Well "crash" is a relative term Legend.

If you look close you see my pilot name reads Rich "Crash" Mulawa.

In an aircraft, especially an aerobatic one, weight is everything. Burt Rutan, a famous aircraft designer, never used to put electric starters on his designs. When asked why he replied that they add to much weight and are UNNECESSARY. When ask how do you determine something is unnecessary?

He replied "It's simple. You take all the bits you are thinking of adding to the basic airframe and power plant and put them in a big pile. You then toss the big pile all into the air and anything that does not fall back down is fine to be added to the plane."

So what does that have to do with my nickname? Well, when I started flying aerobatics I was flying a big pig of an airplane called a Citabria. I had a friend that owned a Pitts S1S, a tiny very high performance plane, and he offered to let me fly it in a local competition (I came in second place that day by the way).

The tail wheel assembly on a Pitts or Eagle for that matter follows Burt's credo and is very lite and spindly. To put it in perspective the wheels on a typical shopping cart would be too heavy for a sport plane tail wheel.

Well when I landed - A PERFECT THREE POINT LANDING - I was surprised at just how well that Pitts tracked a perfect straight line down the runway! I had flown a 2 seat Pitts and they are really squirrelly to control on the ground at high speed. But man this guy was like it was on a rail!

When I came to a stop though it did not seem to want to move at all. Rather then plow the throttle to the wall I just shutdown the engine and climbed out. My friend was there on the spot, slapped me on the back and said "Nice landing CRASH!".

I was not sure what he meant until I looked back and saw I had furrowed a nice long gouge in the asphalt runway because the wheel from the tail wheel had popped off and the tail spring (that metal bar) had dug a nice long 800 foot gash in the runway.

Well although it is very common for the tail wheel to fail on these aircraft and would have most likely come off regardless who was flying it, the nickname "Crash" stuck and I decided to just go with it.