I'm gonna go for a foot landing on your glider at that spot at that instant.
Let's rotate the runway clockwise thirty degrees (north/south) to simplify directions.
I'm gonna set the VG to two thirds and kill altitude with - what the hell - clockwise 360s centered over Farm to Market Road northeast of the junction of the north end of the taxiway and runway and head downwind with some extra altitude.
I'm gonna follow the road with a good bit of speed.
If I hit sink I'll turn onto base early, if I get lift or am just too high I'll go long.
My downwind to base to final is gonna be a pretty hard 180.
When I'm lined up I'm gonna dive to the surface until the basetube is just about ringing on the grass tops and stay there until the glider slows down to close to trim.
Then I'll transfer quickly, one hand at a time, and punch it at the point at which I feel a hint of a mush.
It looked to me like you came down at a fairly shallow angle, leveled off a little high, went to the downtubes early, and let the glider get slow.
Not that I don't think it's possible, just that it's riskier.
I'm not sure that it actually is. It sounds pretty scary to us hardwired foot landers but I wouldn't bet the farm that a thousand downtubers would do better than a thousand basetubers. Even on the Happy Acres putting green downtubers have a lot of potential for doing arms and shoulders that basetubers don't.
Tad Eareckson wrote:When I'm lined up I'm gonna dive to the surface until the basetube is just about ringing on the grass tops and stay there until the glider slows down to close to trim.
Then I'll transfer quickly, one hand at a time, and punch it at the point at which I feel a hint of a mush.
The only way you can get that close to the grass is to remain fully prone. I don't see how you could flare from that height...your body would not be able to get upright.
Tad Eareckson wrote:It looked to me like you came down at a fairly shallow angle...
Not sure I'd agree...I always come in with a lot of speed, especially in active conditions. I don't have a log of my airspeed, but here's an image from my GPS tracklog showing the slope (blue).
Tad Eareckson wrote:...leveled off a little high...
Well, the basetube wasn't 'just about ringing on the grass tops' or anything, but I suspect I'd have been dragging my feet if I was much lower.
Tad Eareckson wrote:...went to the downtubes early...
By Pearson standards, yes. You can't see my hands in the video but you can hear when I transition. I normally do it during ground skim but in this case I dropped quickly when I got near the ground (it doesn't really look like it in the video but I had two eyewitnesses comment on it) and transitioned during the roundout as I knew I would be bleeding speed quickly to maintain altitude and wanted to be ready to flare. I normally complete the transition somewhere around three seconds before flaring and that was still the case in this instance.
Tad Eareckson wrote:...and let the glider get slow.
You have to let the glider get slow before flaring...
The only way you can get that close to the grass is to remain fully prone.
The basetube needs to stay clear of the grass but the toe of a shoe doesn't. I've done a lot of good standup landings with a toe in light contact with the ground for a good while beforehand.
I don't see how you could flare from that height...
That's the approach that I'd use at Columbus. (Forgot to mention that I'd never do any of my pattern beyond County Road 103.)
Dave's final is virtually nonexistent. Hard, fast, steep, slipping turn to get him lined up, no approach distance or runway wasted, touches down IMMEDIATELY at the beginning of the runway.
His skim is eight seconds before flare. Yours is barely three. (Yeah, a little of that difference is kingpost and performance but we're not talking about a factor of two and two thirds here.)
I don't have a log of my airspeed...
The wind speed can probably be figured out from your track log and if it can you have a log of your airspeed.
...but I suspect I'd have been dragging my feet if I was much lower.
Yeah? And?
The lower you have that glider the less likely you are to trash a downtube.
By Pearson standards, yes.
Steve's not doing anything on those finals that a good Hang One couldn't.
You have to let the glider get slow before flaring...
The flare window is really long on a T2, maybe two seconds or fifty feet...
You've got some latitude on that one.
And, oops, I just reread your initial post and realized I missed the elephant.
The instant BEFORE I flared, however, my right wing shot up. With no speed or altitude to correct it (and with hands high on the downtubes), I knew I was going down on a leading edge SO JUST SORT OF HALF FLARED TO ARREST SOME FORWARD SPEED.
Steve Pearson - 2012/03/28 23:26:05 UTC
...BUT I CAN'T INITIATE PITCH UNLESS THE WINGS ARE LEVEL...
I've asked myself, many times, what I could have done in that situation.
You did the PRECISE OPPOSITE of what you should have. You SHOULD HAVE pulled in and gotten to the right for all you were worth and plopped in however you were gonna plop in. Instead your standup hardwiring kicked in and you accelerated the glider into an expensive ground loop.
Always fight to keep or get the glider level as your top priority and until the bitter end if necessary.
And start working on approximating what Dave Seib is doing on that approach.
Hang gliding culture is always telling everybody to ALWAYS do a long final, NEVER turn low to the ground, and ALWAYS pick a spot and try to hit it with a no stepper.
Do the opposite. NEVER do a long final, ALWAYS do a fast low turn onto final, and NEVER pick a spot and/or prioritize stopping on your feet.
Being able to get into a tight field with a good surface is a WAY more useful arrow to have in your quiver than the inherently flawed one used to TRY to stop safely in a narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place or a field filled with seven foot high corn. (And, given your experience with overshooting a field and encountering another one with corn stalks in it on one landing, can I count you as being on board with that position?)
What Dave does (ignoring the length of the field in which he's coming down):
- is safe, easy, and fun;
- requires no critical timing;
- can be worked up to in accordance with your comfort level;
- can be practiced for virtually any landing;
- can be executed very consistently and reliably;
- looks - and is - WAY cooler than some stupid no-stepper on a traffic cone.
As you flare the glider rotates up and climbs and so do you.
Dave rounds out with his basetube I'd guess 2.5 feet from the grass...not 'just about ringing on the grass tops'. I don't think I'm following what you're describing. At any rate, I didn't round out much (if at all) higher than Dave.
Tad Eareckson wrote:(Forgot to mention that I'd never do any of my pattern beyond County Road 103.)
I go beyond it because I want to land at the end of the field while maintaining adequate separation from the power lines. Yeah, I know, minimizing walking distance is "the lead-off to SO many crash reports", but I don't think I'm compromising safety to any significant degree by the approach I fly at this site.
Tad Eareckson wrote:His skim is eight seconds before flare. Yours is barely three. (Yeah, a little of that difference is kingpost and performance but we're not talking about a factor of two and two thirds here.)
Conditions played a big part of that. Like I said, I had to bleed airspeed quickly to maintain altitude.
Tad Eareckson wrote:Steve's not doing anything on those finals that a good Hang One couldn't.
Show me a video of a Hang One landing like Steve. What he does takes skill.
Tad Eareckson wrote:
The flare window is really long on a T2, maybe two seconds or fifty feet...
You've got some latitude on that one.
Are you saying I should have flared sooner?
Tad Eareckson wrote:And, oops, I just reread your initial post and realized I missed the elephant.
C'mon, I talked about it two posts prior. =)
Tad Eareckson wrote:You SHOULD HAVE pulled in and gotten to the right for all you were worth and plopped in however you were gonna plop in. Instead your standup hardwiring kicked in and you accelerated the glider into an expensive ground loop.
I'm not sure about that. I was near the ground without much altitude to pull in. I didn't push out until just before the glider impacted. And if you look at my ground speed in the slow-mo replay (the right view in particular) it does appear to drop off significantly just before impact. I was worried that catching a tip with the speed I had would end much worse. At any rate, I think what I did was better than not doing anything at all...
My reaction was instinctive. But were I more open to wheel landing, I might have done what you're saying.
Tad Eareckson wrote:Do the opposite. NEVER do a long final, ALWAYS do a fast low turn onto final, and NEVER pick a spot and/or prioritize stopping on your feet.
I still think that takes a lot of skill (you have less time and space to make corrections if your positioning wasn't good when you started your approach) and as such is dangerous if you don't have it.
Tad Eareckson wrote:...can I count you as being on board with that position?
Yes.
Tad Eareckson wrote:...I just watched "Radioactive Wolves"...
If you grip the levers halfway from the ends you can crack the nut using half the motion but it'll take twice the effort - period.
This is why control frames are tall, you're supposed to hang as low as possible to the basetube, and competition pilots (like Adam Parer) use side mounted parachute containers to allow them to hang even lower - it reduces control effort (and increases precision).
This is true but like the blind man describing the elephant, you are only describing a part of the process. Kind of like our partisan political pundits arranging disparate grains of truth into a larger untruth.
The glider does not normally fly itself. The pilot must be included into the model.
We will start with the prone pilot initiating a turn. To initiate the turn, the pilot moves his body laterally away from the midline of the glider. The pilot rotates the upper arm using small muscles in the back and shoulder. These motions work quite well to shift the body over.
Disagree with any of the above?
Now, let us move over the upright pilot. Pilot moves over to intitate the turn. Pilot pulls the down tube towards him. Oh,nooooos, 20 Hail Maries, 20 Alla Akbars, and 100 WTFs . Our pilot is working against Tad's dreaded Nutcracker Suite.
But, our pilot has a secret weapon, nore powerful than 20 nuns singing hearty Hail Maries, more powerful than even than even a quartet of devout fellows saying their sincerely said Allah Akbars. When the pilot is upright, he uses his biceps muscle to adduct the arm and bring himself over to the down tube. The biceps muscle is contracting upon itself. The contraction is more powerful than the smaller muscles which control the shoulder rotation.
Extra Credit:
Lay down on the floor and assume the position of the prone pilot. Roll over onto one side. Forget the lower hand, concentrate on the upper hand. Grasp a dumbell as if it was a contoll bar in your hand.
Lift it up and down simulating control bar movements, Put some more weight on it. Unless you are Ahh-nold in his younger days, you will not be able to lift much weight for all that long.
Now, stand up. Grasp the dumbell as a downtube. Pull it towards you as if you are initiating a turn. Not so hard is it??????????
Not so hard, even with Tad's Nutcracker Syndrome.
For extra, extra credit, and a kepie doll, pull down on the weight a draw it towards yourself. It is easy!!!
Not the sappy TV show. It should be in your public library.
In summary, it is easier to initiate a turn when upright due to the mechanical advantage of using a larger more powerful muscle (biceps) to move to body over. We will disregard the fact that with the body vertical, there is no need for muscle power to keep the body parallel. Gravity does it for you when vertical.
Upright gives drag which is most useful for speed CONTROL.
Tad wrote:Bullshit.
You express yourself quite well.
Tad wrote:1. The CONTROL bar is most useful for speed CONTROL.
True
Tad wrote:2. Increasing the parasitic drag by going upright doesn't do shit for speed control. All it does is degrade your glide path.
Oh, noooos somebody better go tell the USAF that drogue chutes on aircraft do not work cause Tad says so.
Tad wrote:Going upright robs you of the upper speed range you may need...
Going upright also allows steeper descents without picking up as much speed as when prone. You can always prone out for whatever reason.
Dave rounds out with his basetube I'd guess 2.5 feet from the grass...
1. We're not worried about where he is when he rounds out - we're worried about where he is when he's running out of the energy he needs for control but may have - or get - a bit too much to stop the way he wants to.
2. There's no indication that the air's doing anything where he's approaching and landing so he doesn't need everything going for him on this one. The only thing he's gotta worry about is runway length.
I go beyond it because I want to land at the end of the field while maintaining adequate separation from the power lines.
1. You can have your cake and eat it too on this one. In fact more and better tasting cake.
2. Adequate isn't always adequate. I'm not saying that you'd get in trouble doing a million approaches like that but if I've got a choice between crossing the power (or tree) lines and not crossing the power (or tree) lines I'm gonna go with "B".
Yeah, I know, minimizing walking distance is "the lead-off to SO many crash reports"...
ALWAYS as a consequence of WASTING runway - NEVER as a consequence of CONSERVING it. And I'm into virtually nothing but conserving runway. Overshooting runway was always my biggest fear in aviation before I even started in aviation. After I started aviation - hang gliding - it became my second biggest fear, not far behind failure to hook in.
...but I don't think I'm compromising safety to any significant degree by the approach I fly at this site.
You're NOT compromising your safety to any significant degree by the approach you fly at THAT site. But THAT site is an AIRPORT. And you're doing NOTHING to advance your skills so that you can more safely land at Dave Seib's site - or something nastier that you may someday find yourself sizing up as your best option for some reason or other.
You're NEVER gonna get any better at doing that approach to Columbus.
Conditions played a big part of that. Like I said, I had to bleed airspeed quickly to maintain altitude.
Then something was going on (like maybe a thermal sucking air from behind you) to indicate that maybe a foot landing wouldn't necessarily be the best choice of ways to stop the glider (not that you need to be told that at this point).
Show me a video of a Hang One landing like Steve.
I can't. Every goddam "instructor" on the planet is forcing students into those horrible goddam upright-only "training" harnesses and forcing them to stay upright until they've got half a dozen mountain flights under their belts.
What he does takes skill.
The landing technique described in the T2 owner's manual (and all the other ones for Wills Wing gliders) takes skill.
Landing is statistically the most dangerous phase of a hang glider flight and what Steve's doing - as should we all - is minimize the skill required for that operation.
He does it by staying on the basetube until almost the last possible moment and flaring to his feet if everything's fine and bailing to a belly-in if not.
A wheel landing takes virtually no skill whatsoever. A Pearson foot landing is the next step in the progression.
When I was "teaching" (read giving hang glider rides) on the dunes for Kitty Hawk Kites (back in the days when there was still a viable contingent which felt that students should be taught something about FLYING a glider in addition to foot landing it) we did and taught Pearson landings.
And I frequently had students who - in the course of a five flight first class - could execute a launch, flight, and Pearson landing as well as I could. (Kids were great - good at doing what they were told and too stupid to be afraid of anything.)
There's not much skill in what Steve's doing. He flies with his hands on the basetube, waits for a cue from the glider, moves his hands to the downtubes, pushes up, and walks a couple of steps. Compare that to what a lot of ten year old kids can do to maneuver through a hostile crowd and put a basketball through a hoop.
Are you saying I should have flared sooner?
I'm primarily saying you shouldn't have flared at all. But if you MUST land on your feet then, yeah, keep it faster and flare/stall the hell out of it. But if you do that then a lot of that crap Rooney wrote starts becoming useful and your long term odds aren't great.
C'mon, I talked about it two posts prior.
Yeah, but when I read:
The instant before I flared...
and blank out the word "before" as I'm forming a mental image then "The instant I flared..." is burned in as the mental image and it takes a helluva lot to dislodge it.
I was near the ground without much altitude to pull in.
Then if you pull in the glider's gonna be on the ground in as good shape as you can manage under the circumstances.
I didn't push out until just before the glider impacted.
This is after-hitting-the-iceberg stuff. We're now talking about the best way to crash.
And if you look at my ground speed...
You may have been doing as well as possible at that point.
At any rate, I think what I did was better than not doing anything at all...
Whatever the situation, fly it all the way to the ground. And don't ever listen to that bullshit George is always preaching about breaking legs instead of necks.
My reaction was instinctive.
Foot landing is counterintuitive. Your good first flight students will instinctively wheel land until we start reprogramming them.
I wish I had a nickel for every time I punched a flare early or crooked KNOWING AT THE TIME that I was making a big mistake.
But were I more open to wheel landing...
If you start making yourself do them whenever the situation is iffy or worse I guarantee you'll come out better in the long run - downtubes, keel, arms, shoulders, back.
I still think that takes a lot of skill (you have less time and space to make corrections if your positioning wasn't good when you started your approach) and as such is dangerous if you don't have it.
1. You are landing/practicing at an AIRPORT. You can really screw things up without screwing anything up.
2. The trees and power lines you're trying to scrape are all MAKE-BELIEVE. If you clip or fly into them it doesn't matter.
3. You have A LOT of extra speed. As long as you've got tons of runway to burn - which you do - you can always go back up and slow down in one fell (reverse) swoop.
4. You can also turn that speed into roll authority and have enough for a couple of really good turns.
5. This is not all or nothing (like a standup flare). You don't hafta go full Dave on your first effort. But start doing something BETWEEN Zack and Dave.
Tad Eareckson wrote:We're not worried about where he is when he rounds out...
I brought that up because you seemed to be implying that that video was an example of what you were talking about when you described flaring with the basetube just above the grass. I'm still not sure what you were talking about.
Tad Eareckson wrote:I'm not saying that you'd get in trouble doing a million approaches like that but if I've got a choice between crossing the power (or tree) lines and not crossing the power (or tree) lines I'm gonna go with "B".
I'm not crossing the power lines (they're buried in front of the runway)...just the road.
Tad Eareckson wrote:There's not much skill in what Steve's doing.
How many times have you seen even an experienced pilot reach for a downtube and miss? Combining the transition and flare also requires a good feel for flare timing. You say 'waits for a cue from the glider' like a light turns from red to green. If it was that obvious, Rooney wouldn't have had to write a book on flare timing.
Tad Eareckson wrote:You are landing/practicing at an AIRPORT. You can really screw things up without screwing anything up.
If you drag a wing you could really screw things up no matter where you are.
Tad Eareckson wrote:And you're doing NOTHING to advance your skills so that you can more safely land at Dave Seib's site - or something nastier that you may someday find yourself sizing up as your best option for some reason or other.
I've practiced tighter approaches at Hearne and will focus on them more now that the landing task is out of the way, but I don't think Columbus is a good place for them due to the power lines.
I brought that up because you seemed to be implying...
I don't know of any videos which show what I'm talking about. I was just trying to use that as a quick illustration that when you flare your upper body is pulled up. Of course now that I actually look at it I note that it really sucks for that purpose. And when I start looking for better examples I note that most of them do.
But...
http://vimeo.com/34922059
Andy Jackson Air Park Landing Compilation
Joey Nieves - 2012/01/11 21:42
dead
There's an adequate example starting at 3:26.
And I can tell you that the most satisfying foot landings I did at Ridgely were executed with a light dragging skim and a pop which simultaneously rotated me to vertical, got my feet under me, and stopped the glider dead with nothing left over.
I'm not crossing the power lines (they're buried in front of the runway)...just the road.
I actually had that figured out from looking at the video at one point but forgot.
How many times have you seen even an experienced pilot reach for a downtube and miss?
I can't even keep track of how many times I've done it myself. How the hell do you think I'm gonna be able to start accounting for other people?
But, speaking for myself, when I've missed it's 'cause I was nervous and trying to execute to quick a grab and usually with a bit of altitude and holding some pitch pressure.
And when I've screwed it up transitioning where Steve does:
a couple of seconds before touchdown, I've just plopped in harmlessly.
You say 'waits for a cue from the glider' like a light turns from red to green.
If the air's uniform it'll do that - you feel a distinct onset of a drop. But the problem is that in the real world...
If it was that obvious...
Yes. We're discussing the best way to do something essentially wrong.
If you drag a wing you could really screw things up no matter where you are.
1. If you've leveled out at a dozen feet it's really hard to drag a wingtip.
2. And with the essentially unlimited runway of an airport you can level out at pretty much any height you feel like.
3. If you wanna see dragged wingtips don't watch the people who are coming in like Dave Seib - watch the people who are upright early and slow.
...but I don't think Columbus is a good place for them due to the power lines.
Just push your comfort level a little bit but always keep a bulletproof margin.
I understand what you're saying and appreciate the effort you put into the explanations but...
- Your most effective tool for reducing roll control effort / increasing response is SPEED.
- Your speed range upright SUCKS. People have died because they were upright and critically limited.
- Good pilots stay on the basetube until near the last possible instant and don't crash.
- Really good pilots stay on the basetube until they've rolled to stops.
- Crappy flyers go upright early and crash left and right and forward and backward.
- There are no videos, reports, or accounts of people ground looping because they were prone and would've been OK upright.
- In the landing of a Ridgely tandem ride you have a pilot using solo muscle for twice the hook-in weight and a good bit more sail area. You will NEVER see a tandem ride on final:
-- the least bit deficient in roll authority;
-- going upright; or
-- ground looping or executing any other kind of crash.
- If you wanna see crashes focus on the dorks going upright early and foot landing the way the asshole tandem pilots have taught them to.
Oh, noooos somebody better go tell the USAF that drogue chutes on aircraft do not work cause Tad says so.
1. They don't use those parachutes for ANYTHING until AFTER they've landed.
2. The problem that those parachutes address in conventional aviation is essentially nonexistent in hang gliding.
Going upright also allows steeper descents without picking up as much speed as when prone.
For any given airspeed, from just over stall to VNE, the more junk you have - Wallaby Release, backup suspension, Kellner Suspension Check Mirror, upright pilot, drag chute - in the airflow adding parasitic drag to the equation, the more your glide (forward progress) will be degraded.
You can always prone out for whatever reason.
1. You're gonna have a hard time finding a video of someone coming down upright to help get him into a restricted field then reverting to prone.
2. You're gonna have a hard time finding a video of someone coming down upright to help get him into a restricted field.
3. It's a crappy idea to land in fields so restricted that one needs to go upright to pull it off.
4. I like the way Dave Seib handles the problem of a restricted field.
miguel wrote:Oh, noooos somebody better go tell the USAF that drogue chutes on aircraft do not work cause Tad says so.
Tad wrote:1. They don't use those parachutes for ANYTHING until AFTER they've landed.
Nope.
They flew around the pattern with these chutes.
They were used to limit the speed of the aircraft while the engines were at a certain power level. They did final with these chutes to limit descent speed. They popped out a larger chute once on the ground.
Tad wrote:2. The problem that those parachutes address in conventional aviation is essentially nonexistent in hang gliding.
The name of the game for landing B-47s and hang gliders is energy management.
Control of speed/energy during descent. Going upright, while not as effective as a chute or the chaps creates drag and the drag is a useful tool for speed control during descents.
Knock on wood but I have never missed the downtube going upright. I go upright early and one hand at a time at a leisurly pace. I fly one hand up and one down because my harness and the way it hangs does not allow for good pitch control from the downtubes. The up hand is on the upwind side. I move the other hand up when stabilized in ground effect. Works great for crosswind landings.
