george.mueller(at)aurora.
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 Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 6:53 am Post subject: BRS |
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I elected to install a BRS in my 701, and there is a drawing on the Zenith builders area on the website showing how it is installed. I agree with a lot of what Mark at Can Zac says about the BRS in a previous post. 99% of the time you should be able to put the 701 down if you have an engine failure etc. However during my flying career I have increasingly liked the idea of having options and keeping options open. It is a bad feeling to be down to your last option during a flight with all your chips on the outcome of that one option. It is much worse, I imagine, to be out of options during a flight.
The negatives of the BRS are it costs a lot, it uses up 30 pounds of the 40 pounds capacity in you baggage area, and it is a less than elegant installation. In my case I have wing leading edge tape covering the straps that are exposed on the top of the fuselage. (There are some better solutions out there, like fabricating channels, etc.)
The positive to the BRS is to have just one last option in case something very unlikely happens, but these things do happen. Here are two examples. My EAA tech counselor for my 701 project built a RV 6A. He was a very fastidious builder, much better than I, and a very careful pilot. He was flying formation with another RV 8 and they hit each while they were breaking for approach to landing. Neither plane was damaged that much by the collision, but the RV 8 had a little less damage than the RV6A, and was able to land. The RV 6A crashed killing my tech counselor. Now nobody puts a BRS into an RV because the installation is not feasible, but if he would have had one, it is very possible he would have been able to deploy it, and the deployment would have saved him. A second example. A long time ago I used to get aerobatic training in a Decathlon with a 30,000 hour flight instructor. When the International Aerobatic Club competitions were at Fond Du Lac, WI he used to inspect the aircraft before the competition and they used to joke about how his inspections were "annuals". Ironically, the Decathlon he instructed in had an improperly welded wing to strut fitting and it took a long time, but it finally broke. Now nobody puts a BRS in an aerobatic aircraft because you have chutes and you do the maneuvers with a 3,000 agl floor so you can get out. But the instructor and his student could not get out in time, possibly because of interference from the wing, and they were both killed. If they would have had a BRS it would have very possibly saved them both.
Will I ever use the BRS? Very unlikely, especially in a 701. The most likely scenario would be a mid air that left me with enough wits to pull the handle. Or maybe my passenger pulls the handle when I grab my chest and slump over. For many folks the negatives of a BRS outweigh the positives, and 99.99% of the time they are exactly right. But I personally would put a BRS in any aircraft I owned if it was feasible, because it is just one more option available to you during a flight and having that option there is worth something to me even if it never is used.
George in Milwaukee
701 912UL [quote][b]
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