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Origin Astronaut Dies In Sussex County Plane Crash

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Well, when your time is up, it's up. I didn't put two and two together until today. One of the four astronauts that went up on the William Shatner flight was killed yesterday in a plane crash. Very sad. Made me think back to Christa McAuliffe.

Hampton plane crash victims ID'd as Thomas Fischer, Glen de Vries (njherald.com)

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Sad indeed.  I'd been waiting for details since the first news of the crash yesterday.  Fischer owned a flight school at Essex County Airport, though I don't think I'd ever met him.  de Vries was his student, working on his commercial rating.  I'd watched his launch on Blue Origin, as I happened to be channel surfing at the time and stumbled across the rocket on the pad with the countdown at T-15 seconds or so.  It was pretty cool to watch.

No news yet on what caused the crash.  Weather shouldn't have been a factor, Sussex County airport was reporting winds of 3 KTs, visibility 10 miles+, ceiling 12,000'+ at the time of the crash.  That's about as good as it gets.  The airport is sleepy enough that there is no LiveATC recording of their frequency, but unless they were doing pattern work they wouldn't have been talking to them anyway.

Update:  the Flightaware data, reported once a minute or more, shows them droning along at 6200' and about 100KTs.   Routine flight out from Essex.  Course data in the last three minutes of flight indicate approx 45 degree clearing turns to the right, then to the left.  In the last minute of the recording, the altitude is still unchanged, but the airspeed was reporting 48 KTs.  So it looks like they were practicing a stall, or practicing or inadvertently entered a spin.   Either of which these guys could have easily recovered from, they had much more altitude then needed. So I'm thinking a mechanical problem prevented recovery.

FlightAware data

FlightAware track log

Not for nothing, it's creepy how much of this data is tracked and in the public domain.

 

 

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Very sad situation. When I did spins in a 172 for my CFi I basically had to hold  control inputs to keep the plane IN the spin. They usually fly themselves out with very little help..unless you actively prevent recovery.That being said a center of gravity issue or flight control malfunction change that dynamic very quickly. 6000 ft allows a very good margin of safety for stall work...although 7000 for spins is a bit more comfortable...but they wouldn't be working on spins for a Commercial ticket. It appears to be a newer C172S with G1000. Prayers to the families indeed. Will await the findings when they come out. Just a reminder how serious an undertaking aviation is..especially  regarding training and maintenance.  

10x..it is amazing how much info is available re: flight tracking. Ads-b was a big game changer.  I use it regularly to track students on solos and show them their  flight paths. 

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it really is scary how much info is out there. to those not scared by that, they should educate themselves and they would be.

 

 that said.....they talked about this briefly on the news on 101.5 yesterday.....and it kinda pissed me off. why? because they talked more about the guy that rode on the flying dildo with capt kirk than anything else.

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On 11/13/2021 at 8:16 AM, 1LtCAP said:

it really is scary how much info is out there. to those not scared by that, they should educate themselves and they would be.

Not sure what you're referring to here?

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5 hours ago, 124gr9mm said:

Not sure what you're referring to here?

I'll address part of the concern; LiveATC.net, for live and previously recorded aircraft conversations with the various control facilities.   The other one is the incredible amount of detailed tracking info for aircraft now available online; that has really increased since the ADS-B (unfunded) mandate the government forced on many aircraft a few years ago.  That would take more time to explain.   Both technologies have good and bad points; ADS-B makes a lot of flight data available to the public, which is creepy, but it also puts real-time traffic and slightly delayed weather information in the cockpit of even the most humble, old, single engine bug masher.  Which is good.

LiveATC isn't a government program at all.  Any facility in the national ATC network records and stores all radio transmissions.  But those aren't publicly available. However, the transmissions themselves can be listened to by anyone, so LiveATC is a volunteer program where folks living near airports connect a receiver to their home computer and upload the transmissions to LiveATC.   If a facility is being monitored by a volunteer, you can listen in live to the frequency from your computer, or call up transmissions recorded previously.   That gets a little macabre if a pilot is on frequency in an accident scenario, and anyone can listen in to the final moments of the flight.   But it's also a useful site, for training students to follow the rapid-fire instructions given by ATC, for playing back what actually transpired if the FAA accuses you as pilot of violating an instruction, or because sometimes it's just fun to listen to how intense the radio traffic gets at major airports.

LiveATC is here: https://www.liveatc.net

If you want to listen to the Newark tower (just one of over a dozen frequencies at Newark, they've also got ground, departure, arrival, and clearance delivery frequencies that can get equally busy), you can click 'listen' at this link:  LiveATC Newark frequencies

It should be especially fun the day before Thanksgiving.    JFK even more so.

 

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The NTSB preliminary report is out.  It doesn't tell us much.  It wasn't an in-flight break-up, the plane seemed intact at time of impact, and control linkages were still connected.  The propeller was turning at time of impact; it's possible it was just windmilling, but they found no pre-impact mechanical failures of the engine.

The wreckage has been retained for analysis, and I suspect the final report for this accident will be quite thorough.   Unfortunately, NTSB final reports can take a year or so to issue.

https://www.njherald.com/story/news/2021/12/02/hampton-nj-plane-crash-ntsb-findings-glen-de-vries-death/8844616002/

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