L-39 goes down in TIX

[The_Russian]

My suspicion is that he welcomed that misunderstanding. However you look at the his profile, it makes no mention of being an IAF pilot.

Yeah, he like to call his show Ace Fighter Jet.

He was at Riddle from 1970 to 1973, so we'd have to believe that between High school (of the Israeli equivelant) and 20 y/o he bacame a fighter pilot (without a degree), left the IAF and enrolled in ERAU. Maybe that's realistic in Israel, perhaps the IAF takes teenagers with no degree and makes then fighter pilots for a couple of years and then lets them go on with no commitment. It wouldn't happen in the US. Maybe I'm missing a piece of the puzzle, but it seems pretty unlikely to me.

From what I have been told, becoming an IAF pilot is more of a life-long contribution to the country. One of our co-pilots is ex-IAF (non-pilot). I will ask her about the process next time I see her.

Somehow, I think that given the tone of his page, if he'd flown an F-15 (A-4 F-4, Mirage, whatever) in the IAF, he's state that in big bold letters.

Yeppers. I would too!

Here's that comes up when you search for his name on myspace. This is where I noticed the age. It has a link to his profile which has the rest of his narrative:

http://search.myspace.com/index.cfm?...ID=FindAFriend

Thanks. I am not sure why I had so much trouble finding that.

Did you notice that half of his panel remained in the Eastern configuration? What a human factors nightmare! Obviously he was not initially trained in the US or Israel on these types of indications. This brings the question:

Was this guy ever formerly trained for instrument flying on a Russian panel?

and,

When he came out of the cloud, did he refer to those Russian indications to attempt to correct his attitude?

In addition, most panels I have seen for a Western L-39 have had a full panel conversion for pilot transition.

 

[The_Russian]

Here is a video of a joyride.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2011235707

 

[moonlight]

Joyride...that's not a joyride. Now THIS is a joyride!!

 

[erj-145mech]

What was he doing in the cloud? You still have to obey the VFR minimums during the airshow. They don't waiver weather minimums for airshows. Worst case scenario its one mile and clear of clouds, right?

 

[Axel]

Art Scholl was a professional.

 

[The_Russian]

What was he doing in the cloud? You still have to obey the VFR minimums during the airshow. They don't waiver weather minimums for airshows. Worst case scenario its one mile and clear of clouds, right?

From what I understand, there is no waiver for civilian pilots. Only the military is cleard for an "unlimited" demo.

This is why I think he was spatially disoriented after coming out of the cloud. As you may know, a Russian attitude indicator moves kinda backwards to a western attitude indicator. On the Russian AI, the aircraft moves with respect to the horizon. On a typical western AI, the background horizon moves and the "aircraft" remains in a fixed position with respect to it.

This can lead to extreme confusion for a western pilot. Especially if he or she has seconds to decipher the AI indication. This may have caused him to hesistate and by then it was too late.