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Dan Bernath RIP


Ed Cesnalis

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1 hour ago, FlyingMonkey said:

Honestly, I'd love to sit down over a beer with the instructor that recommended him for a checkride and ask what he was thinking.  I suspect it was a case of Mr. Barnath being such a PITA to him that he just wanted the man out of his hair.

Sometimes an rare occasion an applicant will get recommended for a checkride with the instructor fully expecting them to fail. You do this because the student thinks they know everything and they fail to heed the instruction. The thought process is that after they fail they are knocked off their pedestal, and you might be able to teach them something. On rare occasion this process fails and they somehow pass the checkride.   

BTW, I have never done this, but do know of it actually happening.

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8 hours ago, Roger Lee said:

Dan Bernath is the definition of a sociopath. I talked to him by email several times in the earlier days of his fanatical assault on anyone that crossed his path.

I got a "cease and desist" letter in the mail at my house because he didn't like something I said about him on an internet forum.  Crazy.

I did hear a liveatc clip between him in his RV-12 and a tower a year or two back that was just sad.  He was basically just saying things that sounded "aviation-ish" but were really just gibberish.  The tower became so angry with him not following directions they told him to park the airplane and call them.

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13 minutes ago, FlyingMonkey said:

I got a "cease and desist" letter in the mail at my house because he didn't like something I said about him on an internet forum.  Crazy.

I did hear a liveatc clip between him in his RV-12 and a tower a year or two back that was just sad.  He was basically just saying things that sounded "aviation-ish" but were really just gibberish.  The tower became so angry with him not following directions they told him to park the airplane and call them.

I remember Dan explaining to me when he was flying in the Portland, Oregon Area that Mt Hood was in the vicinity and he was free to bust the 10,000' limitation at will. He came across with such confidence and authority that when I recently heard him barely able to communicate heading and altitude I was shocked, he was actually unable to communicate in real world.

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  • 6 months later...

I've been away for awhile and was pretty shocked to read about his end.  Right after Bernath bought his CT, I loaned him an oil pressure gauge so that he could troubleshoot a problem.  He returned it reasonably promptly and seemed to be an OK guy.  Then stuff got weirder and weirder.  In the meantime I've had a couple of serious encounters with paranoid schizophrenics.   I don't have any medical credentials to do a proper diagnosis, but I'd wager that Dan had some serious medical issues along that direction.   

I wished there had been a different resolution.

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40 minutes ago, Jim said:

I've been away for awhile and was pretty shocked to read about his end.  Right after Bernath bought his CT, I loaned him an oil pressure gauge so that he could troubleshoot a problem.  He returned it reasonably promptly and seemed to be an OK guy.  Then stuff got weirder and weirder.  In the meantime I've had a couple of serious encounters with paranoid schizophrenics.   I don't have any medical credentials to do a proper diagnosis, but I'd wager that Dan had some serious medical issues along that direction.   

I wished there had been a different resolution.

I agree Jim

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I don’t have any medical credentials either... and I never meet Dan. But I too have experience with a paranoid schizophrenic. As I understand it, the onset is usually during adolescence. And it seems unlikely a psychotic could make it through law school.

Drugs, on the other hand, can have similar manifestations which come and go with usage.

Mike Koerner

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