25 Miles to the Beach - A Cautionary Tale
NMERider - 2014/10/08 18:02:12 UTC
It is vital to be able to safely perform a nil or downwind landing on terrain that is difficult to run on if wide open X/C is the goal. It doesn't need to look showy. It needs to be safe.
I don't mean to get on a soapbox but showy landing can lead to serious injuries if executed improperly on unforgiving terrain. This is why I emphasize the preparation to go into a deep knee bend and also let the glider contact the terrain if necessary. Not pretty but safe. Just and FYI to pilots considering flying into terra incognita.
In aviation showy and safe are - on the average - synonyms. This landing:It is vital to be able to safely perform a nil or downwind landing on terrain that is difficult to run on if wide open X/C is the goal. It doesn't need to look showy. It needs to be safe.
027-03123
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044-03623
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045-03625
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is both showier and safer than this landing:
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07-2216
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08-2301
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10-2422
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The SCFR landing (in response to the Davis Link increasing the safety of the towing operation) is reasonably well under control - no sudden stop, hard impact, bonked nose, injury to the pilot, damage to the glider.
SCFR and Kagel landings. Twenty each. The SCFRs are all like that one. You nail nineteen of the Kagels and bonk one and bow a downtube. The SCFRs average out showier and safer. I'll take 'em anyway - always nice to be able to go back up without needing to straighten and/or replace stuff and/or heal.
The nineteen out of twenty that you pull off kind of showy. Or, more accurately...I don't mean to get on a soapbox but showy landing can lead to serious injuries if executed improperly on unforgiving terrain.
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...show-off. And, for the regular recreational pilot that this asshole sport pretends to be centered on and serving, it's more like one out of five. Yeah, showy/show-off bullshit is pretty much by definition dangerous as hell - times ten when you're fucking around with it at landing - ANYWHERE.
Bit of a mild controlled crash. Which is how REAL XC flyers flying REAL XC - 'specially on expensive gliders are ACTUALLY FOOT LANDING. And you go to:This is why I emphasize the preparation to go into a deep knee bend and also let the glider contact the terrain if necessary. Not pretty but safe. Just and FYI to pilots considering flying into terra incognita.
http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26379
Landings
and listen to our Patron Saint of Landing, God's Gift to Aviation, giving us the benefit of his amazingly keen intellect and find him saying anything like that. And you go to schools and instructors and try to find ANYBODY teaching ANYTHING other than showy/show-off landings.
"Yeah, it's vital that you perfect this 'cause some day when you're flying XC you'll find your only landing option to be a narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place. And this is the only thing that'll stand between you and a trip out in a medevac chopper." Let's combine the most dangerous landing option we can think of with the most dangerous landing technique we can think of. Should work out just fine.
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.
Jim Rooney threw a big tantrum and stopped posting here.
His one-technique-fits-all attitude espoused on the Oz Report Forum has become tiresome to read. It does not work in the fucked-up world of XC landings and weary pilots.
I refuse to come in with both hands on the downtubes ever again. I have had some very powerful thermals and gusts kick off and lost control of the glider due to hands on the downtubes. I prefer both hands on the control bar all the way until trim and ground effect. I have been lifted right off the deck in the desert and carried over 150 yards.
I like what Steve Pearson does when he comes in and may adapt something like that.
Christopher LeFay - 2012/03/15 05:57:43 UTC
January's canonization of Rooney as the Patron Saint of Landing was maddening. He offered just what people wanted to hear: there is an ultimate, definitive answer to your landing problems, presented with absolute authority. Judgment problems? His answer is to remove judgment from the process - doggedly stripping out critical differences in gliders, loading, pilot, and conditions. This was just what people wanted - to be told a simple answer. In thanks, they deified him, carving his every utterance in Wiki-stone.