block30

https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/plane-crash-video-sparks-online-backlash/

So did the FAA find the wreckage? I've done a whopping 10 minutes of reading about this jackwagon, but I've yet to determine if this plane actually crashed or he had sense enough to pull off some trickery and have some hidden pilot fly this thing to safety.

Gearswinger

Skip towards the end of the video and he hikes to the crash site. The plane was destroyed.

JohnBurke

It's reported that he hired a helicopter to extract the wreckage.

rickair7777

The crash wasn't fake. Did he do it intentionally? I don't know. A niche GA channel would be hard-pressed to get a ROI after accounting for the lost value of the plane (insurance fraud would be a crime).

But he was frankly pretty worked up for an experienced skydiver who still had plenty of altitude to work with. Doesn't smell right, guys like that (I'm one) tend to stay outwardly cool even if they're feeling the heat. Also there was a road or a dry wash which would have been worth considering as a landing site. I would have been a LOT more concerned about saving the plane until I got low enough that I was nearing V1 for the jump decision... he was nowhere near V1.

He jumped early and had plenty of freefall time which would NOT have been the thing to do... pull right away so you have max slant range options and can pick your landing spot (ie not a briar patch).

Also given the altitude of the jump and freefall time, odds are that he would have ended up nowhere near the crash site. He lost at least 5,000 feet in freefall (assuming no creative editing).

Seemed overly dramatic to me, perhaps intentionally so.

block30

Yeah I saw some of these things.. it's just SO nuts it's hard believe certain aspects are true.. Sonif he did really bail and this did really crash he sent an unguided missile to crash just wherever. Obviously it's a remote area but you could still kill someone or destroy a structure. Insane.

Oh yeah and jumping out with selfie stick in hand...wow

paulcg77

I'll agree to disagree with you on this one (respectfully). This stinks of insurance fraud + pandering to his social media audience. I don't even know where to begin. Using a skydive rig with double chutes (rather than a single chute emergency/bailout rig) in an 81-year-old taildragger design that is "compact" to say the least is bizarre. You can see he's pretty much asses and elbows and he planned to do that for a flight from Santa Barbara County to the Sierras? Makes absolutely no sense.

I have plenty of experience in taildraggers but zero in Taylorcraft BL-65's so I won't comment on the speculation that he intentionally cut the engine off. I do call BS that he bailed out at that altitude over that terrain instead of pitching for glide (which in that aircraft at that altitude probably would have given him 20+ miles of glide range) and setting it down in a variety of good spots. He even walks down a dry river/creek bed later in that video that would have been perfect for setting that specific type of aircraft down. All of this was in VMC with what looks like ideal wx. I gather he's a PPL, and even PPL's are trained from day one to do this rather than to carry a skydiver rig and bail out and just let the aircraft crash.

Then there's the lack of any kind of fire, which implies one of two things - he was either very lucky or the aircraft didn't have much fuel. This Taylorcraft didn't just gently glide itself down onto flat terrain and nose in like the cornfield bomber in Montana in 1970; it was a proper blunt force crash into a mountain that destroyed over half of the fuselage. I'm from California, born and raised. I know this specific area well - it's the southern part of the Los Padres National Forest that spans from north of Ventura all the way up to Big Sur and Monterey County. At higher elevations it's mostly brush/sage/chaparral with riparian (oak/eucalyptus/sycamore) forest in canyons and hillsides that get rain and snow runoff. Forest fires are common, and wildland fire season goes from June to December there. This accident occurred in November, during the typical end of the dry season when there's also Santa Ana winds that start a lot of fires. As you can tell from the video itself, it's extremely dry in that area.

So here's where I'm going with this - he was at the beginning of a 200+ nm (LPC-MMH) VFR cross country in a light taildragger with at least enough fuel to reach that destination and lets it crash into the side of a mountain in a national forest known for having forest fires, during the dry season, and there's no fire. Then he goes and charters a helicopter to get the wreck a few days later, before the NTSB preliminary report is even up. My guess/bet is the whole thing was staged and he intended to do something like this all along. He wanted some cool Youtube footage so he bailed out at FL050 and figured he'd watch it crash, steer himself to the wreckage and then recover the GoPro's on the fuselage. I doubt he expected any kind of fire because the aircraft probably had minimal fuel on board, engine might have even quit because of fuel starvation, which he would have planned. As much of a douche as he is, I doubt he wanted to start a forest fire that he could have landed in, especially given how remote that area is and how long it takes to get out of it. He was probably also aware that if this ever was proven to be intentional, and he ended up starting a massive forest fire, he'd spend 20 years in jail. He was probably all worked up because he didn't expect the aircraft to come back towards him (which is exactly what the cornfield bomber did in 1970), not because it was an unplanned emergency/crash.

The NTSB finally has a prelim up, accident #WPR22LA049 if you're curious. I usually support pilots in FAA/NTSB investigations but in this case I hope they nail his ass to the floorboard on this one. Full stop.

rickair7777

I said the crash wasn't fake. The crash really happened. I actually have a house in the area; yes fire would have been a possibility but not a foregone conclusion... mixture off/master off/ignition off would have reduced the odds quite a bit. Unlike steel suspension/tow chains on pickup trucks, aluminum doesn't spark on impact with rocks. Engine had plenty of time to cool down on the way down.

I also said the circumstances were bizarre at best, staged at worst. Probably the latter.

But if it was insurance fraud, the guy was really, really stoopid for filming it... LE (probably federal) will pick that apart with a fine tooth comb. So I'd guess youtube stunt.

Skydive rig maybe a bit suspicious, but he's not a professional test pilot so that might have just been what he had on hand. His jump profile and hysterics was more suspicious to me.

paulcg77

I appreciate some devil's advocacy here and I think most of us agree this crash happened. I tend to think that it's so unlikely he just got lucky with not having a fire that it's a near certainty that there was either very little or no fuel left in the tank. Looking at the wreckage in his video, I think that if he left 5 minutes previously with at least 200nm worth of gas then that would have been enough of a high energy impact for an explosion and a fire unless there just wasn't much fuel there. I also think we might be giving his intelligence quotient a little too much deference, given the fact that this guy bailed out at a decent altitude over remote terrain in perfect wx in a perfectly good airplane instead of just gliding it down to a safe landing spot. I really can't tell if he's just insanely stupid or some kind of high level genius but I suspect he's the former. Just another social media influencer who happens to be a pilot and staged this on his monetized youtube account for the attention.

Like you, I'm familiar with the area. I was in an Air Force family at one point in my early childhood and we lived on base at VAFB. I know a few people at LPC, including some locals I went to grade school with who are regulars at Skydive SB, and there are rumors floating that this aircraft was also due for a mx overhaul and shouldn't have been flown at all. Whether he also intended to scam insurance or not, I'm sure the thought occurred to him that he could get a new airplane (or a fat check) out of this plus the thousands of dollars he's already made just from people viewing that video.

paulcg77

On a separate note, can anyone confirm the range of the BL-65? What I've seen online is 240-260nm. This guy's route from Lompoc to Mammoth was approximately 200nm direct without factoring in winds, and he appears to have had no planned stopover, so I'm guessing he would have had a relatively full tank at the time of the crash given he was "about 20 minutes into the flight" by his own admission.

gringo

I’m just glad he had the foresight to not only strap on a parachute, but to strap a fire extinguisher to his leg. Just in case.