Hurricane down

[Dr Jekyll]

A Hawker Hurricane has crashed at a Czech airshow, killing the pilot.

https://www.europeanairshows.co.uk/news/hawker-hur...

[williamp]

Shame and RIP to the Pilot.

I remember reading this a few days ago and was surprised it can be too hot to fly a Hurricane. From the bbmf twitter feed.

We’re very sorry to say that due to the temperatures today, PZ865 has reached her temperature limits and will be unable to conduct her planned flypasts this afternoon. We apologise for any disappointment this may cause, but we have to look after our lovely lady! https://t.co/lNdYCzgL1k

I know we shoukdnt speculate, but couod the hot weather have an effect??

[Simpo Two]

That's a bad loss.

williamp said:

I remember reading this a few days ago and was surprised it can be too hot to fly a Hurricane. From the bbmf twitter feed.

We’re very sorry to say that due to the temperatures today, PZ865 has reached her temperature limits and will be unable to conduct her planned flypasts this afternoon. We apologise for any disappointment this may cause, but we have to look after our lovely lady! https://t.co/lNdYCzgL1k

I know we shoukdnt speculate, but couod the hot weather have an effect??

From the mechanical POV, they flew in North Africa.

From a physical POV, hot weather = thin air, less lift, stall easier in a turn...

[Dr Jekyll]

Simpo Two said:

From the mechanical POV, they flew in North Africa.

From a physical POV, hot weather = thin air, less lift, stall easier in a turn...

....and less power.

[ecsrobin]

williamp said:

Shame and RIP to the Pilot.

I remember reading this a few days ago and was surprised it can be too hot to fly a Hurricane. From the bbmf twitter feed.

We’re very sorry to say that due to the temperatures today, PZ865 has reached her temperature limits and will be unable to conduct her planned flypasts this afternoon. We apologise for any disappointment this may cause, but we have to look after our lovely lady! https://t.co/lNdYCzgL1k

I know we shoukdnt speculate, but couod the hot weather have an effect??

There are additional restrictions on the aircraft as they are museum pieces that fly, from memory cross win limit is around 8-10kts, they wont fly in rain unless they are caught in an unexpected shower and so on.

[2xChevrons]

Dr Jekyll said:

Simpo Two said:

From the mechanical POV, they flew in North Africa.

From a physical POV, hot weather = thin air, less lift, stall easier in a turn...

....and less power.

Also remember that the BBMF aircraft (and other preserved warbirds) spend all their time tooling around at low altitudes (a few thousand feet), compared to their original role of patrol and combat in the 10,000-20,000ft range. So these days, and especially in the current weather, they're operating in much hotter conditions than they were designed for. Even on a fairy balmy British summer's day, flying a Hurricane (or especially an early Spitfire) was an exercise in getting it off the ground and up high into cool air before it overheated, and you certainly didn't stop to do a display routine over the airfield at low altitude.

Now bear in mind that it's often been hotter in the UK over the past few weeks than the average daily summer high in Tobruk, and unlike in the 1940s if you do push things too hard and boil your Merlin you can't just get the ground crew to top up the glycol, run a compression test and leave it at that. And if you really do cook things there aren't hundreds of new engines waiting around in crates and thousands of fitters and machinists waiting to drop one into your plane.

[Eric Mc]

Very sad to hear this.

[Dr Jekyll]

2xChevrons said:

Also remember that the BBMF aircraft (and other preserved warbirds) spend all their time tooling around at low altitudes (a few thousand feet), compared to their original role of patrol and combat in the 10,000-20,000ft range. So these days, and especially in the current weather, they're operating in much hotter conditions than they were designed for. Even on a fairy balmy British summer's day, flying a Hurricane (or especially an early Spitfire) was an exercise in getting it off the ground and up high into cool air before it overheated, and you certainly didn't stop to do a display routine over the airfield at low altitude.

Now bear in mind that it's often been hotter in the UK over the past few weeks than the average daily summer high in Tobruk, and unlike in the 1940s if you do push things too hard and boil your Merlin you can't just get the ground crew to top up the glycol, run a compression test and leave it at that. And if you really do cook things there aren't hundreds of new engines waiting around in crates and thousands of fitters and machinists waiting to drop one into your plane.

One of the things the Battle of Britain film got right. 'The engines overheating and so am I, we either stand down or blow up'.

[72twink]

Looking at the clips the whole display was at quite low level, not particularly fast with little or no retention of energy, my brother commented "Looks slow in the roll ..... Biggin Invader time" - very sad.

[Eric Mc]

Indeed - looks like a stall off the turn.

[aeropilot]

Simpo Two said:

That's a bad loss.

williamp said:

I remember reading this a few days ago and was surprised it can be too hot to fly a Hurricane. From the bbmf twitter feed.

We’re very sorry to say that due to the temperatures today, PZ865 has reached her temperature limits and will be unable to conduct her planned flypasts this afternoon. We apologise for any disappointment this may cause, but we have to look after our lovely lady! https://t.co/lNdYCzgL1k

I know we shoukdnt speculate, but couod the hot weather have an effect??

From the mechanical POV, they flew in North Africa.

From a physical POV, hot weather = thin air, less lift, stall easier in a turn...

That's BBMF being kind to the old girl, as they have much reduced G limits, power setting limits and other factors to prolong the life of these aircraft which are not in the first flush of youth.

As for the sad loss of KZ321 in the Czech republic, the pilot was flying a very tight and low sequence, which looked a bit iffy, compared with a display you'd see in the UK, although the video's of his display the previous day looked a little more polished. Given he was a former MiG-21 pilot, you would have thought energy management at low level would have been something he was very familiar with.........
Also, in this situation there are a lot of depart from flight similarities with the loss of Hurricane G-HURR at Shoreham back in 2007, so I wonder just how much homework, and conversations with other current Hurricane display pilots this pilot did before working up a routine on the Hurricane, which they only acquired last summer, from its previous Belgian owner, so I doubt he had many hours on it.

[eharding]

aeropilot said:

Simpo Two said:

That's a bad loss.

williamp said:

I remember reading this a few days ago and was surprised it can be too hot to fly a Hurricane. From the bbmf twitter feed.

We’re very sorry to say that due to the temperatures today, PZ865 has reached her temperature limits and will be unable to conduct her planned flypasts this afternoon. We apologise for any disappointment this may cause, but we have to look after our lovely lady! https://t.co/lNdYCzgL1k

I know we shoukdnt speculate, but couod the hot weather have an effect??

From the mechanical POV, they flew in North Africa.

From a physical POV, hot weather = thin air, less lift, stall easier in a turn...

That's BBMF being kind to the old girl, as they have much reduced G limits, power setting limits and other factors to prolong the life of these aircraft which are not in the first flush of youth.

As for the sad loss of KZ321 in the Czech republic, the pilot was flying a very tight and low sequence, which looked a bit iffy, compared with a display you'd see in the UK, although the video's of his display the previous day looked a little more polished. Given he was a former MiG-21 pilot, you would have thought energy management at low level would have been something he was very familiar with.........
Also, in this situation there are a lot of depart from flight similarities with the loss of Hurricane G-HURR at Shoreham back in 2007, so I wonder just how much homework, and conversations with other current Hurricane display pilots this pilot did before working up a routine on the Hurricane, which they only acquired last summer, from its previous Belgian owner, so I doubt he had many hours on it.

It's been a while since I did my aerobatic DA - 2006 - and things have obviously changed a lot since then but part of the discussion with the DAE revolved around crowd-line busts ( the salient event guiding thinking back then was Ramstein), and the advice I was given that whilst they were something you should absolutely plan to avoid, but if you did make a misjudgement, and found yourself in a situation where you did anticipate imminently infringing the crowd-line, then far better to deal with the situation in a controlled manner, accept the infringement, and probably having a chat with the Display Director afterwards rather than abruptly pulling G trying to correct and flicking the thing into the ground. There's a brief shot in that video showing a windsock which appears to be showing an on-crowd wind, could be the pilot was blown marginally closer to the crowd line on that final turn than he had been on the previous day, leading to the scenario above. Of course, the cause could have been completely different - control restriction or incapacitation for example.