http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37786
Joe on plowing
Joe Schmucker - 2014/06/11 13:03:17 UTC
As you probably know, I crashed on the second day of the ECC comp. I was very lucky and crashed into very soft, recently planted soil.
1. Oh good, it's been upgraded from "freshly plowed".
2. No.
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Keep going.
If you've seen the video of my crash, it was pretty obvious it was pilot error.
Show me some crash videos in which it's NOT pretty obviously pilot error.
Davis goaded me into posting the video or I would not have posted it.
See if you can goad Davis into putting the Robin Strid video back up so's we can show clearly enough for even the total morons who dominate this sport that his middle of the safety range weak link had zero relevance in the incident.
I didn't think there was anything to learn from it other than Joe can make a crater.
There is, but virtually no one - including/especially you - has learned anything from it.
I've had a lot of people thank me for posting it.
Thank you for posting it.
Thank you all for your kind words.
How 'bout thanking Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney for the kind words he included with his expert analysis of John Dullahan's crash.
I want to thank Adam and Sunny for racing to my aid (and several others too). I hope you didn't end up with poison ivy!
Aren't you gonna thank Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney for calling the ambulance? It would probably be a good idea to do that 'cause he's gotten sick and tired of doing that and - undoubtedly because of the severe and permanent brain damage he sustained upon impact - seems to have forgotten all about the one that was called for him and his passenger/victim.
There were a couple things that I learned from this event:
1) A glider is very heavy when it is on top of you.
2) A camel back is something I will always carry. I needed it to rinse out my eyes after plowing.
3) Make sure your phone and/or radio is easily accessible in case you need to get to it to call for help. In my case, it was in my front left pocket. I would not have been able to get to it if I had broken my right arm.
4) Don't trust that a windmill is facing into the wind. I always thought that the gearbox portion of the windmill was on the downwind side. I had a downwind landing on Day 1...
1. Wheels or foot? Just kidding.
2. Are you still operating under the delusion that you also had a downwind landing on Day 2?
...because I relied solely on what I thought was the best wind direction indication a pilot could hope to have.
I once paid money to Mike Barber to tell me that a large percentage of crashes occur because people are lazy and try to land close to a road etc. so they don't have to carry their equipment that extra hundred yards. I wish I had listened to that advice.
1. This would NOT have been just a matter of carrying equipment an extra hundred yards. I'm pretty sure that landing in that field would've necessitated a breakdown and setup before you'd have been able to get a relight. You felt the situation out and bailed. That's not what got you crashed.
2. Did Mike Barber tell you that:
- about 99 percent of all landing crashes and about 98 percent of all hang glider crashes are the results solely of totally unnecessary foot landing attempts?
- 99.9 of all aerotow launch crashes are the results solely of Rooney Links increasing the safety of the towing operation?
- one hundred percent of unhooked launches occur because the basetube danglers totally refuse to ever do anything remotely resembling a hook-in check?
I appreciate that nobody said, "You know, you may have fared better if you lost some weight."
You know, you may have fared better if you'd lost some weight - and, of course, pulled the fucking bar back more than half an inch at some point in your descent.
I am pretty sure that some of you thought that but out of courtesy did not say it. I am 6'4" and I have a huge cranium! So, I am by default a "big guy". We all take safety very seriously.
Yeah, right. Especially the pigfuckers running Ridgely, other Flight Park Mafia operations, Wills Wing, USHGA, the sport in general...
We sometime screw up and pay some dues. In my case, I could stand to lose about thirty pounds.
That wouldn't put me on death's door either.
That could make a significant difference in my wing loading and my stall speed.
Ya know what else could make a significant difference? Not floating into gradient and shadow at half a mile per hour above stall speed.
So, I have committed to myself that I will not fly until I get rid of the those extra pounds. Here's my real litmus test. If I feel uncomfortable enough in my appearance that I won't take my shirt off when setting up my glider, I'm not ready to fly.
Do lotsa arm straightening exercises.
I think the extra weight would be a positive in the air.
Bull fucking shit. You don't wanna be using muscle to move fat around under a glider. You wanna leave the fat on the ground and fly a smaller glider appropriate for the all muscle / fat free hook-in weight.
But when I come in to land, my ground speed is much faster than I like it to be.
No problem. Just hold the bar out a little farther.
It seems like I used to come in to land and the glider would slow down a lot more before it was time to flare.
In this case it COULDN'T slow down any more.
I see other people land and it seems like their ground speed is way slower than mine. I've no idea if it is real or in my mind.
Why's it matter? If you were coming in on a sailplane would it matter what Falcons were doing? Land what you're flying with what you're dealing with.
Could my track log show ground speed as I am bleeding off speed to flare?
1. Bleeding off WHAT speed?
2. Your track log won't tell you shit if you don't know what the wind, gradient, and shadow were doing - and you don't.
I should check that out and see.
Watch your fuckin' video.
Thank you all for making my time at Highland Aerosports a great time.
1. Just how much does your regular life suck?
2. Hey Matthew...
http://www.chgpa.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6326
An OK Day at Ridgely
Matthew Graham - 2014/06/09 01:51:11 UTC
It was pretty quiet at Ridgely when we arrived at noon. Brian VH and Felix were there-- and Sammy (sp) and Bertrand... and Soraya Rios from the ECC. She was not flying.
Felix test flew Bertrand's T2C for about an hour and loved it. Brian had a short flight on a Falcon. I got on the flight line at a little after 1pm behind Sammi. She had a sledder. Then the tandem glider called rank and went ahead of me. The tandem broke a weak link and it took a while to sort out a new weak link. I finally towed around 1:30 and also broke a link at 450'. Back to the end of the line. Actually, my wife Karen let my cut in front of her. Bertrand and Sammi towed again. Each having sledder. The cirrus had moved in and things did not look good. Again I arrived at the front of the line only to have the tandem call dibs. And then the tug needed gas. I thought I would never get into the air...
Aren't YOU gonna thank the consummate professionals at Ridgely and the great hang gliding community you have in your area for doing everything possible to provide a safe, competent, efficient, and enjoyable hang gliding experience at your little shit heap over there on the Eastern Shore?
They were two very memorable days and I did have a personal best distance on Day 1 coming in about 2km short of goal.
Yeah, that certainly would more than make up for the somewhat truncated Day 2.
Dan Lukaszewicz - 2014/06/11 17:57:31 UTC
You weren't the only one fooled by the direction of the windmill. I also noted it and circled to check for drift before landing and was still fooled when the wing changed directions when I was low. I guess it's just the nature of variable wind...
...read: good thermal...
...days.
I'm recovering from a broken arm but plan to return to the sport. My mishap was near the goal field and I had help immediately and absolutely needed it to get up, unhook, and carefully remove my harness. I wouldn't have been able to do that had I been alone.
Where were your hands and why were they on the downtubes when you were coming into an extremely wheel friendly field? (See if I'm proven wrong on any of that.)
BTW: Big guys fly big gliders and you were doing very well on your Sport 2.
Until one of the two parts of the flight that really mattered.
I'm glad you escaped serious injury.
Is this all we're gonna get about your little incident? Considering the seriousness of the outcomes isn't Joe getting an obscenely disproportionate percentage of the attention?
Rbremermd - 2014/06/11 18:28:13 UTC
It's great that you are going to learn and improve from your experience Joe...
My assumptions about Dan's incident are on a lot steadier ground than yours are about Joe's.
...but don't feel like you are the only one to have done such a thing.
I'm pretty sure he doesn't - given recent ECC history.
We have all whacked at least once on landing, some more spectacular than others.
This wasn't a WHACK in the course of a stupid stunt landing as a consequence of an imperfectly timed flare. This was a serious CRASH.
Most of us hope to be fortunate enough to do it in relative obscurity.
1. Why? To ensure that there's even LESS chance of learning anything and fixing the problem?
2. Chronic fuckups aren't the ones who get attacked, banned, ostracized in this shit heap of a sport.
Paraglider Collapse - 2014/06/11 19:42:07 UTC
Don't you hate it when everyone "armchair-quarterbacks" your flying?
1. Yes, PGC... What he was doing in that video was FLYING.
2. I guess you're posting this from cloudbase using your iPhone. You're obviously not working on laptop from an armchair.
3. Name some people who've commented on this incident who haven't yet made it off the training hill and tell us where they were full of shit.
4. And I guess if a ten year old quarterback who'd never been near a glider typed from his armchair that Joe wasn't in anything remotely resembling a rotor and just came in with zilch airspeed he'd be full of shit and Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney would, as always, be totally on the money about playing with dragons.
Ha ha, that being said... what the heck were you doing still on the basebar at five feet?
Yeah, it's not like he was - or had been - using it for anything other than an armrest.
Get vertical...
Yeah, if you're not gonna come in with any speed anyway there's no reason not to go into a configuration in which it's physically impossible to get any.
...if you're gonna hit the ground at least it won't be with your face.
He hit the ground face first on what's probably the hardest landing hit we have on video and walked away with nothing more serious than a little stiffness from his harness decelerating him.
DAN, on the other hand, was upright so he wouldn't hit the ground with his face, came in with a mild surface tailwind, didn't flare perfectly, broke...
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...an arm, hit his face, and is out of the sport for the foreseeable future.
If Joe had been following your idiot recommendations...
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...with that kinda hit there'd have been a chopper flight out of Ridgely that day too, his arms would've made the ride in ice chests, and they probably wouldn't have bothered to sew them back on 'cause he'd have probably been permanently quaded and would've had no further use for them.
I was also cringing when I saw you headed for that dirt field...
Were you there? 'Cause if you just saw the video you didn't see him heading for that dirt field. You saw him beyond the middle of it, totally committed to it, and eighteen seconds from contact with it.
...notoriously turbulent.
1. Yeah, notoriously turbulent. Very problematic field. Scores of people have landed there and they all report supernatural turbulence. I'm wondering if there are any local assholes anywhere who don't have supernaturally turbulent home site LZs and LZ peripheries. Never hurts to talk about notoriously turbulent fields. That way one you fuck up and pound in with baby ass smooth air you can say, "See? Toldya it was a notoriously turbulent field! Best not play with that dragon."
2. Bull fucking shit. You show me one tiny little bounce that glider took and/or one tiny bit of corrective reaction from Joe to indicate anything other than glassy smooth air all the way down.
And there was a grass field on the other side of the road.
Did anyone take a Bible around to all the competitors and get them to swear that no fuckin' way they'd have still been trying to make it into the airport with a minute's worth of flight left?
Remember when standard rogallos would dive uncontrolled into the ground? Well paragliders still do.
So do state of the art hang gliders...
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...when you shitrig them with the kind of moronic bent pin crap that Ridgely, Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney, Steve Exceptionally-Knowledgeable Wendt, Dennis Excellent-Book Pagen, Davis, Lauren Eminently-Qualified-Tandem-Pilot Tjaden use, sell, recommend, mandate, use to force decent equipment out of circulation.
So how come you've got all this idiot advice for some bozo who doesn't know how to pull a bar in beyond trim and ended up having to rinse some dirt off his face but don't have one single syllable of wisdom to offer regarding a pro toad who rigged himself such that he was only flying trim with the bar fully stuffed, got dumped into a tailslide, whipstall, and tumble when the focal point of his safe towing system increased the safety of the towing operation at the worst possible time, when he was climbing hard in a near stall situation, and slammed him in so hard that after the ambulance ride Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney wasn't able to visit him in the hospital?
