The Mother Lode

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HS-748 2A
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by HS-748 2A »

Fogghorn - Check your PMs

'48
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HORUNNER
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by HORUNNER »

I think the fact that the purpose of the filming at the time of shit storm was to get a rough landing shot and on film and that led to what is seen.

He was landing with the intent of making it look bad :roll:
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HS-748 2A
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by HS-748 2A »

HORUNNER wrote:I think the fact that the purpose of the filming at the time of shit storm was to get a rough landing shot and on film and that led to what is seen.

He was landing with the intent of making it look bad :roll:
Granted. For sure. And a smashing success it was.
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Chairborne
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by Chairborne »

HS-748 2A wrote:Does anybody remember the 1982 movie, "The Mother Lode" with Charlton Heston? Art Scholl at the helm, landed too nose-low. It was suposed to be a just a 'rough' landing. It turned into quite the cock-up.
Art Scholl was not flying the floatplane when it crashed. Scholl was flying the camera plane for the aerial photography per IMDB. The rumour that he was flying the plane at the time of the accident is precisely that: rumour.
HS-748 2A wrote:- Does anybody know which Beaver that was in Mother Lode? (Registration and who it belonged to)
C-GHCT is a 1952 ex-Canadian-military veteran which was owned by Tradewinds Aviation at the time of the crash. The plane was salvaged, restored and conversions added and now lives a fully-restored, pampered life in Cape Girardeau, Missouri as N323RS.
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black hole
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by black hole »

It looked to me: that that Beaver had lots of help.The light is just poor enough, not to see the control deflections.


BH
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SkyWolfe
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by SkyWolfe »

Saw the clip in the TC disc. Pretty interesting. They definatly got their effect...
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Blakey
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by Blakey »

Chairborne wrote:a 1952 ex-Canadian-military veteran.
"Ex-Canadian Military"? Can you tell us which unit it flew with?

http://www.dhc-2.com/id181.htm
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by HS-748 2A »

Chairborne wrote:Art Scholl was not flying the floatplane when it crashed. Scholl was flying the camera plane for the aerial photography per IMDB. The rumour that he was flying the plane at the time of the accident is precisely that: rumour.
Who was flying it then?

My source was around at the time and he says Scholl was flying it.
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by ajet32 »

MUSKEG There were 2 or 3 olive drab military DHC2 Beavers around YEG 1981-82 maybe even 1983. They were not Canadian but British Army. The British Army used the Beaver and these models were involved in support work at either Wainwright or Suffield. I remember seeing them and asking about them at the time. They had the British Army roundel not the Canadian.
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fortis risk
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by fortis risk »

I just watched the clip and its pretty damn scary.
Could an experienced float pilot please explain any and all mistakes made in this landing. I would appreciate it. Thank you.

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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by Intentional Left Bank »

fortis risk wrote:Could an experienced float pilot please explain any and all mistakes made in this landing. I would appreciate it. Thank you.
Not having FDR data, I can't say for certain precisely why the landing went wrong. Speculation is often perilous. But I have an idea about how to replicate such a scenario.

If a floatplane touches down in a slightly nose-low attitude, the floats will tend to "dig". "Digging" happens when the floats aren't at the optimum angle. The angle that yields the lowest water drag is found in a very narrow band when on the "step", with only the very bottom centre of the keel (the step) in the water. During take-off, incorrect angle--either too nose-high or too nose-low--will lead to a much longer take-off run and often prevent the aircraft from lifting off at all, due to higher than optimum drag. Slight changes in fore- or aft-pressure on the stick or yoke will yield instant and very perceptible changes in drag.

During landing, training and repetition will help a pilot develop a sight picture that closely replicates the attitude the aircraft (and floats) had on take-off, for a perfect, low-drag touchdown. Unless of course he is attempting a short-lake landing, in which case the attitude can be deliberately adjusted either at or slightly after touchdown to a very slight nose-low attitude, thus producing an immediate large increase in drag and shortening the landing "roll" considerably. The aircraft is not very likely to flip over as a result, but it is a disconcerting feeling.

Where the problem arises is if this nose-low manoeuvre is combined with a cross-wind landing, or, in the case of glassy water, a normal landing is attempted and the combination of incorrect too-low pitch attitude exists and insufficient care has been exercised in making sure the aircraft isn't in a state of yaw at the moment of touchdown. The first float to touch will decelerate instantly, causing instantaneous yaw around that float. Momentum and centripetal force will result in shift in weight to the other float (and also wingtip) somewhere around the 90 degree point of the yaw, which now results in even faster yaw in the opposite direction. Eventually the aircraft may end up on its nose.

In this particular situation, the water appears to be glassy. Glassy water landing are tricky because it is completely impossible to tell how high you are above the water. Where normally the correct moment to round out into the flare is easy to judge, in glassy water conditions this is not possible. So other techniques must be employed. If it is a narrow river, or there is a straight nearby shoreline, or there are islands, landing very close to these physical features will keep them peripheral vision and the proper time to flare can still be judged. Any ripple or boat-wake can help. Reed beds are also useful. If you can do the approach over land to a very low height, for example flying over a beach with no obstacles on it, down to say two or three feet, then setting it down as soon as you are over water also works well.

If physical features can't be used, then the only option is to descend to as low as you dare, but high enough that you are absolutely certain you are not overly close to the water. Then you round out into the flare, adopting the optimum touchdown attitude, while simultaneously adding power so as to not lose speed and energy, with only a very slight rate of descent. This attitude is then maintained to touchdown, with power being tweaked as needed. The point and time of touchdown is often unexpected, sometimes in that it happens sooner than you though it would, sometimes it takes far longer (and far more lake) than you thought would be required until you actual touch. I can usually feel an almost imperceptible increase in speed as I transition into ground effect, cuing a very slight reduction in power. On a perfect day, the touchdown is not felt; you only know you are on the water when you see water spray in your peripheral vision. This method can require a lot of lake to safely accomplish.

Judging by this video, none of these options were employed. Obviously with the mountain in the background, a straight-in over-land approach to low altitude wasn't possible--or more correctly, wasn't safe. No other physical features were available for an aid to judge the flare height. And the aircraft appeared to maintain a normal--that is, non-glassy landing--rate of descent into the flare. The roundout into the flare appeared to be abrupt and late, and it did not appear that the nose was raised high enough to achieve the optimum angle for touchdown. One float touched down first, "dug", and an immediate yaw occurred, with the sequence then progressing as you see in the video.

What mistakes were made? Can't say for certain. As stated earlier, it appears that for this particular approach, no physical features were available to help the pilot judge his height above water, so the open-water glassy water technique may have been the prudent technique to be employed, which as mentioned earlier, can require a long straight stretch of water. It is not apparent from the video is how much lake he had available to execute this landing. If he had lots of lake available, it would appear that he didn't use it wisely. If he didn't have lots of lake available for this direction of landing, he should have chosen to land in a direction where he had a longer run available. Or, he could have flown close and parallel to the mountain you see in the background of the video, while descending to low altitude using his peripheral vision. Once really low, he could have turned in the desired direction perpendicular to the mountain, and adopted the landing attitude while using engine power to reduce the rate of descent. This more prudent approach would not have been as dramatic as the one appearing in video, but then the landing would also have been much less dramatic.

Stories sometimes float around that local pilots, when asked by the film crew to attempt the approach and landing as seen in the video, flatly refused. Other stories tell of the aircraft in the video being quite willingly made available to the non-local pilot for the right price after being insured to the hilt. Obviously these legends have evolved over time into quite tall versions of the truth.
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mag check
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by mag check »

Holy crap man, you could have just said that he was flying for the camera(very common mistake), and screwed up :D
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fortis risk
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by fortis risk »

Thanks, I appreciate the time taken.
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sesnard
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by sesnard »

I knew and met Art Scholl many times @ OSH in the early days after Rockford, IL. I started attending EAA in RFD in 1967 when I was a junior in high school. I happened to see the crash of the deH Beaver on FakeBook having not ever watched "Mother Lode", it really piqued my interest. I saw one of your posts stating that Art Scholl was the reckless pilot. Well, that did not quite sit right with me. So, I dug a little deeper. I check the cast of Mother Lode on IMBD under stunts/stuntmen (whatever). Lo and behold, the pilot was no other than Joe C. Hughes, NOT Art Scholl. I saw Joe perform in OSH (EAA) on August 1975. Joe had a wing-walker, a young gymnast by the name of Gordon McCollom. Joe was known to push the envelope to its limits. He had been counseled by other aerobatic pilots of the day, including Bob Hoover, not to continue doing the inverted ribbon pickup with McCollom standing on the wing (upside down). A month later performing the same stunt at the Reno Air Races, Joe rolled the Super Stearman inverted with McCollom on top. As he approached the ribbon, the plane starting sinking, striking McCollom in the head, immediately killing him. The vertical stabilizer/rudder was also smashed. Joe managed to climb out inverted (with McCollom's body hanging over him) and proceeded to land.
Now after watching the Beaver and its approach, it all makes sense. I just wanted to set the record straight for Art. God knows how many individuals read this and believe that Art was the goods of trying to land the Beaver, nose down,
hot, and at an angle. RIP Art.
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jakeandelwood
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Re: The Mother Lode

Post by jakeandelwood »

Totally remember that movie from when I was a kid! I remember the scene when his fuel line was plugged, and that guy fixed it for him.
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