News

About a week ago there was an airplane crash at our airport, in which the plane was totally destroyed. The accident falls into the category “Stupid Pilot Tricks”, and I hope whoever reads this can learn something from it and avoid similar things.

A pilot wanted to go flying in his Cessna 182. During the takeoff roll at full power he decided that he did not like his seat position. The seat was similar to a car seat on rails that could be unlocked by pulling a handle to slide it fore or aft. He unlocked it and because the airplane was accelerating, the seat slid aft. As a consequence, he could not reach the rudder pedals anymore. The airplane pulled to the left and left the runway, not quite at flying speed. This airport is on top of a hill, and there are steep slopes on all sides. The airplane rolled quite fast down the hill, through the fence, encountering large rocks, until it hit a big one dead on. The engine was pushed into the cockpit, then the airplane flipped over. Everything that could break did break, except for the pilot. He was able to crawl from the wreck with relatively minor damage to himself. Fortunately the airplane did not catch on fire. Afterwards he admitted that it had been a stupid thing to do.

I took this picture yesterday while flying Caro 1, the red circle shows where it came to rest. 

In aviation (and other situations too) it helps to keep you alive to “Think first, act later”. This pilot was incredibly lucky to have survived.  

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Flying home from a visit to the Bay area, over the Sacramento river.

It was an exceptionally clear, smooth and warm day for late October.

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I finally was able to visit the Little River airport on the coast of California in Caro 1. The area there is beautiful, but often foggy.

I posted the rest of the pictures in this file

https://caro-engineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/The-coast-is-clear.pdf

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Last chance to go flying for a few days: Caro 1 carried me for several days southeast to explore new places.

Crossing the Colorado river west to east into Arizona.

The link to my trip report is here:

https://caro-engineering.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/October-Flight-to-Arizona.pdf

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I had another opportunity to see my sister while she was staying in Monterey. I flew to the Salinas airport in the Pulsar where she picked me up.

A weak front was moving through and in the morning I had a wait for a while for the low clouds to lift. There still was not much space between the mountains and the clouds, but I managed to get past the obstacles.

The last part of the mountains give way before it opens up to the Monterey Bay area.

My sister took me to the famous Monterey Bay Aquarium, which was very interesting and had beautiful exhibits.

It was not easy to take a good picture of the very active sea otters.

The kelp forest and its inhabitants were more cooperative.

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