I was very saddened to see that we lost Ian Grooms this weekend at an airshow. Ian flew a white Sukhoi and was always exciting to watch all the times we saw him.

Dave Hamblin
(formerly DaveH on old site!)

• RE: Ian Grooms...,Ben_Chiu, 08:59z, 05-05-04
  • RE: Ian Grooms...,DHamblin, 11:46z, 05-05-04
    • RE: Ian Grooms...,Ben_Chiu, 20:56z, 05-07-04
      • RE: Ian Grooms...,Patty_Wagstaff, 14:28z, 05-10-04
• RE: Ian Grooms...,vmg10, 13:26z, 05-18-04

Have you heard/read any more about this?

I saw in Patty's guestbook that someone wrote that Ian was in a flat spin and never recovered. I remember in the movie Top Gun (not that Hollywood is any relation to the real world), the flat spin made it very difficult to eject from the flat spin in the F-14. I don't know what kind of forces would be experienced in real life (if it would prevent you from bailing out).

Regardless, our condolences go out to the Grooms family.

Ben

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Well,

Obviously at this stage all is an opinion; but I saw the clip on the news and my first thought was pilot incapacitation. He had done a series (a lot) of snap rolls on a descending 45 line, climbed up and entered the flat spin. At best it looked like it was exiting the spin on its own (not a normal exit to a spin where its stopped by the pilot) when it entered the water.

I remember that part of his show during one of the CASPA events (Dayton or Oshkosh, not sure) and thinking that has to cause a good headache.

We just need to keep his family in our prayers.

Dave Hamblin
(formerly DaveH on old site!)

LAST EDITED ON 05-07-04 AT 21:02z ()

This came out from AOPA today:

"AIRSHOW VETERAN IAN GROOM DIES IN FLORIDA ACCIDENT
National airshow performer Ian Groom, 58, died on his birthday in the
crash of his Russian-built Sukhoi 31 aerobatic aircraft on April 30
during practice for the Air and Sea Show in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
He failed to recover from a series of flat spins. "It was obvious there
was a problem with the maneuver," said John Cudahy, president of the
International Council of Air Shows. The South African-born Groom was
a mentor to airshow pilot Michael Goulian and friend to most of today's
top airshow stars. A pilot since his youth, Groom represented Britain
in world aerobatic competition. A devoted family man, he provided free
unusual attitude recovery training to government pilots. Groom set a
record two years ago for 57 consecutive snap rolls in less than 30 seconds.
He told an AOPA staff member days before he died that he intended to
break the record at the show."

Ben

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Registered to: Ben Chiu
-OLR.PL v1.83-

Hello everyone

Ian was a close friend of mine, and I'm very saddened by his accident. We won't know exactly what happened for awhile, but I believe he greyed out (g-loc'ed) going from an inverted to upright spin.

Ian was a great pilot and a great person and he had a lot of friends who will miss him a great deal.

Patty

the acro world community will miss a lot this britt/american buddy, mentor of many, one of the few flying the Su-31 for what it is.
Blue skies IAN