OT: Colin McRae appears to be dead

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"THE former rally driving champion Colin McRae was killed and his five year-old son feared dead in a helicopter crash yesterday afternoon. The aircraft came down in Jerviswood, Lanarkshire, half a mile from the family's home and burst into flames just after 4pm.

Jean-Eric Freudiger, McRae's agent, said the 39-year-old driver had been piloting the helicopter himself. Also on board were believed to be his son Johnny, another adult and another child. Police said there were no survivors."

Damned shame.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings
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BBC are being a bit more vague saying the authorities don't know how many, or who, were on board and no bodies have been identified so far.

Whoever it was, the families have my sympathies.

Reply to
SteveG

Indeed, hence my "appears to be". The Grauniad is also being a little vague but not quite so vague as the beeb;

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"Fears were growing for Scottish rally driver Colin McRae tonight after a helicopter crashed on land near his home in Lanarkshire."

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

Tis indeed. A great driver and a lovely man.

Reply to
EMB

what a bugger, he was always such an entertaining driver.

He was always known as Colin McCrash in his early days. I guess he will be again now

Dave

Reply to
Dave R

Well thats just put my day in to perspective - dammed shame for all.

Thoughts go out to all the families.

Lee D

Reply to
Lee_D

Thats upset me quite a lot...........

Reply to
Mark Solesbury

On or around Sat, 15 Sep 2007 21:59:35 +0100, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

indeed. I believe the word "bugger" would be apposite.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

Blimey, car nuts are falling out of the skies! David Richards from Prodrive/Aston Martin/justabouteverythingelse has just piled up his helicopter now;

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"The Subaru rally team chief and his wife survived unhurt when their helicopter crash-landed in Essex.

Police said Dave Richards and his wife "walked out of the wreckage" near North Weald Airfield and were treated for shock by paramedics."

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

On or around Sun, 16 Sep 2007 18:45:36 +0100, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:

never mind LPG, it's fecking helicopters that are dangerous.

sundry friends of mine who've been involved with fixed-wing aircraft won't have anything to do with them. I'm not that convinced meself by helicopters

- even a twin-engine one only needs one failure (tail rotor) for it to fall out of the sky.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

I can't remember exactly, but I think it was John Glenn who said something along the lines of 'helicopters are a made of 2,000 parts all trying their best to fly apart' - from a man who sat on top of a Saturn 5....

It sucks about Mcrae, but the heavenly WRC is starting to look pretty tasty with all the sad losses over the last few years - Burnsey, Beef Park and now Mcrae.

AC.

Reply to
AndyC

Yes, the oft-used description I think is "a collection of parts flying in close formation".

Mind you, I'm no great fan of planes either ;-)

And yes I know the statistical likelihood of car use etc..

Just don't like the inability to get out and kick the thing if something goes wrong!

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

Austin Shackles uttered summat worrerz funny about:

I have had quite some experiences in a helicopter. They scare me with a simple efficiency. The Pilot relished the prospect of leaving me mentally scarred in my first flight ever. How I wasn't sick I'll never know. Made my first flight a couple of months later in a Jet to see Santa far more bearable mind. I'm not scared of flying per say... just the crashing.

What I never expected is the buffeting they get from cross winds. They always look so sedate from the ground.

Lee D

Reply to
Lee_D

They've always looked to me like they'd shake your fillings out, camera makers have to go through some quite interesting hoops to try and get clear images from mounted equipment on them for example.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

I took my camcorder up with permission of the pilot and Navigator - have some cracking footage.

Observer opens door - setps on to the Ski and learns out over the ski taking birds eye shots at 3000 ft harnessed to the chopper I may add, no sooner had the door shut and the pilot throws it in to a rapid hard down on the right and dive down back on ourselves to around 1500 ft just to check if my brekkie could hold on. I got the impression the manouver was well rehearsed. Pilot was ex RAF and really knew how to handle the chopper. Rota's sounded like something from airwolf.

As much as I enjoyed the opportunity to be so lucky to go up I think I'd either die from a crash or die from bordom waiting for juciey jobs to come in if I were employed as an observer.

Lee D

Reply to
Lee_D

AOL - I know I can swim. I know I CAN'T fly.

"If God had meant us to fly, he's have given us tickets."

Reply to
Rich B

"Ian Rawlings" wrote

Certainly is.

The McRae family, both brothers and Dad, have been instrumental in developing a new type of Rally Car, the McRae Enduro, a Paris-Dakar type weapon based on a Disco.

2.7 ltr V6.Turbodiesel. 237bhp, 383lb ft. 6 speed manual transmission. 315mm ventilated discs. 235/85R16 Pirelli tyres. 200litre fuel tank. 50/50 weight distribution. The price is about £100K and there will be a special series for them next season. Colin was also making the R4, a rally prototype, with a 2.5 ltr n/a engine producing 300bhp. to be available next year for about the same price.
Reply to
Bob Hobden

On or around Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:04:05 +0100, "Lee_D" enlightened us thusly:

[helicopter antics]

trouble is, however good the pilot, there are too many things on a chopper where a single failure causes it to fall out of the sky uncontrollably.

most fixed-wing stuff will glide, and although that gives you little choice about landing site, it does give you some choice.

google for the Gimli Glider...

Reply to
Austin Shackles

Bit high, spent a several hours flying over the start of one of the Round The World Yacht races. The TV camera helos should have been between 1000 and 1500' but we where in a borrowed Army Air Corps Lynx with military pilot. When ever I looked at the altimeter is was nearer 500' and a comment of "I'm staying down here out of the way of all those loonies up there". There where a good half dozen other camera helos about...

We dropped into Eastleigh airport to refuel and afterwards made a token attempt to go down the runaway ie into a low forward speed hover along taxi ways, then onto end of runway. Bit of height then threw it into a tight righthand turn, bit disturbing looking out of the open (for the camera) side door more or less vertically at the ground only about 40' away.

The worse bit was the oil pressure warning on one of the engines when we where out over the Needles somewhere. He dropped it quick to get it the gyro action going and headed for the mainland PDQ. Remember we had a door locked open, ditching wouldn't have been pleasant, pretty much straight to the bottom. This was before I'd filmed at the "dunk tank" where they train people to escape from ditched helos and really knew that and *not* to get out before the main rotor has stopped turning.

All in all I love helcopters and other small aircraft. Passanger air liners are just tedious boring tubes with no excitement.

Reply to
Dave Liquorice

Now, just imagine an LPG-powered chopper....... lol.

To overcome gravity, you must provide an opposite force greater than the mass you are attempting to shift. In aircraft terminoligy this is called "lift". Now, I for one want the component that is providing this lift to be feckin securely attached with an almost infinite probability of it coming off...... NOT whirling round above my bloody head, attached by not-a-lot! 22 years working on aircraft taught me one thing - helicopters are just simply..... wrong! Badger.

Reply to
Badger

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