For anyone not familiar with USHPA's 'Optional Landing Task'...
Very interesting. In late 2009 Addendum 1 read like this:
At the discretion of the Observer or Instructor and not the pilot, this task may be substituted for the "three spot landings in a row" task.
which I thought was plenty despicable enough as it was. This sentence:
The optional landing task must only be used when the spot landing task is not practical or potentially dangerous.
was subsequently amended.
What the hell does that mean??
I dunno. The spot landing task is ALWAYS potentially dangerous. So the meaning seems pretty obvious to me - at least that's how I'd interpret it if I were an attorney suing the crap out of USHGA on behalf of a former pilot who had permanently lost use of an arm. And let's not forget the "At the discretion of the Observer or Instructor and not the pilot" part - we might as well get his house and SUV while it's convenient.
I've been working on my H4 spots lately. I've gotten two in a row but never three.
And, of course, when you DO get three in a row you will have mastered a skill that you will never lose and this will make you a much better pilot.
In fact, about the only remotely possible real world situation I can imagine where one would need to do this is landing on a 25' radius island in the middle of a lake...
You make it - GREAT! You miss it - you drown.
Large, unrestricted fields, or fields with obstacles surrounding them but so large they don't matter. Wallaby and Lookout have LZs in this category. Aim for somewhere in the middle and it doesn't matter if you're way off...
Michael Elliot - 27 - Pacific Airwave Double Vision - 1991/12/15 - Lookout Mountain Flight Park
Novice pilot went tandem with experienced tandem pilot (Bo Hagewood, in case anyone's wondering) in preparation for first solo altitude flight. On the base leg of the landing approach, flying crosswind over tree line, the attempt to turn onto final was unsuccessful. The inability to turn onto final may have been caused by thermal activity, the passenger interfering with glider control, or both. The glider continued straight, hit a tree, and side slipped sixty feet. The novice passenger died, the tandem pilot was seriously injured.
...(other than minimizing walking distance to the breakdown area).
That's the lead-off to SO many crash reports. There's virtually always something from the owner of the crumpled wreckage in the final paragraph to the tune of "How could I have been THAT STUPID!!!"
I don't land in fields like this, but if I ever did (or was practicing to), hitting a frigging spot is going to be the last thing on my mind. All I'm going to be focused on is turning onto final with just enough altitude to complete the turn safely.
My second through thirteenth mountain flights were on my Comet 165 off of High Top on the Blue Ridge in Virginia into a rotten little LZ. Kitty Hawk Kites did their clinics there and at the time - 1982 - I was working for them and getting my Three. You could hit it with a Seahawk OK but with the supership of the day you couldn't afford to waste ANY runway and my coaching sucked.
Even though I was a really good dune goon at the time I didn't know how to translate the skills to that environment and the third time I was sledding down over that postage stamp I was scared sick and felt like I had absolutely no business being in the sport. But what I learned by that flight or within the next couple was to keep up a good head of maneuvering steam and roll hard onto final as close as you dared to the treetops. After you did that there was no freakin' way you were gonna overshoot. I.e., treat every landing like a carrier landing and you stay out of trouble.
I think it's a good idea to always pick out a landing spot to hone your accuracy as much as possible...
Disagree. If you're even thinking spot you're thinking compromise.
...but I think it's dangerous and totally unnecessary to go out of your way to hit it.
Exactly.
But I don't feel comfortable doing the 'Optional Landing Task' for my rating given the fact that USHPA seems to frown on it...
Fuck USHGA.
(It's not so much about what I think, but the whole point of ratings is to give others an idea of your proficiency.)
Fuck others.
I don't know anything about the history of the Optional Landing Task, why it was added...
On the morning of 1989/07/03 I had gone up the road with Santos Mendoza from the Hyner View fly-in for breakfast at Renovo. As we were about to head back we heard sirens. Dave Collins, one of our DC area club guys, was trying to hit a spot for his Three and flew his Mark IV into the ground.
The basetube caught and he swung forward and twisted a bit.
The Mark IV - instead of the conventional two nose wires arrangement - had a continuous nose wire that turned around through an aluminum elbow sleeve which was engaged by a catch. Perfectly adequate in flight, not so good in a crash.
The wire failed at the nose, the control frame folded back, and the wing came down and forward flat. Since Dave was twisted the keel was able to diagonally guillotine the back of his neck and seriously break it.
The next time I saw him his head was bolted (literally - screws into his skull) to a framework which engaged his shoulders/collar to immobilize his neck. I saw him again flying a training hill but after that he dropped out.
I later discussed this incident with Ken Brown. His response was, "We don't build them to crash." (Yeah, thanks Ken. But that was pretty freakin' obvious to everyone there that weekend.)
Hyner View is in Dennis Pagen's backyard but I believe he was absent that weekend. I myself was working on getting my Four spots signed off - unsuccessfully that trip.
It was shortly thereafter that the "Optional Landing Task" made its appearance in the SOPs.
...and why USHPA put the restriction on it.
'Cause they're total idiots. It's what happens when you put pilots in charge of aviation procedures.
I'd really like to know these things.
One thing you might be asking is why the goddam spot landing was EVER the standard. My theory is that it's a relic from the days of bamboo and four to one before anyone even dreamed of soaring - so, like skydiving once the chutes were open, spot landings were the only thing people could use for demonstrations of skill and competitions.
I'd like to know why people don't realize that it makes so much more sense than spot landing and make it the STANDARD task rather than an 'optional' task.
Precisely the same reason we've insisted for twenty years that our aerotow releases be based on bent pins - criminal negligence and unfathomable stupidity.
Do other countries have similar spot landing requirements?
Probably. From Canada to the UK to Germany to Australia they all tend to have unfortunate habits of following US models.
I sure as hell don't need to land 25' or even 50' from a spot.
Twenty-five feet is ridiculous. That hasn't even been a wingspan of a glider since the mid Seventies. The following Hyner View fly-in - Labor Day weekend - I got three in a row close enough for Dennis to sign me off, but I had an ace up my sleeve anyway. A long time prior a more advanced pilot who shared our conviction that these things were ridiculous told me to ask whatever sonuvabitch was gonna be signing me off to demonstrate one first so I could see how to do it right.
To which Tad responded:
People should not attempt to land in narrow dry riverbeds with large rocks strewn all over the place and fields of seven foot high corn. Works for me.
To which Dave (Susko) responded:
Besides, Tad will miss my response, because he obviously missed my point. But I can't get to it right now, because like I mentioned in a previous post, I have to catch up on work today, and I have a life away from the keyboard.
And, predictably, we never heard from Dave again.
Foot landing is difficult relative to wheel landing, and this is why I think it needs to be practiced...
Yeah? Ya know what I think? I think if you just landed everybody on wheels ALL the time that a pilot who got caught in a waist high grass or boulder situation would be no less likely to be able to stop it on a dime than the typical weekend pilot who practices "doing it right" every landing. And even if that statement doesn't hold water without a bit of leakage I don't think there's any question whatsoever that our overall numbers would get astonishingly better than the way we do it now - which is practice dangerous landings every flight to prepare for dangerous situations we may seldom or never encounter.
...as it is a useful skill.
So's throwing yourself into a ditch when you hear an incoming mortar round. But there's a limited advantage and a predictably high cost associated with everybody practicing it two or three times a weekend - especially if you're operating in an environment in which there's an extremely low or zero probability that anyone's gonna be shooting at you.
We're injuring and killing more people with the practice than we would be with the thing we're practicing to protect ourselves from.
Many LZs simply don't support safe wheel landings (Dave is from SoCal...his river bed scenario sounds like the LZ at Sylmar/Kagel).
Yeah, I was wondering why anyone with all of Texas to choose from would opt for anything that insane. So fine. If that's what he needs to do to get local airtime and he's good enough to pull it off consistently then more power to him. Just don't force all the Texas and airport people to land every time like you have to to avoid breaking a leg at Sylmar/Kagel.
http://www.chgpa.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3695
good day until the wreck
Lauren Tjaden - 2008/12/31 04:29:12 UTC
came in with no wind after an hour and had right wing drop. instead of wrestling gilder straight i tried to flare while desperately trying to straighten.
bad bad whack. horrible pain, i could not move. screaming with pain, literally. took a very long time to get me out and to the hospital. got very good drugs.
turned out to be badly dislocated shoulder. they had to knock me out to put it back in but it was so bad i kept waking up and screaming.
And the guy who had taught her all the pro subtleties of flare timing - Kevin Carter - permanently destroyed his knee punching one prematurely to stop short of a paddock fence during a comp in Australia. He told me he and his glider would've been fine if he had just bellied in and tapped it with his nose wires - if he had even gotten that far.
And if you want to fly XC, you better be damn sure you can land on your feet because you never know what you're going to be landing on (as you can't get a real good look at the ground until you're pretty much committed to the LZ).
1. I flew for over a quarter century and I don't think I was EVER ONCE damn sure I was gonna land on my feet in light or switchy air.
2. I was never once in a situation in which stopping on my feet was important unless I had deliberately pushed my luck and dialed in the danger.
3. Sailplanes fly XC all the time and those guys all suck at landing on their feet.
4. Chris Starbuck has been paralyzed from the waist down ever since the mid Seventies when he pancaked in while swing seated and he flew XC competitions for decades thereafter without incident.
5. I have ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEM with offering a No Stepper Special Skill signoff. I likewise have absolutely no problem with offering a Loop Special Skill signoff. But we shouldn't mandate those as default flying modes.
In Dave's example, the pilot doesn't intentionally choose to land in corn, but that becomes his only option.
Then he's FUCKED UP. He's demonstrated poor judgment. He may be extremely skilled and able to use that skill three out of four times to come out smelling like a rose but he has - nevertheless - screwed the pooch.
I used to push my luck a lot doing ridge runs and I've landed in overgrown clearcuts on the sides of mountains in which had I not been able to stop on a dime I'd have been really screwed. I once did a really excellent stop-on-a-dimer in one of them. Lost my balance on the slash and fell down uneventfully. Didn't even realize that I was hurt until after I stood up and put some weight on my right ankle. Good thing I was still in radio contact with launch.
When I used to follow the local wire you'd frequently hear an impromptu collection of half dozen people talking about going to High Rock on Thursday 'cause the conditions were gonna be great and expressing concern about the grass not having been mown in a while. You could bet your bottom dollar that one of them was gonna come back with a broken arm.
Your average weekend pilot is NEVER gonna be able to consistently stop the glider on his feet in light smooth air more than about two thirds of the time. Watch what happens at ANY LZ on ANY weekend. Regularly scheduled bonks, whacks, ground loops, and trashed downtubes. The perfect boulder/corn field landing is such a rarity that people cheer on the odd occasion when someone actually pulls one off.
So if a bunch of dumb, testosterone poisoned XC jocks wanna push their luck for an extra half mile and trust that they can stop on a dime in injun country EVERY TIME then super. But I one hundred percent guarantee you that probably all of them are gonna end up getting hurt. And I also want those assholes to leave Jayne DePanfilis the hell alone 'cause she's doing just fine the way she is and she's a lot smarter than they are.
Doug Hildreth - 1990/03
We all know that our new gliders are more difficult to land. We have been willing to accept this with the rationalization that it is the unavoidable consequence of higher performance. But I see my job as a responsibility to challenge acceptance and rationalization. From my perspective, what I see in the landing zone and what I see in the statistics column is not acceptable. Crashes on landing are causing too many bent downtubes, too many minor injuries and too many serious or fatally injured pilots.
So what are we going to do? One reply is, "We should teach all those bozos how to land properly." Well, we've been trying that approach for the past few years and it has NOT worked!
William Rich - 1991/01
San Diego
I personally have laid in the dust stunned, my helmeted head rammed into the ground, after having stumbled during a difficult landing. It is a terrible thing to tentatively wiggle the fingers and toes to determine if one has a spinal injury.
Dennis Pagen - 1991/01
Landings and probably bad landings will always be with us as long as we take to the sky and insist on using our feet as landing gear.
Gil Dodgen - 1995/01
All of this reminds me of a comment Mike Meier made when he was learning to fly sailplanes. He mentioned how easy it was to land a sailplane (with spoilers for glide-path control and wheels), and then said, "If other aircraft were as difficult to land as hang gliders no one would fly them."
That is NEVER gonna change.
If you're only going to fly at flight parks with frequently mowed fields, I see no problems with landing on wheels all the time.
I'd hazard a guess that the OVERWHELMING majority of rated pilots in this sport never land anywhere else. And the percentage of flights that come down in those environments has gotta be off the scale.
The Ledger - 2009/11/17
Jeremy Maready
Vermont Man Dies in Davenport Hang Glider Crash - Volunteer firefighter was gliding near Davenport Sunday (2009/11/15) when he hit tree, police say.
Anthony Ameo, 59, of Sheffield, Vermont was trying to land when he struck a pine tree and fell nearly 25 feet, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office and officials at Wallaby Ranch, a facility that caters to hang gliders.
Ameo was flown to Lakeland Regional Medical Center where he died during surgery.
A friend said Ameo began hang gliding about three years ago and was practicing for his intermediate rating. He had passed a written test and was practicing for his flying test, which would measure his ability to set up a proper approach and flare the glider at the appropriate time to land on his feet.
"The transition (from flaring the glider to landing) takes a lot of eye-to-hand coordination," said Eugene Pettinato, Ameo's friend and flying partner. "That was his weakest area, I think."
I posted the following on the TUGS group three weeks ago:
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Luen Miller - 1996/07
1996/04/28 - Frank Sauber - 68 - Taylor Farm Training Hill, Fredericksburg, Virginia
- Pacific Airwaves Formula 144
- Novice, 17 years, still low airtime, tow sign-off on a payout winch
- massive internal
The pilot and a tow operator were using an experimental stationary winch system, reportedly utilizing a motorcycle engine. On the first tow a bicycle grip release was used and three tries were required before the glider released.
On the second tow a string three-ring circus was used. The pilot also said that he wanted to remain lower. "At 50 feet Frank got into a left turn for reasons unknown. The operator thinks that Frank may have been reaching for the release. The turn went uncorrected until Frank was 180 degrees from his original flight path." The winch operator does not believe the glider locked out. At some point in the turn the tow operator reduced power on the winch.
The glider impacted the ground nose first. After attempts to revive the pilot failed, the tow operator went for help. The pilot was pronounced dead on arrival at a local hospital.
The above information has been assembled from second and third-hand reports. An official accident report on this incident has not yet been received.
I first took lessons at Kitty Hawk in 1980 on Easter weekend. Frank and Barbara were camped about two or three tents away with a Seahawk on the racks. He had tremendous enthusiasm for hang gliding but zilch in the way of aptitude and a nasty case of acrophobia.
Starting in 1988 I started working my ass off to get him competent and safe enough for a Two and mountain flying. After about a year and a half of training hill hell I was able to sign him off and throw him off the ramp at Henson and for the remainder of his life we carpooled to the ridges and, every now and then, a tow site. He was a real decent, generous guy. He was the last guy who I signed off on a rating and the last guy who signed me off on a rating sent him up on crappy equipment and killed him in two tows.
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The reason he was towing - with Santos Mendoza - was to relearn to land on his feet. The reason he was trying to relearn to land on his feet was to satisfy the stupid standup spot landing requirement for his Three so he could fly the high sites without Observer or Instructor supervision. He didn't need any of that shit - he was plenty qualified to make his own launch calls. And we were all landing on our feet and breaking downtubes - he was rolling in on his Bennett wheels every time and doing fine. I had been frustrated that he wouldn't/couldn't flare it like everybody else but maybe a year before he was killed I had reached the conclusion, "So freakin' what? He's having fun, he's doing fine, leave him the hell alone."
But I think there's a huge value in perfecting foot landings, especially if you plan to fly a lot of sites or go XC.
PERFECTING them? Good freakin' luck. Knowing how to do them well enough to establish a pretty good batting average? OK. But we're gonna perfect them the same way Olympic athletes perfect their gymnastics and figure skating routines - at best. And those people are working inside where Mother Nature can't get to them.
Yeah, it's a very useful arrow to have in your quiver. But it shouldn't be default mode. Get the glider into the field, stay on the basetube, keep it fast and level, get it down into ground effect and bleed enough speed to get to the point at which it's gonna be tough to hurt yourself, THEN you can start getting artistic if you want.
By the way, Christian Thoreson was still Lookout's flight school director when I trained there. He retired from hang gliding instruction not long after that (a great loss for the school).
Kinda like Oskar Schindler was a great loss for the Nazi Party. Nowadays those assholes are having students do the entire flight from ramp to turf with their hands on the downtubes so they'll be good and ready to flare when the time comes. After they've done a couple of those iterations Matt PERMITS them to advance to the basetube.
http://ozreport.com/14.129
Packsaddle accident report
Shane Nestle - 2010/07/01
2010/06/26 - John Seward
Being that John was still very new to flying in the prone position, I believe that he was likely not shifting his weight, but simply turning his body in the direction he wanted to turn. Because his altitude was nearly eye level for me, it's difficult to judge what his body was doing in the turn. And because the turn was smooth throughout, it would make sense that he was cross controlling the turn. It was also supported by Dan's observations.
He was killed 'cause Jeff was more concerned about teaching him to land on his feet than he was about teaching him to fly the fucking glider.
Frank, Tony, and John were all killed by USHGA and its stupid landing policies - and I'm not happy about it.
Try this experiment...
- At Hearne designate a wide open landing area that NOBODY can miss.
- First round everybody is required to attempt foot landings as safely as possible anywhere in the LZ.
- Second and all successive rounds everybody has adequate wheels and is required to stay prone and land on them.
- Third and successive rounds you bring vodka and start raising everybody's Blood Alcohol Contents.
How high do you hafta go with the BACs until the landings hit the break even point with Round 1?
Next weekend do the same experiment with an orange traffic cone in the middle of the field.