Randy Haskin wrote:
At least a few of us who have engaged in "tail chase" type routines in prop fighters at low altitude had educated opinions that more or less postulated the following when this came in and in fact the discussions are in progress as we speak;
The "offical AAIB notwithstanding, these tail chases as I'm sure you know already Randy, pose subtle issues involving position for the trailer. The turn that caught Brown was an over the top reversal with his aircraft flying the number 2 following lead's execution of the same maneuver.
A few of us believed Brown simply might have gotten caught with a multi-task error as he executed the reversal mirroring the lead caused by what might have looked like to him as his being dragged out too far behind lead as he exited the maneuver.
It's conjecture pure and simple of course, but human factors being what they are, as lead exited the turn reversal he went nose down coming out of it to the right. Following lead, Brown executed correctly going into the reversal nose high and had ample energy and altitude to complete an over the top reversal had the maneuver gone through normally to its completion.
It's entirely possible that as Brown passed the first knife edge into the reversal his attention would have been split between maintaining his trail position and executing the maneuver WITH THIS ADDED FACTOR IN MIND splitting his execution control inputs between the two tasks of position and maneuver completion as initiated.
His visual cue peripherals would have caught lead's exit going away and nose down with lead gaining airspeed and nose to tail separation at the exact instant he was losing energy in the reversal augmenting the nose to tail separation issue.
IF, and this is of course a BIG if, Brown's unconscious reaction to losing his position caused him to increase his pitch rate early with his lift vector pointed downward in an attempt to maintain positional awareness instead of holding in the required aileron, the result could easily have been exactly what happened, a nose low accelerating pitch rate spiral that was unrecoverable with the remaining altitude.
These accident reports do the best they can to reconstruct accidents and serve a purpose in that respect. The reports present the cold hard facts but in many cases don't make the needed impression on the pilots who follow the release of these reports and will be engaging in these activities after the fact.
In the end analysis, it has to be pilots in the community who have to take an active interest that goes beyond an MIR or a AAIB report and form useful opinion that can be carried into subsequent pre-show safety briefings as "factors to consider" in helping to prevent a like accident from occurring again.
Dudley Henriques
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