[GeoStL] Re: FW: Plane (or plain) crash cache

  • From: Mike Lusicic <lusicic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: geocaching@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:57:40 -0500

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WELL......

I have a private pilot certificate. Got it when I was 16 and I turn 60 this month. My dad got his license at the same time, and he went on to add commercial and instrument and instructor ratings and complex and multi-engine as well. So even though I am a low time pilot, I do have a lot of history in aviation and have rubbed elbows with some famous people on the old Compuserve Aviation Forum.

All that being said, I don't see what all the fuss is about. Does the cacher have to SAY it is a memorial? The act of putting a cache there and explaining why IS a memorial. Memory being the root of the word after all.

Honor? Well, after reading the factual findings, there isn't much to honor from a piloting perspective. Of course condolences should go to his family, but the guy cast a bad light on other pilots. He had no business being in Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) without a current Instrument rating. According to his logged time, he was nowhere near getting one either. But it does show he had 4 hours of simulated (out of his 5 total) within the last 90 days and 3 of those were within the last 30 days of the incident. Obviously I cannot know what was in his mind, but that looks to me like he was trying to be able to do the task without actually getting the rating and full training.

He was also at one of the most dangerous times as a pilot. He has enough hours to have confidence, but not enough to recognize his limitations. This is the "prime time" for idiot stunts causing accidents. People who want to be safe pilots read and study the accidents of others in order to know and avoid the mistakes of those others. Having read more than I can remember and some of them concerning people I knew personally, it is sometimes not fun. Not all accidents are a result of stupidity. But many of them are. I knew otherwise smart people who did something stupid and it cost them (and their passengers) their lives. Flying is, at times, not very forgiving.

So I look at the cache as a memorial of the accident. I look at the factual evidence and see a foolish pilot who should have known better. It will be one MORE reminder to me to not venture into IMC if I am not rated, and if I ever get the rating, not to do so if I am not current and proficient at instrument flying with a properly filed flight plan and plenty of preparation, which include contingencies if things don't work out as originally planned. Obviously that run on sentence was not planned.

So there you have a pilot's perspective. I have a feeling though, that I would not have thought it was that bad even if I wasn't a pilot. He may have been good at many other things, but it appears that he was NOT a good pilot.

Michael Rogers wrote:
Well, the cache is active again...nothing really improved. It's still pretty much as cold and impersonal as before. No memorial, no honor. Still a pilot "very dead" but with the added official report about the crash. How touching. I don't give a rat's patooty how "nice" the cache placer is...if this is the best they can do they shouldn't put out anything at all, and it certainly does not help to have people encouraging this junk.

-Michael



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