[Roscoe]

I may take some heat over this but I took another look at the situation and tried to find some point of comparison. What I'm hearing is that we should all feel sadness over this needless tragic incident; WHICH WE ALL DO! The other side is that we should not look at, talk about or analize what this behavior resulted in and how it affects us personally and the replica industry in general.

I don't think we can look at one without the other and still be honest with ourselves. Now we all have done stupid things in our lifetimes and have not been as unfortunate as this poor fellow. However, after our own stupid moves we, hopefully, have taken some introspective thought as to what we did and how not to repeat it in the future.

So I was reminded of the tragic case of JFK, Jr who took off from a small airport about 2 miles from my home. He was a pilot but not really qualified for instrumentation flying. The weather indicated that it was going to be stormy with a very low ceiling. His intellect probably told him he was beyond his limitations but his ego said "lets just load up the family and I'll fly the plane." Well he flew the plane right into Long Island Sound with the entire family aboard.

Reports of the accident covered the tragedy, the family, etc. But there was also critical analysis of his extremely poor judgement. Check out some of the pilot forums for some lively discussions.

While our hearts go out to the family we cannot overlook the circumstances of what happened. This also applies to the other 'accident' that, fortunately, did not end in a death but very easily could have.

Roscoe