http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=30306
Non-fatal crash in Tres Pinos, CA
Greg Laabs - 2013/11/11 08:45:01 UTC
Novato, California
There was an incident today (2013/11/10) at the training hill in Tres Pinos.
A pilot's glider...
...as opposed to a backhoe operator's glider...
...broke in flight, and he failed to deploy his parachute. He survived.
I wrote up the best account I could of the incident here:
Adventures in Hang Gliding
Adventures in Hang Gliding
2013/11/10
Today I witnessed a hang glider crash.
Oh good - you didn't say "accident".
The pilot survived. I feel that it's important for me to write out all of the facts about the incident first...
Yes.
...and then I'll give my own thoughts.
Oh good - you didn't say "opinions".
The incident occurred at the Tres Pinos training hill in California.
Mission Soaring Center strikes again.
A pilot was being towed...
A person was being towed anyway.
...and after release something happened (I'll return to this later) that caused his glider to break mid-flight.
So he was OK while he was on tow going up and didn't have any trouble until he was off tow going down.
http://www.chgpa.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2467
weak links
Jim Rooney - 2007/08/01 19:49:30 UTC
It's more of this crappy argument that being on tow is somehow safer than being off tow.
How curious.
The pilot did not deploy his parachute and impacted the ground hard.
The owner of the site and the tow operator...
Has he got a name? Is there some reason you're not making it public?
...were first to arrive at the crash site, with a fellow student and me arriving a minute or two after.
The fellow student was a professional physician, and was able to immediately start doing what he could for the situation.
Did he have any comments on the prevention versus cure thing?
Minutes later, the ambulance arrived, followed by a fire engine and then a police officer. Eventually a helicopter arrived which took the injured pilot to a trauma center.
Was the helicopter equipped with any safety devices which would instantly kill the power in the event the climb got a wee bit on the steep side for a moment or two?
The pilot had an obvious major fracture of his right femur - it was not an "open" fracture, but the bone was causing a large lump in the hip area. He was conscious, and while there was nobody at the scene when he crashed, there was no indication that he had lost consciousness. He could feel all of his limbs and wiggle his toes, and knew where he was and what had happened. He was, obviously, in a great deal of pain.
Well, at least he came to be in a great deal of pain doing what he loved.
A couple people and I surveyed the area for the video camera that had been attached to the glider, but was missing at the crash site. We located it upwind from the crash, where it presumably had landed after coming detached in flight. It was still recording when I found it. The camera was taken with the pilot in the helicopter.
I hope nobody inadvertently swallows the card.
As for what happened in the air: I didn't personally see it. I saw the descent after the glider had broken, and it was clear that both leading edge tubes had broken about half way down and the tubes after the break were pointing straight up. It's hard to estimate the amount of time I watched him descend in retrospect (time slowed down and all that) but I would guess it was at least six seconds.
I am now going to give an account of what caused the glider to break, but I am going to repeat myself first: I did not witness this part. Everything after this point is what I understand second-hand from those that were watching his flight. Everyone who observed the flight was at least 1500 feet away.
Was the tow operator watching his flight? Have you got a link to his report on the incident or do we have to wait for it to come out in the magazine?
He towed to about six hundred feet. Shortly after releasing the tow line...
It's been confirmed that he released? Was six hundred feet the target altitude?
...he entered a "whip stall".
Sounds...
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flyhg/message/17223
Pilot's Hotline winter flying
Mark Frutiger - 2013/02/03 13:41
Yesterday was a light and variable day with expected good lift. Zach was the second tow of the afternoon. We launched to the south into a nice straight in wind. A few seconds into the tow I hit strong lift.
Zach hit it and went high and to the right. The weak link broke at around 150 feet or so and Zach stalled and dropped a wing or did a wingover, I couldn't tell. The glider tumbled too low for a deployment.
...strangely familiar.
The glider then either dropped its nose sharply (one account) or continued into a too-slow loop (another account) - either way...
Stay with "dropped its nose sharply".
...the pilot ended up upside-down for an unknown amount of time, and somewhere in the mix is when the wings broke. Update: a hang gliding forum poster who witnessed the event posted his own observations on the forums. You can read them here:
http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=30306
Non-fatal crash in Tres Pinos, CA
Nobody can be sure why he did not throw his parachute, although the camera footage may give some insight.
Nothing that happened - or didn't - subsequent to the whipstall really matters.
The glider was a Pacific Windcraft Mark IV 17.
This was the worst injury that has occurred in this site's long history.
Doesn't matter. Lin Lyons got his parachute out on 2013/06/15 - less than five months before this one - and came out smelling like a rose. For the purpose of the exercise both of these guys were killed just as dead as Zack Marzec was.
Witnessing a serious crash first-hand was traumatic. The agonizingly long drive to the crash site (all of sixty seconds or so) gave me way too much time to think about the likely possible outcomes that were much worse than what it ended up being.
Keep thinking about those likely possible outcomes that were much worse than what it ended up being. That'll make for better motivation for getting to the bottom of this and fixing the problems.
I make it a habit to read about every hang gliding incident that happens.
No you don't.
http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=20756
How is Zach Etheridge doing?
Bob Flynn - 2011/02/04 11:26:34 UTC
Lookout keeps this kind of stuff under their hat. You never hear of accidents there. But every time I go there, I hear about quite a few. Blown launches, tree landings, etc.
You make it a habit to read about every hang gliding incident that gets reported.
There's an entire subforum on the hang gliding forums dedicated to discussion of incident reports.
- Yeah. Just be very careful about what you post there...
http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=30199
Incident - 2013/06/16
Paraglider Collapse - 2013/10/28 04:54:30 UTC
Well, I'm certainly glad I clicked on this pointless quote of an old report.
Most of the Jack Show crowd would so much rather hear about how well you nailed that traffic cone Sunday afternoon.
- There's an entire forum over here primarily dedicated to the issue of hang glider crashes and the discussions that the hang gliding industry really doesn't want anybody to hear. And if you were really interested in these issues you'd have had a real hard time remaining ignorant of its existence and been participating over here.
Studying the activities of others is an important part of the sport...
Studying why many of these activities are tolerated, fostered, mandated by the culture and industry and remain important parts of the sport is even more important if you wanna get through the sport in a condition similar to what you had when you went into it.
...and I have learned a lot from the discussions that take place around the incident reports.
Which is another way of saying that the instruction your paying for at that shit heap sucks.
But watching a YouTube video of someone else's crash is nothing like seeing it happen in person.
Correct. When all we have are accounts from people seeing it in person it's a lot easier for Industry/USHGA sleazebags to put the desired spin on things.
I hope that the pilot chooses to share his footage with the hang gliding community once he has recovered so we can all learn from it.
Whatever's on it there will be absolutely nothing to learn from it. We're not inventing new ways to crash hang gliders.
Ultimately it is and should be his decision.
Yeah, if he sits on it he can probably get a good chunk of his medical expenses taken care of by Mission Soaring Center and USHGA.
Hang gliding is a dangerous sport.
Overwhelmingly by design.
Whether or not it's more dangerous than motorcycling, rock climbing, skydiving, and other such risky activities is a matter for endless...
...and totally useless...
...debate, but in the end it would be silly to claim that it is without considerably elevated risk, especially compared to my other hobbies which pretty much all take place at a desk.
The risks of this sport are overwhelmingly generated by people sitting at desks. Dennis Pagen, Dr. Trisa Tilletti, Mark Forbes, Tim Herr come to mind immediately.
I'm signing up for the next parachute clinic (a class to learn how to and to practice deploying a reserve parachute) that Mission Soaring offers.
Yeah. Good move dude. If you're gonna continue training with Mission Soaring Center...
The Mission Soaring Hang Gliding school provides professional training on state-of-the-art equipment at our dedicated training site at Tres Pinos (near Hollister, CA)... just south of the San Jose / San Francisco Bay Area.
...under their professional training using their state-of-the-art equipment at their dedicated training site...
162-20727
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8576/16673571861_3962427127_o.png
...at Tres Pinos it would be an excellent idea to sign up for as many of their parachute clinics as possible. And if you're gonna take swimming lessons at a facility on the Zambezi River it would be a good idea to attend a few herpetology seminars during the downtimes.
....they are towing new students with a converted toyota truck motor winch....
