landing

[Dave Gills]

300' x 600' if not a slot.

A football field wide by two long. Hope the crosswind isn't too problematic.

I don't believe a good answer can be given in dimensions because there are too many factors.
Crosswind is a huge factor.
I can rate the LZs I have experience with & maybe you can find a pattern.

#1 Purdue (Bellefonte) primary or secondary
#2 Pulpit Primary (ball-field) Watch for HUGE groundhog holes
#3 Jack's
#4 Zirk's (between fresh cow pies spot landing practice)
#5 Woodstock
#6 Hyner
#7 Templeton (flare above 3' weeds and tail slide in)

[<BS>]

When landing on the beach the wind is pretty much 90 degree cross where I land. Usually I'd make an effort to land into wind, but there the beach is steep and narrow enough that if you tried there'd be a good chance you'd end up in the surf. I make a final that parallels the beach and stick to it. It's never presented a problem in a variety of wind speeds.

[Tad Eareckson]

I don't believe a good answer can be given in dimensions because there are too many factors.

Exactly.
- And some factors can make landing unsurvivable regardless of what you have in the way of an LZ. Think 2011/06/06, Henson, Tim Martin.
- Crosswinds screw you a bit with respect to the alignment of your rectangle but if you final into or partially into them your runway requirement is reduced - as long as rotor doesn't enter the equation.

Purdue
- Never flown there, looks infinite from the videos I found.
Pulpit Primary
- Don't push your luck getting there, requires a little ridge lift to make it as I recall. Get low before turning onto final and worry more about the slope than the wind direction.
Jacks
- Think I remember needing to land cross to stay off of crops. No big deal.
Zirk's
- Thought that was gonna be my first high launch. Pretty easy to buy a glider from Sport Flight, not so much to get it somewhere at which they'd let you fly it other than training hills. Never made it. Think the field was pretty much infinite.
Woodstock
- Brain dead easy. Scrape the treetops turning off of base and you're looking at a slope you'll need to climb to get to the breakdown area.
Hyper
- Hyner we've discussed. Infinitely long, keep the speed up getting into the strip.
Templeton
- Don't know where the launch and LZ are. Pete Lehmann just used it as an XC starting point.

My feeling on LZs - for our Eastern mountains anyway...
- When you start tightening them up down from a High Rockish threshold you're gonna start seeing related crashes. Good training would allow the line to be held pretty well but good training is non existent in US/Canadian hang gliding.
- When you have reliable soaring conditions you can ALWAYS find and get to stuff way better than any primary other than Lockout's.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.shga.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=5126
The Culture of our LZ

NMERider - 2016/02/24 18:13:18 UTC

The backbiting and slander need to end. No pilot in this or any other club need to repeatedly hear from third-party and visiting pilots how badly the pilots in the LZ are looking forward to seeing them crash, get injured or killed. This goes far beyond tiresome. There is video recorded by third parties in which the same offending individuals can be heard giggling about how they hope an incoming pilots crashes. Like it was some kind of a joke.

Standup landing training is an obscene kind of joke.

What kind of people say things like this to their peers, over and over again, year after year?

The total fucking assholes who've infested and controlled the sport since the beginning of time and are currently managing its extinction.

There was one pilot who repeatedly joked while driving up the mountain how they started a betting pool about when another pilot would die.

I can't predict who but I can give you a pretty good feel for why.

This same pilot...

1. Which same pilot? You've just referred to two individuals?
2. ...skipped the hook-in check - as he's always done for every flight of his career and will continue to do for its remainder - and...

...launched unhooked and nearly crippled himself about an hour later.

1. Good.
2. Another Greblo product?

Instant karma? Why even temp fate in the first place?

By the trash talk on the drive up or always starting his launch run on the assumption that he's connected to his glider?

Is it self-perpetuating? Some of the backbiting falsehoods are about incidents over five years old yet they still get repeated.

I know how to fix that problem - full immediate disclosure and documentation from all survivors and witnesses. When was the last time that happened?

Is this the kind of club you want to be a part of?

I hope so. There's not a goddam thing anybody will be able to do to change anything for the better.

What happens when slander is accepted as normal practice?

Same sorta thing that happens when coming in upright with hands at shoulder or ear height poised for a perfectly timed flare is accepted as normal practice.

Does it become a self-fulfilling prophesy?

Here's the prophesy:

Gil Dodgen - 1995/01

All of this reminds me of a comment Mike Meier made when he was learning to fly sailplanes. He mentioned how easy it was to land a sailplane (with spoilers for glide-path control and wheels), and then said, "If other aircraft were as difficult to land as hang gliders no one would fly them."

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=28835
Why I don't paraglide

Tom Emery - 2013/04/17 14:29:12 UTC

Been flying Crestline about a year now. I've seen more bent aluminum than twisted risers. Every time another hang pounds in, Steven, the resident PG master, just rolls his eyes and says something like, "And you guys think hang gliding is safer."

Nailed it pretty good...

http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2095
Should we try a different way? Designwise....

Steve Corbin - 2015/09/02 22:26:04 UTC

This is a subject that I have been meditating on for quite some time now.

I hear and read about the alleged decline in participation in HG, and how PG is thriving.

Any un-biased observer should be able to see why wanna-be pilots find PG more attractive than HG. Standing around in the Andy Jackson Memorial International Airpark at a busy fly-in shows that a PG landing is a total non-event, while everyone stands up to watch HG's, piloted by "experts", come in to land. A good landing by a HG is greeted by cheers, an acknowledgement that landing one successfully is a demonstration not just of skill, but good luck as well.

...didn't he?

Does this make for safer and more responsible pilot? Does this attract new members to the club and grow the sport?

Hang gliding's a dickhead magnet. And the supply of the flavor of dickhead inclined towards this activity is running dry.

How long before the next serious or fatal accident?

1. Serious or fatal WHAT?
2. The serious CRASH will, statistically, happen a lot sooner than the fatal CRASH. But the serious ones are covered up whenever possible.

Anyone taking bets?

Nope. But I seldom hafta wait long for new material. (Got spoiled rotten by 2015.)

Orion Price - 2016/02/24 20:50:28 UTC

I agree. Less trash talking in the LZ. That's what the internet is for. Also if you are old, irrelevant, crazy, and bitter (a la: Tad Eareckson - Rick Masters) then keep it up or every go 'crazy' with the trash talk.

1. Yeah, getting old in this sport is regarded as a bad thing. Makes it hard to go out the way we all want to - doing what we love.

2. I'd be REAL CAREFUL using "OLD" to disparage hang glider people if I were you, OP. Kinda like disparaging all the midgets in horse racing.

3. So if I'm irrelevant and crazy then how come you feel the need to talk about me so much and often?

4. How irrelevant am I compared to Highland Aerosports, US Hang Gliding, Inc., all the assholes who've died doing what they loved in the past year?

5. Rick Masters? How's Dan McManus's full and speedy recovery going? Haven't heard anything since Sunday.

6. Crazy and bitter? Not sure those two go together all that well.

NMERider - 2016/02/24 20:56:40 UTC

But doesn't "old, irrelevant, crazy, and bitter" already describe a few too many active HG pilots who don't post online?

Like I was saying.

Don - 2016/02/24 23:38:18 UTC

SHGA is bad???

I can only comment on the reaction when someone lets the nose of their glider touch the ground and the immediate comments from the pilots in the LZ. SHGA is a near model of perfection compared to the large number of F'ing A-holes at that large club just 50 miles East of Sylmar. Talk about a group of barn-animals when making fun of less than perfect landings!

And what was I saying about hang gliding being a dickhead magnet?

NMERider - 2016/02/25 00:52:12 UTC

Are We Up To The Task?

Don you are correct.

There are a number of LZ trolls at Andy Jagoff Airpark who not only take excess delight in yelling, "Whack!" but start their yells before the deed is even done. If the pilot avoids the nose beak the trolls can be heard choking on their words. I have this recorded too. Sylmar pilots just sort of mutter, "whack" underneath their breath.

Whether it's in-your-face or behind-your-back, online, off-line, in-person, out-of-body, none of it ever helps anyone become a better or safer pilot.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=27415
Friday the 19th with Hawks & Friends!

NMERider - 2012/10/24 21:47:05 UTC

I have to say that landing on the wheels is so much fun it's not funny.

That's what makes better and safer pilots out of people. Stunt landings have absolutely nothing to do with piloting.

It also drives people away from the sport or at least away from that club.

Both.

If nothing else, it would be better if pilots yelled, "Go get some coaching for that!" or they could gossip behind each others backs about how to motivate or persuade the pilot in question to get some needed help.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=29884
Hat Creek Power Whack

Mike Bilyk - 2013/09/07 17:07:26 UTC

Wheel landings are for girls!

What the much need coaching and help for is to neutralize the effects of all the coaching and help they've gotten previously.

There's no reason the Greek Chorus can't change it's tune to something constructive.

Yeah there is. Hang gliding's a dickhead magnet.

I'm not saying anyone needs to be as sweet and pleasant as Fred Roberts.

Rogers.

If pilots are that sensitive they should look for another sport.

Something that involves ACTUAL pilots, preferably.

I have nothing against good-natured teasing either. But there's a kind of speech that boarders...

Borders.

...on hate and it's alive and well in the sport of hang gliding.

I do what I can - but just where it's very richly deserved and needed.

Why not set an example for ourselves and others that we can have a sense of humor and relax and still kid or tease each other while at the same time encouraging better flying habits?

Tell me what the fuck foot landings have to do with good flying habits.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=22176
Paragliding Collapses

Jim Rooney - 2011/06/12 13:57:58 UTC

Most common HG injury... spiral fracture of the humerus.

They do NOTHING but send the crash rate off the scale.

I think the SHGA can muster it.

I'll be over here holding my breath.

Steve D - 2016/02/25 06:53:57 UTC

I see that you somehow managed to spell Eareckson correctly. That's a significant achievement for you, Orion.

NMERider - 2016/02/25 08:34:21 UTC

Steve D, Isn't op's name spelled, Orian.

Let's try:
Steve D, isn't OP's name spelled "Orian"?

Tad's not going to be very pleased.
Cheers,
JD

Grebloville - 2016/02/25

http://www.shga.com/sylmartians.asp
Sylmar Hang Gliding Association

Orian Price
Dog meets squirrel!
Forum name: OP

u$hPa - 2016/02/25

Orion Price - California - 88538 - H3 - 2011/04/03 - Joe Greblo - FL

He's covered either way.

Hey OP...

Tad Eareckson - Maryland - 32674 - H4 - 1991/12/17 - Santos Mendoza - AT FL PA VA AWCL CL FSL RLF TUR XC

Lemme know when you match that. If you keep having trouble leave Southern California and come here to the East where it's so much easier to rack up air and thermal time. (And I was just about fifteen hours shy of a Five when I was blacklisted out of the sport seven years ago.)

[spark]

uphill, downwind, wheels

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o7M5jmU4GA

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=34106
Golden, CO (Lookout West) Water Tower LZ

Allen Sparks - 2016/02/27 00:47:16 UTC

Our primary LZ will be a construction zone through June, so we are now landing at an LZ that requires an uphill, downwind technique. My knees are not capable of that kind of load, so I'll be doing it on wheels. This was my first attempt.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=29884
Hat Creek Power Whack

Mike Bilyk - 2013/09/07 17:07:26 UTC

Wheel landings are for girls!

[spark]

Mike Bilyk - 2013/09/07 17:07:26 UTC

Wheel landings are for girls!

I haven't gotten any compliments from the girls, yet.

My choices are to retire from flying, or land on wheels. This year begins my 40th season - maybe I'll be able to fly a few more seasons.

[Tad Eareckson]

Would you expect to get compliments from them for dressing like them or playing with their Barbie dolls?

It's not really flying if you're not landing in a narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place every third flight and perfecting your flare timing to be able to land in narrow dry riverbeds with large rocks strewn all over the place the other two. Hang it up and take up checkers. Or at least get some large rocks and strew them all over the place in the LZ.

Wonder how many more people we'd have beginning fortieth seasons now if everybody did hook-in checks four seconds prior to starting their launch runs instead of one or two seconds after and nobody ever practiced for landing in narrow dry riverbeds with large rocks strewn all over the place and waist high wheat fields.

[spark]

Would you expect to get compliments from them for dressing like them or playing with their Barbie dolls

No, not really. I'm satisfied with my own opinions. Mike's comment reminds me of a similar thread and similar comments made a couple of decades ago by Kevin Frost on a HG email list.

I did not start flying with wheels until the early 2000s (after 25 years of flying), and started landing on wheels when doing tandems a few years later. Since my double full knee replacement and back surgery in 2014, about 9 of ten of my landings are on wheels. I have landed on wheels at altitudes above 6k msl at a half dozen Colorado mountain sites, on 'ungroomed' terrain. It requires precision and is intolerant of error and rock-strewn or cacti-infested terrain. However wheel landings are, IMO, preferable in many situations, including downwind and extreme crosswind.

I'd like to be able to [still be able to] do full-flare full-stop stand up landings 2 out of three times in narrow dry riverbeds with large rocks strewn all over the place, but I am no longer willing to accept the risk; and more importantly, I've been around long enough to know that just because one can do a thing, doesn't mean one ought to do that thing.

This (new to me) water tank LZ has many rocks strewn about. In fact, I hit one and rolled over it in this landing just before I came to a stop, which is evident in the video. I also wear hockey knee and shin protectors and I am using a new harness with a special 'Tough' covering, built specifically with wheel landings in mind. This video showed my first landing with that harness in 'rough terrain' (i.e. not a Happy Acres Putting Green).

Eventually I may choose to launch and land exclusively on wheels. For those who think wheels are only for girls ... I say everyone is entitled to their opinions, including those which may also be bigoted, sexist, narrow-minded, or poorly informed.

[Tad Eareckson]

I'm satisfied with my own opinions.

Not a fan of that. People's own opinions are at the root of damn near all crashes in the sport. Physics doesn't give a rat's ass about opinions. Fortunately here though, your own opinions line up with the physics - along with history and common sense - far beyond any level of uncertainty.

Mike's comment reminds me of a similar thread and similar comments made a couple of decades ago by Kevin Frost on a HG email list.

1. Go figure.

2. A list which would be a lot shorter now if we looked at the individuals on it still around. And that shortness would be due in no small part to that attitude and its implementation.

I did not start flying with wheels until the early 2000s (after 25 years of flying), and started landing on wheels when doing tandems a few years later.

I flew with them pretty much all my career - 'cept for dune stuff - but didn't really understand that I should've been using them all along until near the end.

Since my double full knee replacement and back surgery in 2014, about 9 of ten of my landings are on wheels.

I've got a lower back issue that isn't doing anything to make my life more enjoyable and I can think of a whole bunch of extra crisp stuck landings that I wish I hadn't made.

I have landed on wheels at altitudes above 6k msl at a half dozen Colorado mountain sites, on 'ungroomed' terrain. It requires precision and is intolerant of error and rock-strewn or cacti-infested terrain. However wheel landings are, IMO, preferable in many situations, including downwind and extreme crosswind.

In many they're the only landings that are gonna be survivable.

I'd like to be able to [still be able to] do full-flare full-stop stand up landings 2 out of three times in narrow dry riverbeds with large rocks strewn all over the place, but I am no longer willing to accept the risk; and more importantly, I've been around long enough to know that just because one can do a thing, doesn't mean one ought to do that thing.

Rooney Link pops are almost always just very expensive...

Tost Flugzeuggerätebau

- Weak links protect your aircraft against overloading.

- Use only the weak links stipulated in your aircraft TCDS or aircraft manual.

- Checking the cable preamble is mandatory according to SBO (German Gliding Operation Regulations); this includes the inspection of weak links.

- Replace the weak link immediately in the case of visible damage.

- Always use the protective steel sleeve.

- We recommend that the weak link insert are replaced after 200 starts: AN INSERT EXCHANGED IN TIME IS ALWAYS SAFER AND CHEAPER THAN AN ABORTED LAUNCH.

...inconveniences.

This (new to me) water tank LZ has many rocks strewn about. In fact, I hit one and rolled over it in this landing just before I came to a stop, which is evident in the video.

Which, I don't hafta tell you, can be infinitely less problematic than coming to a stop in a Happy Acres putting green with no wheels and one's hands on the downtubes.

I also wear hockey knee and shin protectors...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=26211
Video of scary launch and landing

Ryan Voight - 2012/05/26 00:56:18 UTC

Pilot has wheels, knee pads, and elbow pads. What does it say about his confidence of proficiency to be wearing all that stuff?

2012/08/09 14:10:32 UTC - 3 thumbs up - Jason Boehm
2012/05/28 05:34:40 UTC - Sink This! -- Christopher LeFay

...and I am using a new harness with a special 'Tough' covering, built specifically with wheel landings in mind.

It's criminal negligence that all harnesses aren't shipped to be skiddable. That was the issue that kept me foot landing after the lightbulb finally came on.

This video showed my first landing with that harness in 'rough terrain' (i.e. not a Happy Acres Putting Green).

Eventually I may choose to launch and land exclusively on wheels. For those who think wheels are only for girls ... I say everyone is entitled to their opinions, including those which may also be bigoted, sexist, narrow-minded, or poorly informed.

Christy (Huddle - for you non Capitol area dinosaurs) once told me that when she flew Sandia and attempted to join the conversation on the two meters everybody immediately switched to a prearranged secret alternate frequency. I was stunned.

Couple decades later now NOTHING I learn about hang glider people surprises me in the least.