After all, what would be the point of publishing a “maneuvering speed” if it were not a safe speed for maneuvering? Besides, the FAA explicitly supported it. That belief was universal in part because it was so logical. Before the Airbus accident, nearly all pilots believed that as long as an airplane was flying at or below the maneuvering speed, nothing they could do would break it.
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Because the strains that maneuvers impose on an airplane increase as the plane’s speed increases, engineers select a certain speed, called the maneuvering speed, as an upper boundary. Some requirements are based on turbulence, others on maneuvers that the pilot can perform. The Federal Aviation Regulations prescribe the strength of every part of an airplane. That a few not-very-hard kicks on the Airbus’ unusually sensitive rudder pedals could actually break the vertical fin off the plane, dooming it to certain loss of control, was a fact that only some aeronautical engineers, and a few oddly reticent bureaucrats at the FAA, understood. Molin, whom colleagues described as a smooth, accurate and above-average pilot, was just doing what he had been trained to do, and under circumstances in which he and all other pilots believed that nothing they did could possibly hurt the airplane. The pilot was the last link in a chain of causes that made him as much the innocent victim as anyone else who died in that airplane. The real cause of the accident was a conspiracy of ignorance persistently tolerated by the Federal Aviation Administration, the airlines and the airplane manufacturers. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was his fault.Ĭlose reading of the NTSB report, released in late December 2004, reveals, however, that Molin was merely a convenient fall guy.
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The lyrics make several references to major celebrities of the day including Farrah Fawcett (who was Majors' estranged wife at the time) as well as Bo Derek, Sally Field, Jaclyn Smith, Cheryl Ladd, Cheryl Tiegs, Raquel Welch, Robert Redford, Clint Eastwood, and Burt Reynolds.Ever heard of Sten Molin? He was the pilot whose overaggressive use of the rudder pedals of an American Airlines Airbus brought the airplane down on Long Island late in 2001 with the loss of 265 lives. The decision was to have the show's star, Lee Majors, sing the theme song himself. The inspiration for it all, Somerville's song, would become the theme song and be titled "Unknown Stuntman". On the strength of that song and a five-minute pitch, ABC agreed to fund a pilot episode of what would become known as The Fall Guy. The song inspired Larson to finish developing his idea and the two pitched the idea to ABC Studios, opening with Somerville playing the song on his guitar.
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THE FALL GUY PILOT TV
Although that original show never went forward, a year later Somerville showed it to Larson who coincidentally had also been trying to develop a TV show about stuntmen.
THE FALL GUY PILOT SERIES
It turns out Somerville had been previously asked by television executives to develop a song for a television series based on the life of an anonymous stuntman.
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Larson was friends with Dave Somerville the former singer/guitarist for the '50s group The Diamonds.