Carnage at Ed Levin - Oh My!
- What "pilot"?NMERider - 2014/01/08 03:05:20 UTC
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52357650792_27b50161cb_o.jpg
Don't Panic! The pilot was unhurt.
- Looking at the photos it's a pretty good bet that about the only way the pilot would've been hurt would've been if the rescue had been as much of a clusterfuck as the flight was - which it was.
Fuck them. I've done a lot more difficult and dangerous rescue than that near the top of a ridge way out on the end of an oak limb solo save for a bit of ground support. Ladder, ropes, pruning saw. "Pilot" and glider unscathed, minimal damage to the tree. (And fuck the idiot who signed that idiot off on his Two.)http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/weird/Milpitas-Hang-Glider-Crashes-Into-Eucalyptus-Tree-239183901.html
Hang Glider Crashes Into Eucalyptus Tree | NBC Bay AreaBay City News and NBC Bay Area Staff - 2014/01/08 01:59 UTC
Hang Glider Crashes Into Eucalyptus Tree
An errant hang glider pilot who became trapped in a fifty foot tree was rescued when a California Highway Patrol officer was lowered from a helicopter and brought the pilot down unhurt, authorities said, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2014.
At 11:21 a.m. the Milpitas Fire Department responded to a call about a hang glider pilot trapped in a eucalyptus tree along a hillside at Ed Levin Park County in Milpitas, according to Milpitas spokesman Sean Simonson.
Firefighters arrived and saw the pilot stuck in the tree, which was about fifty feet high. A CHP rescue helicopter was dispatched and reached the scene at 12:30 p.m. A CHP officer was lowered by a line and reached the pilot, who was secured to the line and both were finally lowered to a road at the park. Paramedics who evaluated the pilot and found that the victim was not injured.
Rescuers say this was one of, if not the most, difficult rescues they have ever done.
And Moe, Larry, and Curly.Those who also responded to the emergency included two rangers from Santa Clara County Parks, a county sheriff's deputy, Rural Metro Ambulance and the San Jose Fire Department.
Mike Jefferson - 2014/01/08 04:52:41 UTC
The rescue footage is spectacular! The helicopter guys were awesome. In fact, the guy who was dangling on the end of the string tried to sell me his Moyes hang glider after the rescue. I have to say the pictures were after the rescue. The glider was flat on top of the tree with no damage before the helicopter blew it around and the dangling dude cut the trailing edge.
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USHPA 76175
http://www.sanfranciscohanggliding.com
Ditto.Paraglider Collapse - 2014/01/08 06:32:07 UTC
REALLY STUPID to use a helicopter - the downwash could easily have dislodged the glider from the tree and sent the pilot crashing to the ground.
But hell, it's CHP - he's lucky they didn't shoot him out of the tree.
And I'd like the video of Scott Howard whipstalling coming off tow that he promised he'd post after people got him home. Good freakin' luck.Erik Boehm - 2014/01/08 19:24:26 UTC
The stuff that happens at Ed Levin... just doesn't surprise me any more.
I still have trouble wrapping my head around how people miss the LZ at Ed Levin.
I never figured those trees as a hazard for anything more than a source of some rotor when the wind is blowing from a direction such that students shouldn't be flying anyway.
You shouldn't be launching in that direction, it's not in the path of any landing approach... avoiding a collision with those trees should be as easy as avoiding a collision with a hillside.
I know there is often some lift in that bowl (to the left of the road in the picture)... and I sometimes try to thermal low over that area, but I can't say I've ever worried about hitting those trees... and students shouldn't be trying that shit anyway - I am assuming it was a student, given the glider and the location just in front of the three hundred foot training hill - I suspect this person was working towards their H2, or had only recently obtained it.
I would very much like to get some more details.
Fuck the "pilot", his blessing, and this bullshit that we're not allowed to see photos, videos, reports and not allowed to discuss or speculate about anything because we might upset some goddam family member.Mike Jefferson - 2014/01/08 21:23:31 UTC
Eric your dead on. I have the video in my iPhone and put it in my Epics. I would like to get the pilots blessing to post it then I need someone to tell me how to convert it from my ipics on my mac. Anyone familiar with Macs out there?
Me too. As long as he maintains his flying career he will have an opinion worth listening to.Brian Horgan - 2014/01/09 02:31:26 UTC
i hope the guy dont quit.
Name names. The fact that the names involved in this one haven't spoken up is proof that they very richly deserve to be named.Erik Boehm - 2014/01/10 07:25:34 UTC
Well, I've received some info via a private channel that says perhaps this guy is not cut out to fly.
I don't want to name names, but supposedly, this was not a student of MSC, in case that is what people were wondering.
Still no details on what actually happened immediately before hitting the trees.
BULLSHIT.Mike Jefferson - 2014/01/10 17:56:28 UTC
I was there. I watched it from the 150, I was first on the scene. The conditions were WSW and very light. The guy flew into a tree. Enough said about what caused the accident. No instructor can be blamed for that. The instructor who launched him is not responsible for a guy who land in a tree next to a huge LZ.
Likely not. But the guy whose name is on his card may very well have something to answer for.Just like the guy who blew his launch the other day from the 1750 on the Sport 2, the observer that launched him was not responsible for the broken leading edge and control frame. Right?
Fuck you. What piloting skills does one need to agree or disagree with you?Brian Horgan - 2014/01/10 18:04:48 UTC
ill say it again.This puppy mill approach on teaching is what is causing this crap at a high rate.There are people who are not qualified to get a rating but have enough money to get it anyway.Money is more important than quality now.Its like we let anybody in,qualified or not.I dont know of any flight school that has a zero washout rate except hanggliding schools.
ok lets here the peanut gallery with all of its armchair pilots tell me how im wrong.Roast my nuts because i give a fuk.
Brian Horgan - 2014/01/10 18:09:03 UTC
wrong! the instructor IS AT FAULT.You guys know whos going to make it and whos not.LEARN to tell them they dont have it.Dont let money blind you if you instruct!.Thats why your a instructor,learn to instruct the people who dont have it,tell them im sorry i dont think your going to make it.Everybody is to fuking nice.
His release would've worked just fine - in a non emergency situation anyway - if it had been configured properly.Mike Jefferson - 2014/01/10 18:12:33 UTC
And the accidents in Tres Pinos can all be prevented with better instruction. Like the guy who crashed because his release would't work.
Fuck secondary releases. There's no more excuse for going up with release that isn't 100.000 percent solid than there is for going up with an obviously frayed sidewire. And in real emergencies one seldom survives the easy reach to the primary anyway.We could show those instructors in Tres Pinos what a secondary release is.
Yeah. Here's the best instructional video ever made on the subject:The we could teach the students and instructors how to use the hook knife that he had on his chest.
1:15
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJGUJO5BjnA
Always make sure the glider's under control, air is smooth, and line tension is light and you have a couple thousand feet to work with.
Then you shouldn't be instructing. If general aviation instructors can be sure their students won't fly into trees, cars, other aircraft on the ground or in the air then so can hang gliding instructors.Then we could teach the tow operators how to cut a tow line. Yea, with some training, Tres Pinos could be a safe place to learn hang gliding. I don't know a way to insure a new pilot won't fly into something like a tree, car or glider on the ground. I think that could still happen.
Maybe you shouldn't have been.Mike Jefferson - 2014/01/10 18:20:22 UTC
I partly agree with you Noman. Maybe I was playing the mother hen a little there, protecting my fellow instructor.
Then you don't put the student into an environment in which that kind of situation is a possibility.Please don't hit me at the meeting tonight. Some people were not meant to fly and you can see it in all the lessons that lead up to this kind situation.
Fuck him. No pilot ever became a worse pilot for reading a description of or watching a video of a pooch screw.Situational awareness, quick reflexes and good judgement should always be considered.
I will bring the rescue footage to the meeting tonight. The pilot doesn't want me to post it because he says he doesn't want it to affect the other pilots in any way.
Maybe you could show us the clip of the dangle guy slicing up the sail.Its pretty cool how the helicopter pulls him free.
I'd certainly be cool with letting Mike teach your kid how to fly. Can't imagine it would result in any damage to the gene pool.Brian Horgan - 2014/01/10 18:49:48 UTC
Mike your one of the very few that i would let teach my kid how to fly.
But as long as these people who've bought ratings are flying - into trees, cars, parked gliders, whatever - they're all head and shoulders above any armchair pilot you wanna name.My concern is that people are getting ratings to easily and money is the concern not ability.When ushpa took away the so program it crippled us putting out quality pilots.
Unwittingly they caused all of this in my opinion.They made our veterans null and void and left a void for people with money, as a concern, to take the rains.
Define extreme. When one of Tom Galvin's victims kills himself launching minus a hook-in check because he's been taught that hook-in checks are dangerous because they give a false sense of security does he get to walk because this is how EVERYONE operates?Dave Hopkins - 2014/01/10 21:19:16 UTC
Obviously this student had a problem with target fixation or turning or speed control. I can not believe it did not show itself before he got to that level.
If someone crashes and you are instructing them you are at fault in some way. We have to operate that way. I don't think you should be sued or pay damages to them unless it is extreme but you are still at fault.
It can EASILY cost MANY millions when somebody is taught something poorly, not at all, wrong. So do it right or don't.If we made a million $ teaching people to fly ,maybe then.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bRrpHNa68iY/UQ6Pv9gRZyI/AAAAAAAAjTg/Hc22bx5122Q/s2048/20943781_BG1.jpgYour instruction was obviously poor . You did not give your student the skills to handle the situation. You allowed them to fly in conditions over their heads. Or you as an instructor are a bad judge of People developing flying skills You don't know the basics of teaching a human to fly or the basics of flying your self.
We can play this game quite perfectly enough to prevent crap like that.We are going to make mistakes. We will not be perfect all he time but as in our flying we need to make them small mistakes and fix it before real accidents happen. THAT IS PART OF THE ART OF TEACHING. Guide the student to teach themselves . Understand why its wrong and get the results of doing it right. Some times you wonder if it's ever going to sink in but they stay low until they earn the right to go up.
WE must keep the bar high!
Bullshit. Name a crash that occurred just because hang gliding is an inherently risky sport. Crashes ALWAYS happen because of one or more pooch screws by one or more individuals. Nobody with a halfway functional brain and a halfway acceptable level of competence stands or prones out at launch thinking that the next part of the day is gonna be a dice roll.rkswb - 2014/01/16 20:41:03 UTC
SF Bay Area
I find it interesting that despite that HG pilots seem to be extremely clear on the fact that flying is not a risk free sport, it's not just as obvious that an instructor can't eliminate all risk for the people who fly under his or her instruction. Yes, it behooves an instructor to use his or her best judgement to launch a student only when the student is ready for the task-at-hand, although conversely to eliminate all risk would mean to instruct students not to get involved in free flight at all.
A one in a hundred thousand chance of a student ending up in the top of a eucalyptus tree is not an acceptable risk.The point is that I'm trying to recognize that there is, for the benefit of both the individuals involved and the sport at large, some ambiguous and undefined "acceptable risk" when an instructor launches a student.
The bottom line is that the "pilot" missed untold wide open acreage of landing options and a lot of people have been killed as consequences of mistakes dwarfed by this one.I don't know if we'll ever have the information to point to a root cause for this crash, but look at the bottom line: the pilot landed in the tree but didn't get hurt.
There virtually never is. The Jeremiah Thompson / Arlan Birkett fatal was officially written off as "shit happens" despite several glaringly obvious and undeniable contributory violations of federal aviation regulations and USHGA SOPs. And when you get decades of operation free of criminal investigations and convictions the problems which kill people don't get fixed - they get incorporated as standard operating procedure.There's no reason to open up a criminal investigation.
This shit very obviously didn't happen because something went wrong quickly in the air. And when a Zack Marzec DOES get killed because things went very quickly and very predictably in the air tell me what we do in the way of response.Things can go wrong quickly in the air.
Of course they will. What other options have they got when the student involved and the instructors who put him in that situation slam shut tighter than clams?I understand people will speculate on what happened...
- Who's the hang gliding "community"?...and that the HG community wants to learn from every crash that occurs... but will people *please* hold off on the blame game?
- I one hundred percent guarantee you that the higher up you go in the power structure of the hang gliding "community" the greater the desire is that NOTHING be learned from ANY crash that occurs.
Fuck that. People have been flying hang gliders on a pretty significant scale for over four decades and the reporting has been going steadily downhill for at least the past three.The pilot will look at what he did wrong, and try to learn from what happened. The instructor will consider what he could have done, and try to learn from what happened. We on the internet can hopefully learn from their experiences by fostering an environment where the pilot and instructor feel open to sharing.
http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1081
Platform towing /risk mitigation / accident
Get some criminal investigations going and get some fuckin' heads on fuckin' pikes if you wanna reverse the learning process to something positive.Sam Kellner - 2012/07/03 02:25:58 UTC
No, you don't get an accident report.
Tough shit. He SHOULD be on the defensive after parking a glider in a tree. And a pretty reasonable defense would be that his instruction sucked. I overshot a field on my third mountain flight 'cause it was a crappy dangerous field and my "instructor", Mark Airey, was/is a real asshole.It only works to the detriment of everyone to put them on the defensive by saying "I heard the pilot isn't cut out to fly"...
The fact that his instructor is still publicly unidentified and hasn't uttered a word about this situation lends a lot of credibility to that position....or ardently blaming the unidentified instructor and painting him as a greedy asshole who cares more about money than his students' safety.
We don't wanna be a community. We wanna have checks and balances and accountability or all we're ever gonna have is conflict of interest and corruption. And good luck doing anything to make a positive change.Is that the kind of community that we want to be?
) 
Good luck if it does. No 911 calls allowed. My friend was lucky, the nurse on hand convinced the owner not to move him, this after he snatched and threw her phone away. 
