Vrezh Tumanyan - 2012/05/28 23:39:22 UTC
Sunday, May 27 I had my second mountain flight which I ended in a crash landing at the end of the "runaway" runway.
Some background info:
Started HG twelve years ago. Have mostly been active, topless since '04.
Just back to the sport after 1.5 year long hiatus. Went through some "rehabilitation" before flying Kagel again.
First, I went to the beach training site and did number of hops on a Falcon to check and refresh my muscle memory.
The second stage of "rehabilitation" was the "Big O Loop" training session at AJX, Crestline club in San Bernardino:
http://bigoloop.com/
There I did two flights from a five hundred foot hill on a Falcon and five on my Litespeed.
Everything went smooth, and I went on to take a late flight from Kagel last week, May 20th. After 1.5 hours I decided it was enough for the first mountain flight and landed uneventfully.
Sunday, May 27 had my second flight from Kagel. Some 2.5 hours of good ol' exhilarating flying.
Before heading out to land, mentally went through my landing routine and decided to land on the top flat area rather than on the upslope beginning part, where I usually used to end up always. The air in that part tends to be tricky due to being a merging point for two different air masses coming from the upper LZ and lower riverbed.
The air was very buoyant, despite being late in the day. I had to look for a "sinkhole" to get down.
Went to downwind leg a bit higher, to make it to the upper LZ. I must have been climbing going downwind, but did not adjust accordingly, and turned into base even higher.
Having been able to deal with extra altitude before, I decided to proceed onto final without worrying much about it.
If you stuff the bar on a Litespeed far enough, it will point the nose to the ground and dive like a Falcon, maybe even better. Both hands on the bar, pushed all the way back to my toes I went for it. At the beginning of the "runaway" runway I was already skimming low and fast but I knew I had too much energy to bleed before I reached the end of it. Still trying to round up, I managed to shift my right hand into flare position, but lost the control trying to transition the left hand.
There was so much energy that the bar just popped up immediately and I missed the left downtube in a vain and desperate attempt to grab it. Twice.
The glider turned right sharply, I knew I lost it and was going to break something.
Ended up hitting the dirt pile on the right side of the runway. Broken downtube, some minor bruises on my leg and some serious humiliation (would feel differently if it wasn't my second flight).
On a hind side, there seems to be some entertainment value too this incident, judging by the overly excited reaction of spectators. Later, over beer and laughters it was suggested to call it a "dishonorable landing".
On a more serious note, here is my brief analysis:
- In general, I am not a great lander to begin with. I should take concrete steps and get better at it, period.
- I should have done my "regular" landing, instead of attempting a different approach for some time, until I am all comfortable with my landings again.
- Arriving too high, easily could have done a 360 before final, or...
- Once in a frozen state of mind and soo preoccupied with a single goal of getting down no matter what, could have jumped onto control bar (monkey flying), which would've got me down much faster (I've done "monkey flying", I know how), or...
- Just forget the upper LZ, fly the glider and land in the wash.
Apparently, there were other landing incidents before mine, I heard talks about difficult landing conditions of that particular day, but I attribute my bad landing solely to my bad execution.
Happy flying!
