My first glider came with wheels which I used to roll it up the hill.
I'll take a wild guess that the glider was certified to do the job it needed to do in some fairly nasty air and the wheels were just something round that someone felt like calling wheels.
The light bulb lit up and I decided to land it on the wheels.
Why? Aren't foot landings such a piece of cake that wheel landings never need be considered?
The wheels were the Hall brothers split wheels.
I don't think so. I think they were the German snap-off jobs that got both of Boy Oyng's arms broken.
The first one was a perfect 3 pointer with little roll. I was jazzed to try a rolling wheel landing.
Yeah, they're kinda fun, aren't they?
The wheels touched down lightly. They then found fresh cow patties and slung the shit on the sail and me.
Just like they'd have done if you'd flared late and gotten behind the glider a bit. There have been a lot of people who've come into pastures - Yours Truly included - with the very best of intentions regarding foot landings and ended up seriously slimed anyway. But getting slimed is very far from the worst thing that can happen to you on a landing.
There are many other places where a foot landing is the better option.
There are TONS of other places where a foot landing is the better option - almost all of them easily avoidable.
No argument, but the reality is that you have to use whatever the owner of the towing aparatus tells you.
Luen Miller - 1996/10
USHGA Accident Review Committee Chairman
We have two more fatalities because of a glider that couldn't be released from tow. Again, the fatalities occurred in a training situation in which a student should reasonably not be expected to do everything perfectly.
I am strongly recommending formal review and analysis of releases and weak link designs for all methods of towing by the Towing Committee, and that recommendations on adoption or improvements be generated.
I believe that from preflight through release we should have more standardized procedures in towing.
Which is why we need enforced equipment standards - just like we have for the gliders.
The HGMA got a lot of lethal junk cleared out of the sky and we need to do something just like it to put serial killing motherfuckers like Matt Taber and Jim Rooney permanently out of business.
Tad, out here, the next step after running on the flat is to advance up the hill a bit.
Yeah, that's the next step pretty much anywhere - but that's not the scenario you presented.
Mr Rodgers and I knew you could!
What indication did you have that I didn't already?
And now can you see how difficult it would be for the fledge to run, go prone and land the glider on the wheels.
No. I can't. That's a description of my first flight ever - 1980/04/02, Kitty Hawk Kites, under Jim Johns. It was wonderful and brain dead easy and what zillions of my own students did on their first flights ever.
I knew Noman when he was a fledge. He has come a long way.
Damn near all of us have. This isn't a sport that takes much in the way of brains.
Around here, all good landings are gushed over.
1. Around EVERYWHERE.
2. PRECISELY.
Bad ones unless there is carnage, elicit guffaws.
1. Right. They're commonplace.
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."
2. They're commonplace because they're too fucking demanding for your average Joe with perfectly good flying skills...
http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=25536
Whoops! Snapped another tip wand :-O
NMERider - 2012/03/14 15:17:14 UTC
Landing clinics don't help in real world XC flying. I have had the wind do 180 degree 15 mph switches during my final legs. What landing clinic have you ever attended that's going to help? I saved that one by running like a motherfukker. And BTW - It was on large rocks on an ungroomed surface.
...to pull off on a regular enough basis to be safe.
3. Let he who is without sin...
4. People who guffaw at people who bonk landings can go fuck themselves. Sometimes marginally bonked landings can result in a lot of suffering and misery.
I see the beauty but some of us do not aspire to land on putting greens.
1. Show me the videos of people NOT landing on putting greens.
2. This guy - Bob Grant - doesn't just land on putting greens.
I did four stand up landings last year when necasary in plowed fields and it workd out OK.
3. However...
Saturday crash
chga@mail.folkriver.com
Paul Tjaden - 2004/04/26 17:01:06 UTC
As Lauren, wrote in her earlier post, we were having a ball working the light lift as we flew downwind together. Lauren had more than held up her end on several occasions and we were doing quite well with gains to just under 4800 msl. It's hard to explain how much joy there is in flying and working the sky together thousands of feet in the air with your Honey and life partner. Definitely the high point of my flying career.
Anyway, we were just past fifteen miles out and getting quite low for the first time. With my faster glider, I had taken the lead looking for lift and Lauren was following a couple hundred yards to my right when she radioed she had something she thought was workable. I immediately turned back towards her but hit outrageous sink as I attempted to reach her location. I managed to make it to her but had lost too much altitude and at four hundred feet was unable to get back up.
There was a friendly field just below me but I could see the grass and small weeds blowing dramatically as the thermal Lauren was climbing in pulled air in from nearby. I chose the side of the field away from this disturbance and started an uneventful approach to an obvious upwind landing. Everything seemed quite normal until just before I started my round out. At that time I felt a sudden acceleration and drop and my groundspeed increased dramatically. Can't be certain, but I think it may have been the rush of air going outward from the sink usually found on the outer edge of thermals.
At any rate, I suddenly found myself in a strong downwind situation. Never really had time to flare, just found myself being pounded in to the ground at fairly high speed. The soil was too soft and sandy for my wheels to roll and I whacked hard. The glider never went over on top and I didn't break or bend any aluminum so it must have not been that extreme but apparently I was thrown through the control frame violently enough to cause a spiral fracture of my left humerus.
When the dust settled, I found it difficult to get the glider off of me and to get on my feet. It was then I realized I couldn't use or feel my left arm. Looking over my left shoulder, I saw it hanging behind me at a ridiculous angle. I reached over with my right hand and grabbed my left wrist to pull it forward and, to my horror, it honestly felt like a limp peace of meat. Now don't laugh here but for a while I thought I had mangled it so badly that it was only being held on by my jacket and some sinew. It really scared the hell out of me. Apparently, the main nerve runs along the broken bone and was so traumatized that it shut down for a while. I was not completely convinced it was still attached until the feeling started returning and Lauren was able to help me out of my jacket.
...the less ideal the surface you're coming down to the thinner you're cutting your margins - no matter what kind of landing you're planning on doing.
4. And my guess is that if you rewind the tape and put Paul's hands on the basetube he comes out smelling like a rose.
5. And four years, eight months, and one week later - on the Quest Air putting green...
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
very light conditions at quest. me, paul, dustin, carl and jamie were going to fly out and back but not high enough so we flew around the patch. i worked small lift using carl's tips...he is english where conditions are weak, and is 2nd in world.
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. finally they got it done but then they had a hard time waking me back up. drugs were so wierd by the end i could not leave for hours, i'd just start bawling for no reason.
Most of us do not have putting greens available for training or in the lz.
1. As far as I've been able to tell damn near all of you actually DO.
2. Anybody training somebody in an environment that doesn't afford safe wheel landings should be stood up in front of a fuckin' wall.
If no one reads what you wrote, it becomes like the question of fallen trees not making a sound if nobody hears it.
People ARE reading what I write. This thread, for example, is currently averaging over eleven hits per post. That ain't rockstardom but it's better than nothing and the total hits on a thread will never go down.
For me, this is cheap entertainment.
1. You may not be paying for it but there's an ENORMOUS effort involved in producing it.
2. Have you seen nothing in it that could keep somebody's arm or neck from getting broken?
Others, I am sure a few read and comprehend; most are unaware as they do not read the board.
Yeah? And...?
Hang gliding is globally controlled by massively corrupt entities who can't afford to have the messages I'm putting out heard and understood by a lot of people. What did you expect?
It is now 2012, and you have been banished and marginalized to your own website.
What better proof that I'm doing things right?
Question: Who was the first to mention 'child molestation' on the Bob Show board. You or Bob?
I dunno, miguel...
http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=884
The Bob Show
Bob Kuczewski - 2011/12/13 05:55:39 UTC
If I boot you permanently it will be due to my concerns over the topic we discussed on the phone. This forum should be a safe place for people of varying ages to visit. You have not given me any assurances that's true with you on this forum.
Is your IQ in the:
-a) lower; or
-b) higher
single digits?
If you answered "a" I'll 'splain it to you...
- Bob's a lying sleazeball politician who saw me as a threat to his sleazeball political agenda.
- Bob tried to use sleazy political tactics - intimidation, innuendo, distortion, lies, blackmail - to neutralize me.
- Bob was/is too fuckin' stupid to understand who he's trying to screw over and think ahead a couple of chess moves.
- There's only one way to respond to a move like that and I'm a fuckin' expert at it.
- Look at the results.
