landing

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=32009
Ouch

Tom Lyon - 2014/10/30 02:22:49 UTC

davedpilot - 2014/10/29 22:22:14 UTC

I hope this isn't out of line to pat myself on the back...

Great job! My downwind landing was mountain flight #7 and it scared the heck out of me.

No wind foot landings are scary. Wheel landings with a tail...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2Gd2kcyOes


- "Oh, that's so much more brainless than landing on your feet!"
- "That was beautiful!"
- "That was a GREAT landing, Rotor!"
- "Who cares if it's downwind!"
- "Ooh shit, that was awesome!"

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Once it was clear that I was OK, one of the instructors wryly said "The wind goes in the big hole of the windsock and out the little one." Ha!

I checked when I got to the field, and this was a sled ride, so I knew that I was landing after a couple of boxes of the field. But I got complacent. I hope to not do that ever again.

There wasn't much of a downwind component, but it doesn't take much.

See above.

You did a great job with changing your pattern to reflect the conditions.

Totally awesome.

Hang gliding will keep one humble, that's for sure!

Ever read any posts by Orion Price, Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney, Ryan Instant-Hands-Free-Release Voight?

gluesniffer - 2014/10/30 02:33:05 UTC
If you can't land in that field...

...all your training has been geared for nailing traffic cones in middles of huge flat putting greens. Wide patterns, long finals, no dangerous low steeply banked turns, zero appreciation for runway conservation. For the love of God make sure you come in at least a hundred feet over that fence so there's almost no danger of you clipping it.

The bigger the training LZ the crappier the approach skills are gonna be.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=32009
Ouch

Dave Jacob - 2014/10/30 08:26:17 UTC

Jackie, thanks for the explanation. I now understand why he went down wind. As Mbadley suggests, there is a huge lemmings mentality with new pilots.

There's a huge lemmings mentality for damn near everyone in this idiot sport. Why do you think:
- we all have backup loops?
- "just prior" is synonymous with "ten minutes"?
- nobody is capable of:
-- verifying his connection to the glider without having somebody hold his nose while he lies down in his harness?
-- landing in a flat putting green half the size of Nebraska without trying to whipstall his glider to a dead stop on top of a traffic cone?
- for the most critical phase of our flight everyone puts his hands on the downtubes at shoulder or ear height where he can't control the glider?
- all barrel releases are assembled with bent parachute pins?
- a 350 pound glider uses the same standard pitch and lockout protector as a 200 pound glider and expects the same performance?

Inexperience makes you doubt yourself in cases like this and you go with the familiar or what everyone else did even when the signs tell you otherwise.

1. Bullshit. He was totally unaware of the signs.
2. If he'd flown the pattern properly the tailwind wouldn't have been a big fucking deal.

If I was a betting man, I would wager this pilot is generally pretty decent for his level...

I'd wager that this pilot is precisely at his level. And I'd win that bet a hundred percent of the time.

...and that the disorientation that comes with turning down wind...

I missed the part where he was disoriented. I saw the part where he had no Plan B 'cause he'd had zero training for the situation in which he found himself

...pulled him off his game.

What game?

Going forward he will be the most fervent windsock believer on the East side and he'll be fine.

So this:

Fletcher - 2014/10/29 22:12:59 UTC

Clearly this person needs to be under strict guidance by a local instructor.
Also restricted to radio guidance until better judgement is proven.

is total bullshit? You think he's actually capable of learning from a mistake and not flying into a building again even without benefit of intense supervision by Lookout's expert professional wind direction specialists?

Dave Gills - 2014/10/30 12:18:31 UTC

Think I'm going to go into the garage today and make some more streamers.

The LZ is going to look like this next time I fly.

Was the problem that there weren't enough adequate wind indicators in the LZ?

Erik Boehm - 2014/10/30 12:35:14 UTC

Huge LZ
Downwind landing
Weakly effective cross-controlling
Poor transition to uprights

He needs more training...

Yeah, if he flew off the side of the field once he's OBVIOUSLY too fuckin' stupid to figure things out on his own. More training. Definitely.

...and should be aiming for the middle of that big fat field, and be willing to walk more

Get fucked - idiot.

Avolare - 2014/10/30 12:54:49 UTC

To paraphrase MBarber, you guys will spend an hour on a treadmill, elliptical, stairclimber, etc. but you won't walk just a few seconds from the middle of a huge LZ!

See my note to Erik immediately above.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96rQkGSjLyg


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- 01 - chronological order
- 00 - seconds
- 01 - frame (30 fps)

Pattern is flown WAY too fuckin' high and wide.

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Second of two Dragonflies taxiiing to the new downwind end of the strip. Should/Could've been a tip-off.

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Dragonflies taxiing to the NEW downwind end of the field.

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Both tugs in view.

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Windsock.

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Rear Dragonfly slipping astern.

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This is David's title frame.

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Totally unnecessary left hand transition.

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Lead Dragonfly extremely out of the way.

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Intended landing strip passing by on the right.

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Totally unnecessary right hand transition.

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This is the frame Tiberiu uses to illustrate his 2014/10/29 21:18:24 UTC Jack show post. (But full quality here.)

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Cottages getting very big very fast.

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Touch down.

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Initiation of energy absorption phase.

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Energy absorption phase complete.

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---
2022/02/18 04:00:00 UTC

I've reworked this collection a bit. Seven new stills.

[<BS>]

Wheels didn't save him, just kidding. Airborne again or riding one wheel?

[Tad Eareckson]

Airborne.

We have this:

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=32009
Ouch

davedpilot - 2014/10/29 22:22:14 UTC

It looked to me that he flared with too much speed and a low wing...

eyewitness statement and I've pulled some additional stills. First two digits are seconds into the video, last two are frames - thirty per second.

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Going frame by frame for a bit, from the point of contact...

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...on we can see digital image distortion and loose wires flopping around:

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From here on until impact the wires are pretty straight and the images and glider look smooth.

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That starboard wheel is pretty high and the glider ain't rolled all that much.

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That's my call with a gun to my head. Stills taken from frame mounted cameras while gliders are rolling tend to be pretty trashy.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=32009
Ouch

Bob Flynn - 2014/11/04 19:09:17 UTC

Give him a few flights at Crestline and he'll never have another problem at Lookout, lol. The air is awfully switchy at Lookout though with lots of mechanical rotor and turbulence off the trees.

He doesn't NEED a few flights at Crestline to bulletproof him. He needs to be doing worst case scenario simulation landings EVERY TIME he comes into Lockout. But all those useless goddam motherfuckers teach is best case scenario landings.

seb - 2014/11/04 23:07:13 UTC
Alabama

looks to me that it started with the slipping turn at 16 seconds.

Looks to me like you don't give a flying fuck about early elementary school quality writing.

Got some extra yaw after that late correction and some pio after that.

You have a very vivid imagination.

I cant judge nor say what a person would or should do...

Why? Pilot competence down there with writing ability? Another Lockout graduate?

...but I would not have let go of the base tube to transition up.

1. But no fuckin' comment whatsoever on...

http://www.rmhpa.org/messageboard/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5545
"Jedi" Joe Julik - Gone But Never Forgotten

Tiffany Smith - 2014/09/30 15:28 UTC

Joe had been at Whitewater, MN all weekend, towing and flying his happy head off. Sunday night he made a deal to purchase a Topless glider.....he was landing his first flight on it Monday morning when he stalled after transition and couldn't recover....landed hard.

...Joe Julik?

- Hang Two Dave here DIDN'T KNOW he was landing downwind until he was in ground effect. Hang Four Twenty Year Joe was TRYING to land upwind and - solely because he transitioned to stay current on his narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place landing technique - was UNABLE TO PREVENT HIMSELF from "landing" downwind.

- Dave ended his flight with a probably totaled glider and a some damage to some inexpensive lattice work but right side up and uninjured. Joe crashed his glider into a parked one and ended up upside down and extremely and instantly dead.

But let's beat this one to death and totally ignore the other. Massive Trivial Pursuit Syndrome.

I would have been shoving that base tube to the left with all I got .

So would anybody else who had half a clue as to what he was doing and what was going on. But Lockout doesn't train anybody how to do anything on final other than adjust glides to hit traffic cones and not worry in the least about overshoots 'cause...

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What could possibly go wrong? Get real dude!

I watched it happen and glad hes okay.

Im glad too.

[<BS>]

Totally unnecessary right hand transition.

Possibly the worst thing he could have done.

But let's beat this one to death and totally ignore the other. Massive Trivial Pursuit Syndrome.

Reason being access to the video. This one's a fine example of what happens when you let go of the control bar while holding pitch pressure.

[miguel]

Nice job on the photos from the video.

My guess is flying stalled downwind with the illusion of control.

[Tad Eareckson]

Possibly the worst thing he could have done.

I'm pretty sure he didn't appreciate the situation he was in at that point. (Totally certain he did a second later though.)

Reason being access to the video.

We get to see precious few of the really good ones. Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney launching his tandem flight unhooked, Jon Orders launching his tandem with his passenger unhooked, Bill Priday, Joe Julik, Robin Strid...

We won the standard aerotow weak link war - thanks to Zack Marzec. If there'd been a half decent video of that increase in the safety of the towing operation we'd have won that last major battle with zero effort and so much more damage to Davis, Rooney, Peter, all their scummy co-conspirators and groupies.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=32007
Increase in lousy instruction?

Dave Jacob - 2014/10/29 20:00:15 UTC

I think one thing that makes it look worse now is the abundance of in flight video cameras.

We are SO LUCKY that this technological age has coincided with this period of brutal suppression of crash information by The Industry. Nothing more dangerous to those motherfuckers than a Hang Two with a GoPro on his wing.

Nice job on the photos from the video.

Thanks. Archiving, organizing, cataloguing is the nightmare. I've been spending most of the past several days working on stuff. Seem to have figured out the newer version of Final Cut that runs on my OS 10.10 partition. (I work almost exclusively in 10.6 and the version that runs on that system totally crashes me whenever it feels like it.) Got an application called "A Better Finder Attributes 5" which lets me alter file dates and is a big help. Got the 2653 photos currently up on my Flickr account in reasonably good shape now.

My guess is flying stalled downwind with the illusion of control.

Nah. He had pretty good speed the whole time. Enough for a touch and go starting at 0:35. Could've had a decent second flight if the cottage hadn't gotten in the way. Lotsa people have done a lot worse with a lot fewer hazards in the equation.

[<BS>]

Nice job on the photos from the video.

I thought the same thing but failed to mention it.

We are SO LUCKY that this technological age has coincided with this period of brutal suppression of crash information by The Industry.

I agree, but it's more than that as I'm sure you're aware. People in general are reluctant to share their own errors out of embarrassment and there is a taboo surrounding incidents that end in death.