Mentioned in another thread, but worthy of its own headline. Ignore Fokker reference .
”A pilot escaped unharmed after the engine on a replica First World War fighter plane failed, forcing him to crash land in a field.
The Fokker Albatross was flying from France to Headcorn Aerodrome, but crash landed in fields between the villages of Pluckley and Bethersden, near Ashford at 2.20pm this afternoon.
Police, fire crews and paramedics were called to the site, but the pilot was not injured, despite his aircraft sustaining heavy damage and appearing to end up upside down’
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/ashford/news/ww1-plane-crashes-engine-failure-102555/ (photo in link)
By: avion ancien - 22nd January 2017 at 17:17
I was using the word ‘journalist’ in the widest sense. However I appreciate that those who have knowledge of what they write are small in number and that number is, probably, diminishing. Such writers are generally – but not always – confined to the specialist media, namely those publications and websites whose readers are knowledgeable and thus expect material published to reflect that fact. The ‘teenage scribblers’ now seem endemic in the general media – local and national newspapers, television, radio and online – but as a large proportion of the consumers of the output of such media don’t know and don’t care about facts, why should those for whom they write adopt an approach which is any different?
By: OHOPE - 21st January 2017 at 23:54
My despair of the general media only ever increases. Do the journalists who write pieces such as these state matters as fact in the genuine belief that they are correct and in a belief so strongly held that they believe that they have no need to check their ‘facts’? Or is it that they are lazy and inefficient and simply don’t care whether their ‘facts’ are correct or incorrect? Or is it that the general media puts significant time and effort into recruiting as journalists those who are intellectually challenged and can be guaranteed to produce consistently bad copy? Or is it all of these, the journalists resting safe in the knowledge that they are not alone – for the general public don’t know and, probably, don’t care whether what they are reading is factually correct or not. And in all probability, they don’t generally get beyond looking at the pictures.
Not sure we can blame journalists , genuine journalists are probably considered too expensive an item for much of today’s media , much cheaper to have an anybody who can write run something up , and once it is on the Net others simply copy it .
By: Oxcart - 21st January 2017 at 19:50
Re: Fokker. It’s now a British company!
By: ErrolC - 21st January 2017 at 19:39
AAIB report (via KentOnline)
Summary: (actually just about the whole thing, pdf only adds pilot hours etc)
The Albatros DV.a was a German World War 1 fighter aircraft equipped with a Mercedes D.111 six-cylinder, liquid-cooled engine. ZK-TGY is a reproduction aircraft, manufactured in 2015 and operated by a historic warbird company in New Zealand. The engine is understood to be an original unit that has been overhauled.
The aircraft was on loan to an organisation in the UK and was returning from an event in France. The pilot reported that, approximately 4 miles short of the destination airfield, the engine began to run rough before stopping. He attempted a forced landing but clipped a hedge on final approach, resulting in the aircraft coming to rest inverted; he was uninjured.
The pilot reported that sufficient fuel remained in the tanks after the accident and water temperature and fuel pressure indications were normal throughout the flight. A landing incident three flights previously resulted in damage that required a replacement propeller and the aircraft was returned to flight after consulting the manufacturer.
The cause of the engine failure was not immediately apparent and the operator advised that the aircraft would be recovered to New Zealand for further examination.
Sign In
September 15, 2016 at 9:34 pm