REFLECTOR: Bad Insurance News

[Terry Miles]

Nobody would insure me either, Bill, for the first 10 hours or whatever it
was.  Also, if you have the RG, and no retract time, don't do what I did and
land gear up on the 4th flight or so.  I was deep into testing, observing a
half a dozen things and finding power settings and sink rates you name.  My
routine was slight disturbed by a traffic pattern conflict--and I forgot the
gear.

I too went thru the Velo flight school.  Unless they changed it, I trained
in an FG with a gear control panel in the panel.  That gets you maybe used
to looking at the gear toggle sw, but it doesn't provide any seat of the
pants feel for gear actuation.  Also my gear warning was only the factory
setup and it was not fed into the intercom system.  

After I recovered my ego and the bottom skin of the airplane I put in a
voice activated gear warning system that works off airspeed.  I see it now
as one of the most important "day in and day out" safety features on the
airplane.

Terry

-----Original Message-----
From: reflector-bounces at tvbf.org [mailto:reflector-bounces at tvbf.org] On
Behalf Of LAURA WALKER
Sent: Saturday, November 22, 2008 11:15 PM
To: reflector at tvbf.org
Subject: REFLECTOR: Bad Insurance News

After being verbally assured for the last 4 months that my upcoming first
flight would be covered, Pam at AUA E-mailed me with the feared good news,
bad news deal. First, my premiums would be moderately lower than she had
thought. But, as of now, first flights are not coverable from ANY of her
insurers. Also, the planned test pilot, John Abraham, was to put 3 or 4 hrs
on the plane...now she says they want a minimum of 10 before I fly it. And
this is after I just logged 25 hrs with him in Florida (I had no retract
time).

I had a bad feeling that this past year's unfortunate events would catch me
before I could get my plane in the air, and it looks like it came true. 

Oh, well. I suppose I will have to get a written and signed definition of
"flight". If I'm lucky, it will be defined as all the wheels clear of the
asphalt. This could easily be combined with the first landing 3 seconds
later. 

I'll let everyone know what transpires.

Bill Walker

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