Members Jeff da Weasel Posted November 4, 2011 Members Share Posted November 4, 2011 source The pilot was identified as Chuck Surack, president and founder of Sweetwater Sound, a Fort Wayne-based company that sells musical equipment and produces music for radio and TV commercials. In August, Surack bought Sweet Aviation, which provides flying lessons and small-plane rentals from Fort Wayne's Smith Field. The crash happened about 6:15 p.m. Witnesses told police the aircraft circled once, then crashed on its side in a harvested cornfield a few hundred feet behind a home in the 11300 block of Hanbury Manor Boulevard, near the Sagamore subdivision. The neighborhood is near Sagamore Golf Course, near 166th Street and Union Chapel Road. All six occupants escaped the aircraft before it burst into flames, Russell said. === Glad you made it back down alive and well, Chuck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted November 4, 2011 Members Share Posted November 4, 2011 Wow...glad he's okay. Scary... My Dad was an aeronautical engineer. He told me never to get into a single-ended plane. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted November 4, 2011 Members Share Posted November 4, 2011 Wow...glad he's okay. Scary...My Dad was an aeronautical engineer. He told me never to get into a single-ended plane.At least with a fixed wing aircraft, you have a better chance of being able to guide the craft to a controlled crash landing. For a period while I was in school, I was a typist for a private investigation firm that did aviation-related cases. The several helicopter crash cases I typed up really stuck in my head. One -- where thankfully only one passenger was seriously injured -- was a chopper-load of firefighters. The craft had dropped them all off, earlier in the day and now, in the hottest part of the afternoon was picking the same crew up. But the change in temperature was enough to put the load in the critical range (I forget how that all works) and, after the plane had risen to just about treetop height, it sort of 'slid' backwards at an angle and crashed. One guy seriously hurt his back but everyone else was cuts and bruises. The other crash, however, a sight-seeing chopper that had been a fixture near the Queen Mary's permanent mooring in Long Beach, was not nearly so lucky. I already knew the outcome going in because I'd once considered paying the small fee for a short ride around the harbor in the little Bell chopper -- and then, a year or less later, AIR, was chilled to see the plane involved in a crash that killed the pilot and two passengers. But the investigator's report went into a lot more detail than the newspaper accounts. And those details were not pretty. Of course, dead is dead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Goobers Posted November 4, 2011 Members Share Posted November 4, 2011 My Dad was an aeronautical engineer. He told me never to get into a single-ended plane. Always good advice, as a plane with only one end is infinite in the other direction. Just think if you had to take a leak during flight, and the bathroom was at the other end. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted November 5, 2011 Members Share Posted November 5, 2011 Wow. I didn't even notice that malaprop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Ernest Buckley Posted November 5, 2011 Members Share Posted November 5, 2011 Wow, glad to hear he and fellow travelers are fine... I`m sure they`re all a bit shaken though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted November 5, 2011 Members Share Posted November 5, 2011 Very glad to hear he's okay. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Geoff Grace Posted November 5, 2011 Members Share Posted November 5, 2011 Always good advice, as a plane with only one end is infinite in the other direction. Don't you mean directions (plural)? After all, a plane is a flat, two-dimensional surface. Best, Geoff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted November 6, 2011 Members Share Posted November 6, 2011 Wow, Chuck you're a lucky man. My previous employer died that way - the engine (basically a supercharged chainsaw engine) on his experimental aircraft died, and he crashed into a building. Needless to say, he'll probably never do that again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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