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Kevin,
FYI, I knew Leroy and he was very
hands on in the completion of his Legacy. He bought the plane with the
airframe largely completed, but he worked on it as often as he could over the
past several months completing the wiring, panel installation, engine
installation and all of the other things that go into finishing one of these
things. I honestly can't recall if he had an AOA in the panel, but
echo your sentiment that it's an invaluable tool when properly
calibrated.
It will be some time before we learn
if he lost control due to a stall entered from correcting an overshooting turn
to final or as a result of fuel exhaustion as was speculated in one of the
newspaper articles. In either case it's the latest stark
reminder that the first priority in any abnormal situation is to FLY THE
AIRPLANE!!! I'm not aware of what level of training Leroy got other
than he didn't use HPAT and was not able to train with his first flight test
pilot due to bad weather, but he had flown off his Phase I hours and told me he
was about to move the plane to it's permanent home in Compton.
There's little doubt that HPAT training would have better equipped him to deal
with whatever he faced on Friday.
I was out at the airport yesterday,
where Leroy's car is still parked just outside my hangar and had to move his
passenger's motorcycle inside his hangar until we're able to contact his
family. All Lancair losses are hard on our fraternity, but it's an
especially sobering thing to deal with when it's someone you
know.
Skip Slater
N540ES
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