hero persona
Before this crash, he toured around the country, showing off his incredible
airplane which he flew incredibly well. He was the hottest stick around.
Hell, at my home airport, at an AOPA fly-in before the crash, I watched him
take off after a ridiculously short run and climb out at a 70 degree angle,
again and again. The hottest stick in America, dude. No one was more
skilled at high alpha than he was, or so we were told, and so he demonstrated
at every airport in the country. And that's cool.
But then he wrecks, because the biggest baddest 21st century pilot is
afraid of ATC?
What the fuck is this world coming to?
ATC can make suggestions to me. If I like what they suggest, I will do it,
but if it's a bad idea, I'm not going to do it. ATC are not pilots. They
don't understand the limitations of every different type of aircraft out
there, and I have no fucking idea why 21st Century pilots think that they do.
ATC's job is NOT to bully pilots into crashing and get nasty letters mailed
to you if you don't crash.
ATC's job is to co-ordinate the flow of aircraft, and frankly, I can generally
do that at least as well as they can. For over 25 years I flew at an uncontrolled
airport where we routinely mixed antique NORDO and 400 knot surface jet
aerobatics. Without ATC. Unlike ATC, I understood the limitations of all the
different aircraft because I flew them all.