So, I just saw that my plane crashed

[bvar22]

110. AH...the 60s... What a wonderful time to learn to fly.

Back then, you had to be a Hanger Rat for a year or so before earning some stick time.

[div class="excerpt" After reading the above, I feel I left the impression that ALL Commercial Pilots are idiots. That is not true. There are 100 competent professionals for every dufus. It is just when the dufus makes a mistake trying to fly the autopilot instead of the airplane, he now kills 400 people.


If you learned to fly in the 60s, then you're training included unusual attitudes and spins, and you didn't even see a Wing Leveler for the first year.
New trainee pilots aren't trained in spin recovery or (really) unusual attitudes (like inverted and rolling), and many have never experienced an actual spin in their training.


My first love was a 100 horse Super Cub with a constant speed prop (converted Ag plane) and a beautiful sunburst paint job. It still had those long, LONG wings (rated for 0 negative), so we had to be a little careful to keep everything positive, but that was such an easy and fun plane to fly. Back then, I could have bought one for $35K.

I was romanced away from the SuperCub by a brand new Bellanca Decathlon, and I still cherish that airplane.

Somewhere in my early 30s, I developed a sinus/ear problem that disoriented me whenever I turned my head to the left to watch the wing tip during verticals,.... and aerobatics was over.

So it goes.
It still seems that there are more accidents caused by pilots flying the autopilot instead of the airplane. Remember that Eastern Flight that "flew" into the Florida swamps? Had either pilot gotten their nose out of the manual and looked outside, or at least at the altimeter,
that flight would have landed safely.