Do you think the tree absorbed the fatal energy they arrived with ?
Apparently nobody got hurt (besides the odd bird in the tree).
The pilot, Manfred Forst, 79, was taken to the Hospital of Central Connecticut with minor injuries, Plainville police said.
My grandmother used to park her car like that.
PetitCessnaVoyageur wrote:
Do you think the tree absorbed the fatal energy they arrived with ?
Yes. The tree makes the deceleration happen over a couple of seconds, rather than the more or less sudden stop that would have happened when the plane finally stalled and fenceposted.
it is a very effective way to remodel a tree
I guess large part of the energy was also absorbed by the right wing touching the ground. In my days of training to fly gliders I studied a book by Helmut Reichmann called “Segelfliegen”, that also contained recommendations for landing gliders off site. In the section for landing in terrain not suitable for a normal landing it simply said “slip into ground, breaking wing will absorb crash energy”, not sure if this works with composite but can imagine that wood or sheet metal might be worth a try.
I saw a Weihe glider spin in, just missing seeing the impact behind the hangar. Less than 50metres away. The canopy lay nearby, undamaged. The right wing had disappeared, covering the cockpit area in matchwood. The left wing stuck up at about 70°, and was split longitudinally. There was a 180° twist in the fuselage, with the empenage undamaged.
The “elderly” pilot was almost uninjured when we cleared the wreckage from him. ( I was 23, he was over 50. 
)
If we are having a competition, I watched a Spitfire crash at Biggin Hill.
Standing next to me watching it was my passenger, who had never been in a light aircraft before and was already nervous.
