landing

General discussion about the sport of hang gliding
MikeLake
Posts: 65
Joined: 2011/02/24 20:07:11 UTC

Re: landing

Post by MikeLake »

Steve Davy wrote:Sure is nice to know that you're alive, Mike! I hope that you are doing well.
Cheers.
Yes alive and kicking. All healed up and with an enhanced respect of being downwind of anything taller than 12".

Making myself a couple of harnesses, a cocoon (thanks for the photos Jonathan) and trying something new. Is there anything else that can be done with a harness? Maybe not so it might turn into a normal pod.

Continued head banging Tad but some more progress, I'll update you soon.

What's happened to KiteStrings then? Becoming a source of reference with links appearing everywhere. Maybe even becoming kind of 'acceptable' Who'd a thought!

(Please note any spelling or grammatical errors are deliberate and only there to prove the points raised in the posts above.)
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<BS>
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Re: landing

Post by <BS> »

MikeLake wrote:Is there anything else that can be done with a harness?
It's been done, but I'd like a light weight prone/suprone convertible.
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Tad Eareckson
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Re: landing

Post by Tad Eareckson »

Wow, four consecutive posts by three participants none of whom is me.

Was about to say the same as Steve and ask about stuff you've just answered.

Please stop head banging Tad. He does and gets more of that in a week than the average NFL player does in a season and the toll is beginning to show.

I was wondering how your BHPA twat buddies were reacting to our little u$hPa experiment with Tad-O-Links - the one in which our brave test pilots, meaning every man, woman, child, dog who hooks up behind a tug, suddenly chucked the one-size-fits-all focal point of our safe towing systems, one having proven to have worked by several decades of experience and hundreds of thousands of tows conducted by numerous aerotow operators across the county, and replaced it with one 54 percent more dangerous which has never once been reported to have worked.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=14312
Tow Park accidents
Jack Axaopoulos - 2009/11/10 13:36:53 UTC

That said, I am not confident that I am right. Id love to see ONE tow park switch systems for a year or longer, and compare tow incidents before and after. Its the only way to really test which way is better IMO.
Should be interesting - seeing as how they plagiarized the justification for their policy from Pagen. Two and a half seasons and running and Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney hasn't had to visit anyone in the hospital where the Tad-O-Link victim can begin to hear what the Rooney Linkers have been telling them all along.

When you're doing your harness design try not to make it so good that the parachute is most likely to be disabled in the precise circumstances it's most likely to be needed (à la Adam Parer).

Kite Strings... The elephant in Jack's Living Room. What's that they say about eighty percent of life being showing up? Must be worth something in combination with getting things right all the time. We're seeing definite trending in progress. I wonder how all the houses of cards will hold up in the coming years.

If Kite Strings were to ever become "acceptable" there would be very little need for its continued existence. Can't see u$hPa, HPAC, BHPA, HGFA ever allowing that to happen.
MikeLake
Posts: 65
Joined: 2011/02/24 20:07:11 UTC

Re: landing

Post by MikeLake »

A perfect example of how to change the context from what was intended...

"Continued head banging Tad but some more progress, I'll update you soon."

When I read the above again I can see it is lazy bollocks.
"Head banging Tad" is of course very appropriate but an English version of what I meant to say might read...

"I continue to bang MY head, Mr. Eareckson, but be assured I am making some progress in a matter we have discussed in the past and I will elaborate soon."

Tad-O-Links? I've seen no reaction at all however, see the sentence above.

Harness & sticky parachute?
Hell, I intend to design something where the parachute is so easy to deploy it randomly falls out in flight two or three times a year, thus offering me the ultimate protection along with a warm feeling of security.
If this doesn't work I'll reduce the strength of the Velcro a bit.
Just like weak-links, you can't be too careful you know.
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Tad Eareckson
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Re: landing

Post by Tad Eareckson »

Yeah...

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JUST like weak links...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYe3YmdIQTM


Pity that parachutes are such a bitch to repack. With weak links you just go back to the front of the launch line and hop on the next available cart. Think how many more lives we could save if we could just get the inconvenience factor down to a comparable acceptable level.

This is a global third of a century long Ponzi scheme and we're watching a really historic collapse. The motherfuckers who've been running it are having their reputations destroyed on this issue and know full well that one doesn't have a reputation destroyed on one issue and come off smelling like a rose on everything else. Officer Michael Slager won't be getting any community service awards for all the unarmed black men he DIDN'T shoot in the back eight times on camera.

We need to make sure that these motherfuckers - and the ones who've been supporting and enabling them - NEVER get forgotten or forgiven.

The US is the epicenter of world hang gliding power, numbers, influence. And BHPA won't be able to get away with ignoring what's going on here after having based its whole structure on it.
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Tad Eareckson
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Re: landing

Post by Tad Eareckson »

http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=2040
Dangerous landing areas - Could you land a hang glider here?
Rick Masters - 2015/07/29 19:02:09 UTC

Some landing areas develop a record of injuries over time. They often end up being closed to free flight.
Hang glider pilots should be forewarned about these potentially deadly places so they can avoid them.
In the rare case when a hang glider pilot has no alternative, he must ask himself "Could I land here? Could I land here and survive?"
This blog is to warn hang glider pilots about these risky landing spots and attempt to prepare them for the worst.
- narrow dry riverbeds with large rocks strewn all over the place
- any area in which you need to land on your feet
- any area in which you try to land on your feet
- wide open fields with old Frisbees in their centers
- Whitewater when an invisible dust devil hits right after you've gone upright
- anywhere Ryan Instant-Hands-Free-Release Voight is conducting a landing clinic
- anything at the end of a long straight final
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Tad Eareckson
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Re: landing

Post by Tad Eareckson »

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33218
Keep our speed while landing!
Dave Hopkins - 2015/08/02 22:32:30 UTC

Just a reminder to make our approaches with extra speed . A friend pounded yesterday and f@#$%# up his elbow, cut his nose , rung his bell. Pasted out shortly after landing. Refused to go to the hospital . He seems OK today. I stayed with him last night.
Wind switched on approach. He changed his direction ,Needed to make a low 90 turn...
Sorry, below two hundred feet you're only allowed to make minor adjustments to maintain heading. (Right Tom?)
...but didn't carry enough speed and stalled in the gradient and fell in from 15' .
Bullshit. No fuckin' way you can crash as a consequence of a stall. It's just the inevitable inconvenience one experiences every now and then, frequently right after a Rooney Link increases the safety of a towing operation. You just react to it as you practiced in your training and you're fine. (Right Bob and Bill?)
Hell of a pound in. Broke the chin guard on the helmet.
Good thing he was upright. That ensures you don't slam in headfirst.
No damage visible to glider, But it was a TRX so the carbon needs a good look.
SPEED IS OUR FRIEND!
And always make sure you're upright by the time you start on final so you can always be assured of having or being able to get all you'll need at any given moment. Plus have much better roll authority that way.
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Tad Eareckson
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Re: landing

Post by Tad Eareckson »

Jump to next post:
http://www.kitestrings.org/post8238.html#p8238

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43580
Don't land in the wheat
Davis Straub - 2015/08/11 13:19:29 UTC

We saw this problem in Ridgely also

Bob Grant sends:
Pilot in command drifted into the wheat field on landing and was unconscious for five minutes. That wheat can really grab your base bar quickly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REmiJXwMB-k
Go to 4:10.
Don't land in the wheat
Why not? What better reason do we have for spending all the spare weekends of our careers perfecting our flare timing?
We saw this problem in Ridgely also
Paul Vernon - 2012/06/06. We don't talk about him anymore.
Pilot in command...
1. Oh. There was a Pilot In Command? So he ran off the side of the runway deliberately?

2. Course he was the Pilot In Command. Pro Toad, very very reliable bent pin release within easy reach on the right side, an appropriate weak link with a finished length of 1.5 inches or less on the left as his backup and emergency instant hands free release, no wheels. Best of the best.
... drifted...
Bull fucking shit. FLEW.
...into the wheat field...
1. Flew off the side of the runway.
2. Too bad there wasn't an old Frisbee at the midpoint of the strip.
3. Have him go upright next time. Better roll authority that way.
...on landing...
Oh, that was a landing? So what's a crash look like?
...and was unconscious for five minutes.
1. So serious brain trauma and some degree of permanent damage.
2. What, he wasn't wearing a helmet?
3. Must've been one of those salad-bowl-on-a-string helmets.
4. Good thing he'd gone upright so's he wasn't leading with his head when he hit.

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Tad Eareckson
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Re: landing

Post by Tad Eareckson »

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43580
Don't land in the wheat
Larry Bunner - 2015/08/11 14:56:57 UTC

Landing in wheat

On the 4th of July, I flew into a family party (43 miles) with the intent on landing in the field behind the house. I got there high and thermaled up to assess the field. It was full of wheat.

There were water runoffs through the field running in the direction of the prevailing wind. These had spots of wheat in them as well so I abandoned landing at the party and picked a bean field instead.

I full well remember several incidents over the last 41 years of hang gliding and corn or wheat can be as tough as a fence!
Oh. So even if all us Twos and ups CAN land in corn, wheat, waist high grass...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hhpa/message/11517
Question
Dave Susko - 2010/11/05 02:07:47 UTC

Now, tell me what you do when your chosen LZ is a narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place. Better yet, you see what looks like a large green pasture so you head over there only to find out that it is in fact filled with 7-foot high corn, and now there is no usable LZ within glide. Wheels probably won't help you in either case.
...we probably SHOULDN'T. Lemme write that down somewhere so's I won't forget.
David Williamson - 2015/08/11 18:24:49 UTC
Sussex

Not Just Wheat.

I was skimming over the top landing with my feet trailing for an overshoot five weeks ago. The grass was short, as it is grazed, but some thinly scattered, thin stalked weeds had grown in the previous week. I was on the uprights with a pint-pot grip and I was just wondering whether I was too fast to attempt sliding my feet to slow down, when the glider nosed in with a whack, even though I had pneumatic wheels on.

I went head first from 20 m.p.h. to zero in an instant and may have been briefly knocked out as I certainly had some temporary short-term memory loss.
No fuckin' way! You were upright so you couldn't POSSIBLY have hit your head - least not hard enough to sustain a concussion through a helmet.
I've done lots of crop landings, some with passengers, and never had a problem as I always flared above the crop without touching it. In this case though, I never imagined that such thinly-spread stems would exert such force on the base-bar as to cause this but I think that's what must have happened.

I had a couple of cracked ribs, at the back, due to both arms being wrenched back when I hurtled through the A-frame.
Well yeah. But at least you were upright. If you'd been prone with your hands on the basetube you might have hit your head hard enough to sustain enough of a concussion to result in some temporary short-term memory loss.

And here I was thinking that Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney - the Patron Saint of Landing - had solved all our problems in that department for us about three and a half years ago. You guys should probably review his thread - just two stickies up from yours at the moment.
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Tad Eareckson
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Re: landing

Post by Tad Eareckson »

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33264
Don't Land In The Wheat - Knock Out

Predictable idiot fuckin' Jack Show response...
Jason Boehm - 2015/08/12 14:21:25 UTC

in those instances treat the top of the grass/wheat/corn/shrubbery etc like ground
much easier ot flair and fall a couple feet than plow into the earth at 20 mph
A LITERATE chime-in from red and a couple posts about better crash helmets.

Obviously we'll never be able to train ourselves to the point of proficiency in which we can reliably stop our gliders...

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...on RUNWAYS, but fortunately we WILL BE able to easily train ourselves to consistently whipstall our gliders to precise dead stops treating the vegetation tops as the surfaces RIGHT AFTER...

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...we've totally missed the fuckin' runways. (I wonder what kind of training conventional aviation pilots undergo to handle such situations.)
Red Howard - 2015/08/12 14:33:55 UTC

Man, that video is a very hard lesson. Glad that nobody was damaged permanently.
He was out for five minutes, asshole. He undoubtedly WAS damaged permanently. This ain't like Sixties TV westerns in which everybody's perfectly fine one commercial and a stiff drink after being whacked in the back of the head by a six-shooter handle butt.
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