wow... i have seen guys tied down on all three tie down rings and wonder for several minutes why the plane wont taxi with full power.    yes... i am serious. not only that but they will apply full power for about 15 seconds and idle it again... scratch their heads and then apply full power yet again. 

appears that this guy actually pulled a block out of the ground, and towed it banner style behind the airplane until the rope broke under the strain.

How could the pilot not notice it?  I mean a concrete block dangling from your wing or tail would have some affect on your flight characteristics, right?

the kind of pilot to pull one of those blocks off the ground wouldnt likely notice the difference in performance.

sadly enough i have noticed through several years of instructing and conducting flight reviews for other pilots that there are many out there who for legal, financial or personal reasons do not fly but for the legal minimum number of landings required to "stay current".

I have written an entire essay once about the difference of being "current" and "proficient".

for example i did a flight review for a pilot and i gave him the standard spanking... just plot me a 50 nautical mile cross country straight down this highway to XXX airport. he drew the line on the chart but was not able to determine any headings and failed to select check points. upon departure he flew a heading that was about 45 degrees west of what he needed to be flying in order to reach the destination. that was blunder number one. Then en route i discovered that he had no idea how to relate his position to a VOR to recover from a "lost" position so he proceeded to circle until he could locate his position on the map (bad idea) that was blunder number two. i schooled him on the use of VOR and we proceeded on course. when we reached the destination he announced lining up to enter final to runway 33 when in fact we were lining up for the final of runway 15. i explained this to him, but he couldnt seem to grasp the concept that runway 33 goes NORTH. he argued this fact until i took the airplane and very patiently and politely took him on the other side of the airport and crossed the numbers for runway 33...blunder number three. He then demonstrated the same lack of navigational knowledge by heading west to reach the home airport that was only 49 nautical miles almost directly due north. another serious error was the inability to maintain calm and develop any sort of "procedure" or cockpit management when dealing with engine failure. We returned to the home airport... i thought he was beginning his decent early but it wasnt until he got under 2,000 AGL and started making radio calls about 20 miles out that i realized that he was lining up for landing on a drag strip which at this point had CLEARLY recognizable raceway features such as a concrete barrier down the middle, large street lights on either side of the track every 30 or 40 feet and even big metal bleacher type stands for the fans. so why was this man seeking a BFR? he wanted to get a "quick refresher" and rent the club plane so he could fly some 800 nautical miles to Oshkosh!

simply put there are many pilots out there who couldnt find their way to the end of the runway without the aide of a GPS. and who couldnt tell you which systems problems might lead to a faulty airspeed indication etc... This is mostly because they go out and rent the local plane for an hour or so every 6 or 8 months. Just enough to be able to wrestle the aircraft onto and off of the ground 3 or 4 times and suddenly their "current" again. - if any abnormalities happened during their flight they would in fact probably die over something as simple as carburetor ice. (which as most of you know can occur even in warm & clear weather when the risk of structural ice is non existent.)

now i have to admit, i have forgotten chocks and tie downs before, we all have at some point... and this news story could be just a spot of bad luck that hit a good pilot... but i can only imagine that it took - at least initially - full power to pull that concrete from the ground even if it was a concrete block buried into a grass strip or something.

Madness! Glad I live quite a few miles north of Jesmond! Cannot understand how the pilot didn't notice it, expect him to be in some serious trouble.