Saw at a lunch stop nine miles shy of home on the way back from New England Thanksgiving that Jonathan had posted but didn't get a chance to see what he'd posted until after completing the final stretch. Took me two minutes to get my jaw back in place but managed to handle that task while getting an archive on the hard drive.
On the worlds largest hang gliding community as of about 2018/11/27 09:35 UTC there were 138 hits and a 2018/11/27 06:37:08 UTC reply of zilch substance.
No shortage of comments on the video page itself however - the vast majority of them useless and/or vacuous. But a plug for the hook-in check from Jan.
Victim is Chris Gursky, perpetrator will probably be identifiable from previous tandem thrill ride videos.
Location is Interlaken, launch and landing:
46°42'08.86" N 007°49'20.53" E - 4349 feet
46°40'57.40" N 007°49'34.15" E - 1871 feet
2478 feet vertical
Lotsa calls from glider people for this guy to be banned from piloting tandem rides for life. But note we heard zilch along those lines when Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney made the same mistake with the other carabiner at Coronet Peak on 2006/02/21.
- That video was initially made available but pulled.
- When that motherfucker ran off with his carabiner dangling his passenger became Pilot In Command and he became misplaced ballast robbing her of control and putting her aircraft into a diving glide path that was gonna be interrupted by powerlines. His duty was to cease overriding her control. And just imagine the global reaction there would've been if she'd been electrocuted and he'd gotten away with a few moderate bruises.
But as things worked out his victim came out smelling like a rose while he got two thirds killed. Then after spending a couple of months in the hospital on the New Zealand taxpayer's dime, recovering and telling all the Tad-O-Linkers in his ward how they tried to warn them, he gets to come back out on The Davis Show and explain to all us stupid muppets how and why it's totally impossible to guard against unhooked launches - tandem or solo. All foot launchers are just rolling dice every time they leave the ground. And how very odd it is that not a single tandem thrill rider has ever been tuned into this risk in over dozen years since. (Lenami Godinez-Avila comes to immediate mind.) Also very odd that none of this wisdom has ever made it into any of the SOPs or advisories of the national organization that certified him.
So if this guy should be banned for life from tandem ops why shouldn't the same honor be bestowed on any other motherfucker who at his current rating level has started a launch run with his carabiner dangling? Dennis Pagen, Larry Tudor, Davis Straub, Pete Lehmann, George Stebbins... Is one gonna be just half as vigilant concerning the connections 'cause there are only half as many lives at risk? Is he gonna be less vigilante about hooking up a passenger than about hooking up himself 'cause he'll just be facing the end of his career, global condemnation and humiliation, a felony manslaughter conviction rather than a plummet to his own death?
In my book the motherfucker who skips a hook-in check 'cause he just did a hang check just behind the ramp thirty seconds ago is the one who needs the ratings and qualifications revocations. But given that all the national organizations and commercial operations will fight that simple, common sense, bulletproof strategy till the end of time I'd choose this guy to fly my twelve year old kid tomorrow over every other tandem thrill rider on the planet. If he flew fifteen tandem hops a day for the next thirty years he'd never make that mistake again.
He has the fear. He's been severely traumatized by this one.Rob Kells - 2005/12
My partners - Steve Pearson and Mike Meier - and I have over twenty-five thousand hang glider flights between us and have managed (so far) to have hooked in every time. I also spoke with test pilots Ken Howells and Peter Swanson about their methods (another five thousand flights). Not one of us regularly uses either of the two most popular methods (hang check and Aussie) outlined above. Each of us agrees that it is not a particular method, but rather the fear of launching unhooked that makes us diligent to be sure we are hooked in every time before starting the launch run.
http://www.chgpa.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1153
Hooking In
Inoculation complete.Steve Kinsley - 2005/10/06 22:57:44 UTC
I am somewhat irritated at Lobsterman myself. Marc (Fink) believes, wrongly, that he happened upon me unhooked and about to launch. Just not correct. I was very much aware that I was unhooked. Told him so at the time. Story goes around and around and comes back to me now and then. So to Mark Cavanaugh's complaint that an incident is not relevant, in my case it is not even true.
But I did have an incident where I failed to hook in. At High Rock. Eddie Miller saved my sorry butt. Sure woke me up. Too bad Bill did not have a scare like that. I now have a nice DSL line through the tangle of Alzheimer's plaque. That was at least ten years ago and there is still not a blade of grass on that neuron path. So that is not how I am going to die.
What we really have to do is to vaccinate pilots, like I have been, but without the scare. How do you do that? How do you get them to internalize a procedure so that they do it no matter what distractions are present? I don't know. But I have come to feel that the communal effort to assure that pilots are hooked can be destructive of this purpose. I never intended to advocate that wire crews should not be vigilant; just that they avoid hijacking the process.
And note that what Steve is saying on this issue is the polar opposite of...
http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4247
Hook in failure in New Zealand
...what Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney is.Jim Rooney - 2006/09/24 21:19:29 UTC
In particular... Third Party Verification.
You won't save you, but your friends might.
Not always, but they're more reliable than you.
Why do you think that airline checklists (yes our lovely checklists) are check-verified by pilot AND copilot?
That's all I got for ya.
The other topics have been beat to death here.
If there was an answer, we'd all already be doing it.
And let's give Interlaken Guy credit for making what turned out to be the best call on dealing with the situation of his making. 'Cause if Chris HADN'T been able to hold on until skim level everybody would've been throwing tons of shit at him for not having opted to crash back into the trees near launch.
And I don't think the sport's ever seen an unhooked launch incident that's come close to this one - unhooked individual dangling for almost a half mile of vertical descent and coming out - without benefit of a parachute - in good enough shape to be able to have the option of a hang gliding career after a shortish recovery period.
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P.S. - 2018/11/27 16:30:00 UTC
Interlaken Guy also gets credit for not swallowing the card. He lands in sole possession of the camera.
