How much time do you have?
Back before I really learned to appropriately hate hang gliding culture in general and Highland Aerosports in particular I started noticing that all of their students were constantly discussing and obsessed with judging angles at various stages of their approaches. Despite the fact that I've been really good at short runway landings since 1982 on about my fourth mountain flight, it bothered me a bit that I had no clue what they were talking about so at some point I acquired a clue and then told 2003 Instructor of the Year Award winner Sunny Venesky that I didn't think I could pass their Hang Two landing test.
Sunny was surprised and told me I didn't need to worry about the angle thing - that it was just a tool they used guide students in.
Of course what I should have been noticing was that while their students and graduates were reasonably good at hitting a spot in the field at:
38°58'09.16" N 075°52'05.60" W
they were also reasonably good at flying into the taxiway signs, ponds, and soybean and corn fields in the vicinity and that their scrap bin was always bulging with bent and broken aluminum tubing. (While this would be totally unimaginable in REAL aviation in hang gliding it's considered pretty much par for the course.)
So here are the stats on the victim at moment of impact - 2012/06/06, early afternoon...
Paul M. Vernon - 90397 - Hang Two - 2011/05/28, courtesy rat-bastard Adam Elchin - AT FL - 350 flights
- Aeros Discus - Wilmington, Delaware - Age 51
A Hang Three needs ninety flights and ten hours airtime. If he's averaging a minute and forty-three seconds per flight he has the airtime. So how come he doesn't have a Three?
If there's some reason he can't get a Three with that much overkill under his belt then what's he doing flying in an XC comp?
http://ozreport.com/16.114
First accident in eight years of the East Coast Championship
Davis Straub - 2012/06/07 12:14:05 UTC
First accident in eight years of the East Coast Championship
It wasn't an accident - so the record is still unblemished. Incidents with lethal potential, however, are so routine that hardly anyone even bothers mentioning them.
There never has been an accident here (Highland Aerosports, Ridgely, Maryland, USA)
Unless you count stuff like - off the top of my head - Chris McKee taking a dolly for a short flight; Adam Elchin coming down under silk a couple times after totaling at least one glider; Paul Adamez having to leave in an ambulance with a concussion after auguring in; broken arms from Robert Sweeney, Paul Tjaden, and John Simon; and Keavy Nenninger getting killed in a Dragonfly crash.
And we COULD talk about cofounder Chad Elchin dying after his improperly assembled Dragonfly folded up and his improperly mounted parachute tangled but, hell, that was down at Quest.
It wasn't a "poor landing", Davis. It was a CRASH - a crash that didn't fall all that short of killing someone.
As you can see from the picture above, Paul Vernon has wheels on his basetube. Those wheels do not do any good in a wheat field.
Yeah, they tend not to do much good unless you get them down on a surface firm enough to get them rolling and spin them for a couple of seconds.
I saw that he came in fast and then suddenly nosed over.
I didn't notice that he didn't move, wasn't concerned that the landing had been that bad, and kept on going another half mile to work zero sink north of a tree line north of him. I came back later to land across the street from him. When I came back I saw that his glider was still nose down and that there were two trucks parked on the highway near him. As I set up the landing the rescue vehicles showed up.
Later a helicopter came in and transported him to the hospital.
Too bad it wasn't a stealth helicopter. Then you wouldn't have had to waste all this time talking about how safe your competitions are and what a stellar job Ridgely does training pilots.
I had heard that he had done a wheel landing at the Ridgely Airpark earlier on his first launch and didn't round out, tried to get up to do a foot landing and landed hard on his wheels.
He was landing at a fucking pancake flat airport with enough nicely mown grass to keep a fair sized buffalo herd happy indefinitely.
If he hadn't been TRYING to get up to do a stupid foot landing and had come in like all the asshole tandem instructors do on EVERY flight he WOULD HAVE rounded out just fine and rolled in soft and smooth on his wheels - just like they do.
The implication being that he did something similar coming down in the wheat field.
If he had stayed prone with his hands on the basetube he coulda maintained good control of the glider, rounded out, flared hard from the basetube a little early, packed up his undamaged glider, gotten a ride back to the airport - 2.6 miles / 4.3 Ridgely runway lengths to the south, and flown the next round.
Sunny talked to him about his landing.
Great. Nothing like an Instructor of the Year telling a Hang Two how to really nail that flare timing.
Obviously wheat is going to grab the base bar and make you nose over, if you don't flare above it.
Yeah, funny nobody ever told him that before.
Gawd I'd love to see archive footage of you on TV with lotsa people talking about what a tragic loss this is to the sport of hang gliding.
I was looking for the pic and that came up with the misspelling. I went with it. I am aware of the correct spelling. I checked after. 
