each other, with a close pass every now and again. One such pass was made 'on the deck', and both planes rose into a pair of loops. Jim Leroy, pilot of the yellow plane, slapped the belly of his plane into the runway at the bottom of his loop. From what I remember seeing, both loops were the same size, making me think his speed was too high in the downward portion, or he had a moment of dead-stick or other mechanical failure, increasing the radius of his loop.

The plane skidded about 1/8 mile to a stop, the impact not even enough to collapse the bi-wing. There were sparks during the skid, and smoke after the stop. Immediately after the crash, there was plenty of hope that he was alive. There's a good chance he was unconscious, but the impact was nothing compared to some accidents of seen. This is where I get mad.

The plane sits and smokes....and sits.....and sits....and sits. Flames begin peeking out from under the plane...the lonely wrecked plane 1/4 mile away. ALMOST 2 MINUTES PASS before a vehicle shows up, by now the plane is engulfed in flames. The vehicle...an Explorer with a guy in it, no extinguisher. A minute later, airport firetrucks show up and put out the fire. While they're doing this, a med Blackhawk is warmed up behind us and flown over to the crash site...where it sits for 5 minutes. The lack of haste once the fire was out tells me immediately that the pilot is dead, though the news reports that he died on the way to the hospital.

 

The response time of the rescue services was outright, totally, inexcusably unacceptable. It seemed like the fire trucks had to drive from the far end of the airport to get there, after their crews were assembled. The people who responded were at no fault. The organizers of the event were totally unprepared for emergency situations. Maybe I'm just used to race-track medic preparations. I understand you can't take the firetrucks away from the operating commercial airport, but the show should have had it's own seperate response crew. All stunts are relegated to airspace over the runway and taxiway area, it's not as much area to cover as most tracks. A single fire tank-truck parked at the far end of the runway could have gotten there in a minute or less.

 

It was a grim and depressing cap to an otherwise great day. Nick had fun and was oblivous to what he saw, commenting only "Air'pane broke" once.

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/7238/airshowbq3.th.jpg

[LPFSTheFett]

I was going to go to that this weekend too, but ended up getting tied up doing other things. Can't imagine explaining to my 7 and 6 year old what happened. I'm glad we ended up not having the time. Thoughts go out to his family and friends.

[HAOLE]

Very sad....

[Sparky]

Well on a brighter note the show was very good today. There was a moment of silence along with a long story about Jim and his life. Thunderbirds were amazing as usual and the b-1's and f117 were also very cool to see.

[Science Abuse]

It's a shame you couldn't see the act that was lost. I wish I'd seen the Thunderbirds, but there's always next year.

To see a visual aid of the nature of the accident, yo can refer to this footage of the Thunderbirds:

The issue there was, the altimeter was zero'd to sea level and not ground level.

As I was trying to watch both planes at once, I missed the fact that they were doing barrel rolls throughout the loop.

[RedRocket1647545505]

but there's always next year.

 

There's also september. They are returning to Rickenbacker for an air show, along with the largest gathering of P51s in a long time.

 

I went to the show today. Simply amazing. I went last year as well, but thought this year was better. Sad to hear about the crash though.