landing

[Tad Eareckson]

I never knew about that tandem incident at Lookout (or that Bo was ever an instructor there).

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=20756
How is Zach Etheridge doing?

Bob Flynn - 2011/02/04 11:26:34 UTC

Lookout keeps this kind of stuff under their hat. You never hear of accidents there. But every time I go there, I hear about quite a few. Blown launches, tree landings, etc.

I haven't been able to find it lately but in 2009 around the time I went down there Lookout's website was advertising something like its "flawless seventeen year tandem safety record" - which, to the untrained eye...

Then seven years ago Bo's at Currituck on a borrowed Combat with two millimeter racing wires that he's been advised not to get creative with. And he gets creative with it. And he breaks it. And his parachute isn't connected to the harness so it comes down separately and still in the deployment bag. And he spends a very long time in the hospital in very bad shape.

He started flying and was an instructor at Kitty Hawk after I did and was and I knew him casually and had always been on friendly terms.

He shows up at Ridgely at the 2007 ECC shortly after I've developed the little shoulder mounted "Barrel Release - Remote" I referenced a couple of days ago. He's at the picnic tables, my harness is hanging from a tree five yards away, I ask him if he'd be interesting in seeing it. He walks over, glances at for a second or two, says:

"Tad, you have taken a very simple device and made it complicated. I won't fly it and I won't endorse it."

and turns around and returns to his perch.

I never had another word to say to that asshole. And I checked the flight line the next morning just to confirm that he was, indeed, just another Davis configuration, bent pin, 130 pound Greenspot shithead. No problems there. And I can name you two pilots who would still be alive if they had been using that configuration subsequent to the exchange that evening.

You don't get to kill a student at the edge of anything remotely resembling that field and three quarters kill yourself twice and talk to ANYONE like that - 'specially not me.

You have to be thinking about landing somewhere.

I never do. 29 years ago near the end of this month I was thinking about landing my Comet on the far side of the creek where *I* wanted to instead of in the middle of the creek where *IT* wanted to. I trashed one of its downtubes.

This was what at Lilypons near Frederick (39°17'33.87" N 077°26'34.05" W), which was at the time the big DC area training hill and student pilot factory. Tom Haddon was teaching a class for Sport Flight. He had been a Kitty Hawk instructor in the real dinosaur days and in the fall of 1980 had shown up on the dunes with the first Comet I had ever seen shortly after having won the US Nationals at Ellenville on it. Real nice guy, great dune pilot, one of my big heroes back then. He made me understand what I had just done and I never forgot that lesson.

All I ever think about is getting the glider into the field. After I've done that I totally stop thinking and land when the glider tells me it wants to.

Even airplane pilots are thinking about a spot (their touch down point).

Those guys have engines, gas, flaps, airbrakes, tail hooks... I don't, I don't care, I'm not in any rush. And I don't know all that much about real planes but I suspect that their pilots tend not to make too much of the issue and get in trouble when they do. I recall going up in a Cessna with an F-4 carrier pilot while he did a few touches and gos and him being very patient on the issue of it making contact with the runway.

I think it's much easier to have a point picked out than a general area. You have to have some way to judge accuracy (in preparation for LZs fitting into my third class).

I'm looking at the last thing I don't wanna hit at the downwind edge of the field. I'm trying to get as close to it as I possibly can while carrying enough speed reserve to deal with any unpleasant surprises. After that I'm all accuracied out. How can that POSSIBLY not work?

Gonna have to disagree with you there. My flares sucked for a long time after I started flying.

My flares sucked 28 years after I started doing them. If I flew a LOT - or, actually - if I flew a lot of FLIGHTS, I'd get pretty good. I'd start feeling cocky. But those streaks tended not to last very long.

What do you think about Joe Greblo's 'moonwalk' approach to landings?

I think Joe's a very smart guy. I don't know if he has everything right but if someone held a gun to my head he'd probably be my top instructor recommendation - at least for free flight.

I've never tried it. I'm so used to the way I do things it's very difficult for me to change.

I always meant to. But by the time I started meaning to I was only doing long high flights and thus few and infrequent landings. And I'd always forget to try it. And I was so incredibly hardwired after all those years of no-stepper brainwashing. But try giving it a shot at Barker next time.

During the summer the grass frequently gets too high at Hearne to safely wheel land. And we once had a student on a tandem out there break a wrist after a front wheel hit a large ant hill.

And, like I said, we broke a lot of arms foot landing in high grass at High Rock. Motion: Landing in high grass is dangerous. Any seconds?

On my only three XC landings, one was in a rocky field (in Mexico), one had tallish grass...

I'm thinking that Christian and Jayne are making a pretty good case for their technique for wheel landing in tall(ish) grass being safer than the conventional approach. Might not be a bad idea for Yosemite - given that they make wheels that can be locked for takeoff and unlocked in flight.

...and one was in a cow pasture. I would have only felt comfortable wheel landing in the last one (but then it was strewn with 'land mines').

Whenever I flew XC I'd always looked for cattle (never horses - they'll eat your glider while you're hauling your harness to the gate and you can't scare them away). You got cattle there's no vegetation that you're gonna hurt or is gonna hurt you. And the only bullshit that ever really did anyone in this sport any real harm is the kind we get from our instructors and other qualified pilot fiends.

Wheels are greatly discouraged. Wheeled gliders tend to roll off of the steep launch during hook in with or without the pilot. The Landing Zone is high grass offering no advantage for a "wheeled" landing.

See above.

I didn't use wheels on the dunes pretty much for the same reasons. They were a major pain 'cause you couldn't park the glider while you rested going up steep slope or in the wind at launch when you wanted to mash the basetube into the sand with a foot. And they weren't likely to do much good if you came down in soft sand. Plus you're not flying on the dunes unless there's a lot of wind and any idiot can foot land a glider when there's a lot of wind.

I know you have a lot of east coast experience, but have you flown out west?

North Dakotan badlands. Like dune flying but you can't afford to crash. Wide open short grass landings - bottom and top. Lotsa wind.

I haven't (much), but my impression is that LZs like Kagel's are not uncommon in the drier parts of the country.

1. If people wanna develop and use skills to enable them to exploit dangerous environments for airtime - great. I'd do it myself in a New York minute. I've done it.

2. But if you're regularly landing a lot of people in fields with a lot of rocks in them you're gonna hurt more of them than you will at a sod farm. That ain't rocket science.

3. Create an Injun Country Special Skill signoff to qualify to fly Kagel if you must. But don't force people who just wanna fly Lookout, Hearne, Funston, and Yosemite to get it.

And the densest population of pilots in the US is without a doubt in SoCal.

Well DUH! Like I couldn't tell that just by reading Dave's posts? Must be something in the water. Or air. Or both.

OH WAIT! You probably meant there are a lot of people who fly hang gliders who live in that area. Yeah, that too.

It's my understanding that if a sailplane pilot lands out he 'FUCKED UP'. In hang gliding, out-landings are expected.

Nope. We make them so we can roll them up and put them on the top of the car, they make them so they can take the wings off and put everything on a trailer behind the car. You've only fucked up if you put your Dacron or fiberglass down in seven foot high corn and/or can't walk away.

Really? Even smooth air? I think hang gliders are actually pretty easy to land in smooth air, even with light wind.

By light air I meant drooping ribbons. At Lookout in 2009 I just watched. There was a good thermal day, everyone and his dog were up. Twos on Falcons, hotshots on bladewings and Atosses, everything in between. It turns off late in the afternoon, people dropping out from locally and coming in from Henson. Negligible air, nothing going on. It was a bloodbath.

I wish I had seventy bucks for every seventy dollar aluminum downtube and a hundred and forty bucks for every hundred and forty dollar carbon downtube I saw trashed within a half hour period. It was ridiculous. Nearly three decades I'd been watching - and doing - that kinda crap.

And every eight gliders or so I'd watch someone deliberately roll in on the wheels. And none of them was bonking, whacking, or groundlooping. And I went up and talked to each one of those guys.

Another point... The more wind you have in your face the easier it is to land on your feet. But also... The more wind you have in your face the less it matters - no matter what you're coming down into shy of a minefield.

I'm a pretty average weekend pilot and pretty much always stop the glider on my feet.

I watched one of your landings a bunch of times. I think it was your adverse yaw clip (with a keel view). Clean, flawless, textbook. Made my skin crawl.

You've rotated to vertical and your hands are up high on the downtubes right where they're supposed to be. You're skimming the ground at twenty miles an hour. If that glider abruptly stops for any reason before you tell it to and you don't get your hands outta there FAST you're gonna snap an arm in half or rip it out of its socket. Happens all the time to pilots better than you and me put together.

This was the case when I learned there as well. But the reason wasn't so that they'd be ready to flare...it's because they've only flown from the downtubes on the training hills.

So that they're ready to flare.

Plus, they're using training harnesses that don't allow going prone...

So that they're ready to flare.

I don't think they have any problem with aerotow students going to the basetube on their first mountain launches because they're used to flying from the basetube.

When you've been hit by nasty shit up in the air have you ever had an urge to rotate to vertical and grab the downtubes to enhance your control of the glider?

I'm sure Jeff has his students fly from the downtubes initially for the same reason.

1. Are Jeff's training hill landing areas as dangerous as Lookout's so that it's ALSO critical that they get their landings on their feet four out of five times?

2. If Jeff had had all of his students up to the Two signoff go prone and to the basetube ASAP and do nothing but wheel landings how many of them would've been killed as a consequence of landing prone in narrow dry riverbeds with large rocks strewn all over the place and fields filled with seven foot high corn?

3. What's the Packsaddle LZ like? Narrow dry riverbed with large rocks strewn all over the place? Seven foot high corn?

http://OzReport.com/14.129
Packsaddle accident report
2010/06/30 13:01:28 UTC

Shane Nestle - 2010/06/26

Being that John was still very new to flying in the prone position, I believe that he was likely not shifting his weight, but simply turning his body in the direction he wanted to turn.

This isn't Yours Truly on another one of his wacko jihads. This is your primary witness saying that in his opinion the guy was killed because all of his driver's ed training was focused on parallel parking and he had no clue how to keep the car out of the oncoming lane on the highway.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=13745
Good News vs Sad News

Steve Morris - 2009/10/02 05:16:32 UTC

The pilot had a bad flight two days earlier (poor airspeed management and turning too close to the hill) and got a serious lecture from some more experienced pilots in the LZ. Two days later I was asked to come along by a friend of his and video their flights so they could see what he was doing wrong. Little did I know he had a new harness and helmet that were confusing all of his flying sensations and this was ultimately a factor in the accident. In the video you can clearly see the glider stall and then turn into the hill while the pilot stays prone fighting the turn, but not lowering the nose for airspeed. The whole thing really upset me because I wasn't his instructor and I had no idea of his skill level (I'd never seen him fly before). I was just there to tape the flights and then he died. Everyone was asking me what happened and I didn't have any good answers. I believe the USHGA changed the Hang 2 requirements after this accident to require that pilots demonstrate airspeed control in the prone position as part of the rating, not simply from the uprights (tasks l and m in the H2 rating requirements).

Note the pattern?

If one MUST be new to some form of flying make it upright. Not first teaching someone how to fly prone on an aircraft that's designed to be flown prone and affords lethally compromised control when not flown prone is pure unadulterated insanity and, as far as I'm concerned, criminal negligence.

I just checked the current rating requirements and was stunned to note this "While in preferred flying position" bullshit. What incredible assholes. This is the 130 pound Greenspot of free flying. This isn't the PILOT's "preferred flying position". This is the shitheaded INSTRUCTOR's "preferred flying position". This is EXACTLY like Addendum 1 - "At the discretion of the Observer or Instructor AND NOT THE PILOT." Why allow the Pilot In Command to exercise sound judgment on the safe control of his aircraft? We can have so much more fun when some douchebag on the ground or in Matt's office arbitrarily dictates what he will and won't be allowed to do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjcCyMsOAOQ
dead

I one hundred percent guarantee you that that was NOT his "preferred flying position" 'cause I was down there when he (Alan Wengren (Jack Show "HangDog")) first showed up for lessons. He was a general aviation fixed wing and RC chopper pilot and took to hang gliding like a duck to water. He latched onto me 'cause he recognized that I knew what I was talking about and his instructors were scumbags who didn't. We were in almost daily contact after I left and he was absolutely furious about being forced upright.

US hang gliding is supposed to be pilot controlled aviation - which itself is a monumentally crappy idea. But it's managed to go even farther down the evolutionary rungs of knuckle draggers. In rough descending order: instructor, flight park operator, tug driver. And for combos... Do the math.

This is NOBODY's "preferred flying position" above a hundred feet.

1982/06/20 - Tom Perfetti - 32 - Intermediate - Proair 180 - High Rock, Smithsburg, Maryland - Massive internal injuries

Good conservative pilot on final approach into turbulent and thermal landing zone in early afternoon. Sudden gust pitched glider down radically from forty feet. No chance to recover.

Anybody wanna hazard a guess as to what his "preferred flying position" at forty was? (That's not what happened by the way. He was on final when he got hit by a powerful thermal which pitched him up and dumped him in the falls as he flew out the other side.)

1994/10/29 - Gerry Smith - 56 - extensive, USHGA #216, Advanced, "flying for 20 years" - UP Comet 165 - Sand Dollar Beach, Big Sur
- internal, head, face, hip, arm

Rich Collins:

At about seventy feet he decided to land and began his regular approach. I know this approach well, because after seeing him perform consistently good landings I adopted it as my own. First, you climb to the upright position at about seventy feet on your base leg, with a slight turn toward final so as not to be bumped downwind. Second you turn your glider into the wind and begin final approach. Third, you pull in the bar. I know Gerry pulled in the bar because I saw him do it. Granted, you can't pull it in very far but he did pull in.

No question as to what his "preferred flying position" at seventy was.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=13619
Landing an Atos glider

Vince Endter - 2009/09/13 21:25:45 UTC

I am always trying to improve my hang gliding skills. Even though I have only bent two weak links in the last two years, I have never been satisfied with the way my glider lands. In talking with numerous other Atos pilots, there was a common thread. Some almost never had trouble landing their gliders and other had trouble most of the time. I think I have come up with a reason and a solution.

It came to me when I looked at a picture of a friend, Bill Vogel, landing his Atos VQ. His hands were very high up on the down tubes.

http://www.flyatos.com/bill_landing.jpg


Bill always seems to have a good flare on landing.

And SEVEN DAYS LATER...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=13712
Very sad news

Vince Endter - 2009/09/20 20:38:57 UTC

Of all my reports, this is the hardest I have had to write. Bill Vogel died yesterday landing his glider. I was the only witness to the accident.

We had launched from Elk. Bill launched first, then Rich, then me. We could not get higher than launch. We headed for the thistle field (the creek bed next to the thistle field). Bill was about eight hundred feet below me. He had set up to land between the two sets of wires crossing south of the thistle field. I radioed to him to watch out for then crossing the creek bed. He did not reply.

He continued his approach to land in the upright position. It looked like he was at the same elevation as the wires when the finally saw them about a hundred feet away at thirty feet. He made a quick left hand turn, it looked like he was trying to make a 360. When he was 180 degrees through his left tip hit a bush and his body impacted an eight foot bank at the creek bed's edge. His glider stopped about eight feet past where he first hit. He did not move after the crash.

I radioed Cathy to call 911. I landed about two minutes later and ran to his aid. Rich was about a minute behind me. Bill was unresponsive when I got there. Rich and I performed CPR until he was pronounced by the life flight nurse.

Our hearts go out to his wife Cathy.

And there's no question that his "preferred flying position" above ground effect WASN'T prone with his hands on the basetube.

But the goal of hang gliding is never to maintain a lot of maneuvering speed with the option of picking up a lot more to respond to any surprises, maximize control of the wing before come into ground effect, and survive the flight in good enough shape to give it another shot next weekend - it's always and solely "TO HAVE A GOOD FLARE ON LANDING"!!!

If Chris Starbuck can fly for a third of a century and in a lot of XC competition only able to do wheels then I would guess that students in South Texas would be able to get along pretty well for a long time also.

Good pilots stay prone into ground effect. I stay prone into ground effect. If I can stop it on my feet afterwards - fine. If not, BFD - I knew from much past experience that it was gonna be iffy at best anyway.

We should be teaching people to fly like good pilots from Day One - not forcing them to fly like crappy pilots and then rewarding them with the basetube after they've "mastered" that.

My first flight ever - fifty foot dune - I was given (by Jim Johns) the standard song and dance about rotating up, hands back to the downtubes, flare... I didn't get into the sport 'cause I always dreamed about whipstalling a plane at the precise instant to stop on a dime on my feet. I got into it 'cause I wanted to fly like a bird. And I subconsciously did the math and realized that the whipstall was gonna cost me airtime. So I just extended my glide and let the plane land when it wanted to - like every other pilot on the planet EXCEPT hang glider pilots do. And it was really cool! And I got mildly rebuked for not doing it right. And then I drank the Kool-Aid and spent the next several decades allowing that idiot cultural no-stepper tyranny compromise my safety, break my downtubes, and insure that the last thirty seconds of damn near every high flight I ever made were spent in well justified fear of screwing up at the end.

Ever read a Wills Wing owner's manual real carefully? Ever notice that they're telling you to violate the hell out of their own placard limitation for pitch at one of the two most critical and dangerous phases of the flight? Doesn't that seem a wee bit weird?

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."

Hey Mike, maybe if you'd revise your owner's manuals to read more like sailplane manuals hang gliders wouldn't be so difficult to land and more people would survive more flights in good enough shape to buy more of your gliders.

Should instructors teach students to fly from the basetube before they go off a mountain? I dunno...most training hills aren't very big and students don't have a lot of time to transition, do some turns, and then transition again. They certainly don't have time to do all that and go prone.

I'm ASTONISHED that you're asking that. That's exactly what EVERYBODY was doing on dinky little dunes and inland training hills when I learned and I'd guess for at least fifteen years thereafter.

And there is NEVER a need to "then transition again" on a training hill (unless the ground is really wet).

When I was "teaching" on the dunes I'd start people off on the basetube whenever there was enough wind to make it easy. If I had really been smart I'd have had them all land that way too when nobody was looking.

In 1994 I was in an Instructor clinic run by Mike Robertson who's something of a pioneer and was a big wheel in the USHGA Instructor machinery. He recognizes stand ups for what they are, lands on his wheels whenever possible, made us all land a trainer on wheels, and pushed us in that direction.

I'm glad I had tandem training before I first soloed...

I'm glad I didn't.

I agree that pilots should be able to land on wheels should they choose without criticism.

And get any rating, One through Five, for which they otherwise qualify completely on their wheels on strips, not spots - just like people do in REAL aviation, from weekend Cessna jockeys to Alaskan bush pilots to carrier fighter jocks. But the problem is that pilots who have absolutely no need to land on their feet are unable to choose to land on their wheels and get rated. They are thus pretty much ineligible to fly ANYWHERE and TOTALLY ineligible to aerotow.

But only performing wheel landings will limit the sites a pilot can fly.

1. Not as much as a broken arm - or neck.
2. I've flown 52 sites in ten states in my career - none of which would've been put the least bit off limits to wheels (or floats) only.
3. I'm wondering just how much trouble it would be to clear a two hundred foot wheels safe strip at Kagel.

[Zack C]

Then seven years ago Bo's at Currituck on a borrowed Combat with two millimeter racing wires that he's been advised not to get creative with. And he gets creative with it. And he breaks it.

That happened not long before I started flying. I heard that he was looping that glider while visiting Lookout, and when told of this Christian's response was 'That man will die in a hang glider.' The incident above happened not long after.

I recall going up in a Cessna with an F-4 carrier pilot while he did a few touches and gos and him being very patient on the issue of it making contact with the runway.

I guess 'roundout point' would be more accurate than 'touchdown point' (well, unless you're talking about carriers). But I'm out of my league too.

I'm looking at the last thing I don't wanna hit at the downwind edge of the field. I'm trying to get as close to it as I possibly can while carrying enough speed reserve to deal with any unpleasant surprises. After that I'm all accuracied out. How can that POSSIBLY not work?

It may work, but flying close to obstacles and/or turning near the ground sounds risky to me. What you describe sounds like an RLF approach, which as I said are not very forgiving. I'd rather use more space if it's available.

What if there aren't any obstacles on the downwind edge of the field but the field is small (one of my 'class 3' LZs)? The lakeside LZ at Valle de Bravo is about 200' long when the water level is high but completely unrestricted on two sides. You don't need to turn near the ground/water to land there but you do need to be reasonably accurate.

What if the field is so narrow you can't perform a 180 within its confines? Discounting the runway, which we're not supposed to fly over below 500', the LZ at Columbus is like that. It's bordered by powerlines on the downwind leg edge so you have to turn onto base with sufficient altitude to clear them. You can see it at 30 secs into this vid from last weekend (password = 'red'):


Columbus 3/6/2011

(We had a light, switchy wind day just cuz I just said we never get those. First landing I ran out, second I had a late/weak flare because a wing was wanting to come up.) This field is so long that accuracy isn't too important, but what if you had the same scenario with a short field (with nothing higher than, say, crops on the downwind edge)?

I think the best approach for any situation depends on the site and conditions. For example, I don't normally do figure eight approaches, but I think a short but wide field without tall obstacles around it in high wind is an ideal candidate for that type. Some approaches will require some degree of accuracy. Just not to within 25'.

Motion: Landing in high grass is dangerous. Any seconds?

To be clear, when I say tall grass I'm just talking about maybe one foot, which I don't consider dangerous. (Yosemite does get taller, however.)

I think the main thing we disagree about regarding landing on wheels is the suitability of almost all sites for wheel landing. My experience doesn't match yours (Hearne; Columbus also gets tall grass). And it doesn't seem to match Jayne's either:

Landing on wheels makes it difficult or impossible to land safely at many mountain sites. Landing on bumpy or uneven terrain can be unsafe too. Don't forget why you made this choice. Go to the training hill and learn to land on your feet or don't fly sites where wheel landings are not a safe option.

I'm thinking that Christian and Jayne are making a pretty good case for their technique for wheel landing in tall(ish) grass being safer than the conventional approach.

I don't know what that technique is. There's a point where grass becomes so tall wheels aren't going to make any difference (Yosemite very much gets this way). The only thing I can think of is it involves stalling the glider right above the grass similar to what we do to land with small floats at the lake above the surface (jump to 2:36 in this video). This technique is not much easier than foot landing...on a nil wind day I once botched it and whacked (if you can 'whack' in water). (We now use bigger floats in light wind that land largely like wheels.)

My first glider was a North Wing Horizon (like a Pulse but with VG). I got pneumatic tires with it because the 12" plastic wheels don't have VG hubs. When I took it down to the hills at Lookout to try it out, Christian said I had to use 12" wheels out there, even though it meant removing the VG cleat and wheel hub from the base tube. He said the reason was that double surface gliders can glide beyond the short grass at the hills and the taller grass can catch the base tube with the smaller wheels.

This brings up something we haven't talked about yet but is very important to this conversation: wheel size. Those 12" wheels (like Jayne used) can land in a much greater range of environments than the tiny wheels on my S2. But they don't fit anything above Falcons.

...your hands are up high on the downtubes right where they're supposed to be.

I always thought that was a bad thing. I thought your hands were supposed to be shoulder-height because the higher they are the more they're already partially extended, limiting the amount you can extend them to flare. It's another one of those things I want to experiment with but can't untrain myself enough to do. Many say your hands should be high but I've never heard an explanation as to why. Pagen says shoulder-height.

If that glider abruptly stops for any reason before you tell it to and you don't get your hands outta there FAST you're gonna snap an arm in half or rip it out of its socket.

Tell me about it. Two years ago I snapped BOTH of my arms in half with my hands in that position when a wingtip hit some corn and the glider spun and nosed in (a result of overshooting). I probably wouldn't have had a scratch if I had let go or if my hands were on the basetube.

But barring a situation like that (overshooting), what would cause a glider to abruptly stop just prior to flare?

An abrupt stop on a wheel landing seems much more likely, which as I've seen can lead to a broken wrist (though I'll take that over a broken humerus).

When you've been hit by nasty shit up in the air have you ever had an urge to rotate to vertical and grab the downtubes to enhance your control of the glider?

Actually, not only have I had the urge, I've actually done this (well, maybe not rotated vertical). I think I have better roll control (but less pull-in ability) on the downtubes. I'm reluctant to say this because I can't find the source, but I believe Joe Greblo is one of the few people that agrees. To me it's easier to pull against a downtube than push against the basetube.

The video you linked to is no longer available.

I'm ASTONISHED that you're asking that.

I've never seen anyone go to the base tube on a training hill flight...the concept is foreign to me. I'm going to have to defer to your experience as an instructor on the practicality of doing this, but I remember in training having to go immediately into a bank as soon as I launched to fly towards one target and then change heading 90 degrees towards another target before landing. I barely had time to do that. I certainly don't think I had time to do all that and go prone.

I'm glad I had tandem training before I first soloed...

I'm glad I didn't.

How come? Along with paragliding, we're the only form of aviation where students are expected to fly without ever being in the same aircraft as an instructor. It's great to be able to practice flying approaches with an instructor before doing it alone, and the training process is much faster flying tandems because you get so much more airtime (and you first solo with many times the airtime hill-only students have).

I did hill and tandem aerotow training simultaneously and first soloed both off the mountain and behind a tug the same day. If I had to do it again, I'd do just tandems until I was soloing and then head to the hills to learn to foot launch and land.

Zack

[Tad Eareckson]

...'That man will die in a hang glider.'

Wish he had died in a hang glider before he took out a student and started serving as another role model for Lauren.

I guess 'roundout point' would be more accurate than 'touchdown point'...

Yeah, ROUNDOUT POINT I can live with. That's pretty analogous to what I'm doing with field versus runway landings. They DEFINITELY don't wanna undershoot the runway but they don't wanna waste much of it either.

...well, unless you're talking about carriers...

I think it's a pretty safe bet that they're way less willing to kill themselves doing spot landings than we are - despite the fact that they totally need to do them and we totally don't. If they're not lined up very well they're gonna hit the gas and give it another shot. John Simon did just fine as a carrier pilot. It wasn't until he put on his hang glider hat that 99 percent of his IQ was neutralized.

It may work...

I did it that way for decades - there's no MAY about it.

...but flying close to obstacles and/or turning near the ground sounds risky to me.

Zack C - 2011/03/10 03:54:20 UTC

Yeah, it's intuitively obvious, but you know my feelings on intuition.

There's lotsa stuff in flying that SOUNDS and even looks risky but is, in fact, the precise opposite. It's NEVER the guy you see wanging the turn from downwind to final with his low tip a couple of feet from the leaves that's gonna get hurt. Keep your eyes on the bozo floating nice and level on final 75 feet over the trees.

This is kinda like when you don't wanna hit something you speed up and aim for it - you don't slow down and try to turn away from it. John Seward was killed 'cause he slowed down and lost the option of turning away.

I learned to fly on the dunes and if you weren't doing really hard turns really near the ground ALL THE TIME you didn't get any airtime. We made a lot of passes with tips pulling up sand. (Boy that was fun.)

What you describe sounds like an RLF approach, which as I said are not very forgiving.

You don't need to say that. You're flying a glider, you get one shot, and it's a restricted field. But coming in you're carrying a lot of speed - so you can go back up and adjust if anything happens.

I'd rather use more space if it's available.

I'd rather use as little space as possible 'cause I'm never quite sure that I'm not gonna get accelerated by a tailwind or floated by a thermal. I'm ALWAYS way more worried about the trees at the up than the down wind end and that assignment of fear proportion has never gotten me in trouble.

What if there aren't any obstacles on the downwind edge of the field but the field is small (one of my 'class 3' LZs)?

If you're coming into a "field" there's SOMETHING at its edges defining it for the purpose of the exercise and SOMETHING at its downwind edge you wanna fly over. It can be a tree line, an electric fence, newly sprouted corn, a puddle, or, at Ridgely, an asphalt taxiway. I made a sacred vow never to land on or just short of a taxiway 'cause I NEVER assume I'm still gonna be on my feet when the glider stops moving forward. And I've seen what happens to the harnesses of people who weren't as afraid of them as I was.

You don't need to turn near the ground/water to land there but you do need to be reasonably accurate.

If I'm on a long final I can easily misjudge the headwind and/or my glide - one way or the other - and I'm farther out of range of my field than I need to be.

If I just keep 360ing over the field - biased towards the upwind end - it's not gonna get out of range. When I've done enough 360s that the thought of an extra one scares me I start playing downwind, base, final. If I'm low I can tighten it up. If I'm high I can swing wide and extend a leg or two. If I'm still high on base I can extend it, pick up some extra speed, and wang a 180 to come back to the point at which I wanna turn onto final. And/or I can slip the hell out of the turn into the field.

There's no such thing as "too high" until after you've committed to final so I never commit to final until I really have to.

If I do a nice "conservative" long final and I'm:

low I can break both arms clipping a taxiway sign the way John Simon did on that idiot stunt he pulled three years ago;

high I pull in and end up going a million miles an hour very efficiently in ground effect.

Hang gliders don't have engines like most other planes so we can't adjust our flight paths as easily or change our minds and try it again. But we can make really tight turns and we need to be exploiting that advantage.

I get so sick and tired of hearing all these idiot instructors pounding into students this terror of making low turns. No, you definitely don't wanna FUCK UP a low turn but you pretty much only do that by being way slow. Low turns are extremely valuable arrows in your safety quiver. But what do the instructors want them honing and having in their quivers? Right - spot landings. And where are we getting people creamed on a regular basis?

Tony Ameo wasn't practicing crisp low turns from the basetube when he was killed.

First landing I ran out, second I had a late/weak flare because a wing was wanting to come up.

http://www.chgpa.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3695
good day until the wreck

Lauren Tjaden - 2008/12/31 04:29:12 UTC

came in with no wind after an hour and had right wing drop. instead of wrestling gilder straight i tried to flare while desperately trying to straighten.

bad bad whack. horrible pain, i could not move. screaming with pain, literally. took a very long time to get me out and to the hospital.

What if the field is so narrow you can't perform a 180 within its confines?

Chandelle. Or as close to it as you feel comfortable.

Let's make things at Columbus short and a lot more uncomfortably narrow, replace the runway with a tree line, and have corn growing just beyond the downwind end. Fly downwind a bit high right over the powerlines.

It's bordered by powerlines on the downwind leg edge so you have to turn onto base with sufficient altitude to clear them.

If you're right over them you can't get trapped on the wrong side of them. Adjust your glide to come out about at the beginning of the corn. As you get there keep easing the bar back until you're going like a bat out of hell really low over the wire then wang a 180. You're gonna climb and you're gonna have very crisp control. Slip the turn onto final if you wanna save some runway.

(I wanna see some reversing wangs on the next video.)

For example, I don't normally do figure eight approaches, but I think a short but wide field without tall obstacles around it in high wind is an ideal candidate for that type.

Fer sure. In a high enough wind you can come straight down or even back up. Good scenario for staying on the basetube all the way down 'cause you're likely to get trashed by whatever's upwind from you.

I think the main thing we disagree about regarding landing on wheels is the suitability of almost all sites for wheel landing.

I don't think we disagree as much as you do. My main thrusts are:

- Fuck spots.

- Land however is safest or, failing that, reasonably safe.

- You are probably more likely to break an arm practicing for not breaking an arm at Yosemite than you are to actually break an arm at Yosemite doing either a crappy foot or good wheel-less belly landing.

And it doesn't seem to match Jayne's either...

Correct. It doesn't SEEM to.

Landing on wheels makes it difficult or impossible to land safely at many mountain sites. Landing on bumpy or uneven terrain can be unsafe too. Don't forget why you made this choice. Go to the training hill and learn to land on your feet or don't fly sites where wheel landings are not a safe option.

But if you read her entire article carefully you notice that she never says that she's actually been in a situation in which she needed or it would've been advisable to land on her feet.

I don't know what that technique is.

I think what they're saying is that you may be better off than conventional by staying prone on the basetube, getting the glider to the "surface" of the grass, going full out to kill most of your groundspeed, and plopping down staying full out to keep the nose up.

Those 12" wheels (like Jayne used) can land in a much greater range of environments than the tiny wheels on my S2. But they don't fit anything above Falcons.

Ya do what ya can with what's available. And if you're stuck with small wheels you focus on the great glide you're getting and accept that there are gonna be fewer situations in which wheels are gonna be able to bail you out. But it sure would be nice if we put a tenth of the resources we use for parachutes and hook knives into wheels and releases.

I thought your hands were supposed to be shoulder-height...

I couldn't really tell you where my hands are - I've always done it by feel. It seems to me that long discussions on the issue are wastes of time 'cause in a millisecond you can adjust the position as called for in a particular situation.

It's another one of those things I want to experiment with but can't untrain myself enough to do.

Maybe you've got them there 'cause it works there. Did you need anybody to tell you the proper hands positions for your steering wheel? And you easily adjust those on the fly as well.

Two years ago I snapped BOTH of my arms in half with my hands in that position when a wingtip hit some corn and the glider spun and nosed in (a result of overshooting).

HOLY SHIT! REALLY? That's ridiculous. No other sport has figured out how to hurt its participants that badly on flat ground at those kinds of speeds. And this shit happens ALL the time. I've known so many people who've done something like this - and some of them don't and can't come back into the sport.

You've just broken your arms. I put my Satan hat on and tell you I can back the clock up to when you were at fifty feet for a do-over but for the rest of your flying career you've gotta land on wheels. Do you take the deal?

But barring a situation like that (overshooting), what would cause a glider to abruptly stop just prior to flare?

It's monkeys and typewriters. You put lotsa people skimming the ground twenty-some miles an hour configured like that shit is gonna happen. If they don't figure out how to do it Mother Nature will.

I've launched off the back of Steve Wendt's truck in smooth air at the signal and found myself staring at the license plate. I've been skimming just fine at ten feet waiting for the Dragonfly to climb out and gone momentarily weightless. And if that doesn't work we can just keep screwing up the flare timing and get the same results.

An abrupt stop on a wheel landing seems much more likely, which as I've seen can lead to a broken wrist (though I'll take that over a broken humerus).

Yeah, and you can break your neck too. But you can let go easier and typically you're gonna swing and have the basetube ripped out of your hands anyway. But when you're vertical with your hands on the downtubes they're pretty much trapped behind them. And people break also break wrists and necks shooting for standup.

...(well, maybe not rotated vertical).

Then the answer is "no" 'cause it was an "and" question. I think I've grabbed a downtube a couple of times getting kicked around on the dunes a very long time ago.

...(but less pull-in ability)...

Yeah. That's the asterisk. Joe's pretty smart and, without going to the trouble of reviewing or thinking I'd say that you probably DO have more roll authority up on the downtubes - FOR ANY GIVEN AIRSPEED. But you don't see people at aerobatic competitions going vertical and grabbing high to roll hard - you see them staying prone and stuffing the bar to make the glider REALLY responsive.

The video you linked to is no longer available.

Yeah, I just checked the link directly and through the thread on which it was posted.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=12813
My 2nd mountain launch

Gone. It wouldn't have brought back any happy memories for me either.

I've never seen anyone go to the base tube on a training hill flight...the concept is foreign to me.

Polar opposite from my era and/or neck of the woods. And now that it occurs to me...

By the way, Christian Thoreson was still Lookout's flight school director when I trained there.

Christian Thoreson - 2004/10

Thus wheel landings, the safest and easiest way to consistently land a hang glider...

So why was Lookout doing it that way then? Did Christian cave to USHGA? Matt? Or was he just not implementing his own convictions?

I'm going to have to defer to your experience as an instructor on the practicality of doing this, but I remember in training having to go immediately into a bank as soon as I launched to fly towards one target and then change heading 90 degrees towards another target before landing.

If you were gonna fly that same task on that same hill tomorrow is that how you'd do it?

I used to fly the Kitty Hawk Spectacular on the dunes each May and it was all about pylons - which I loved - and spot landings - which I hated. And when there was nothing in the way of air you sure didn't have a lot of time to spare. NOBODY EVER did a pylon vertical.

I certainly don't think I had time to do all that and go prone.

Going prone is SO EASY. Nobody has a problem going prone. It's trying to rock back up and grab a downtube that nobody can do without bouncing a hand back off a tail wire and crashing. (I wish I had a nickel...) Read the John Simon suicide - the 2011/01/19 post on this thread.

How come?

That was something of a throwaway line - motivated primarily by the thought of any of the ninety percent of the tandem instructors I know being closer than a half mile or so and this tandem requirement for the AT signoff that Tracy (and probably Matt) rammed down everybody's throat.

But for me personally... I picked up hang gliding VERY quickly - went from Zero to Two in five consecutive days on the dunes. I didn't need or want anybody up there babysitting me and on the next flight I could have easily soloed at Lookout with fifteen coming in at the ramp and stayed up for three hours. My first tow - later that year (1980) with little more in the way of relevant skills - was solo foot launch with a stationary winch and a THREE point (control frame corners) bridle to five hundred feet and I didn't need anybody's help on that one either.

Along with paragliding, we're the only form of aviation where students are expected to fly without ever being in the same aircraft as an instructor.

We're also the only two flavors of fixed wing aviation that can take off and land at under twenty miles an hour.

Most of the people - myself included - around here from that era when there really wasn't any tandem or towing (or at least any towing that anyone could survive more than two or three times) DID experience a lot of frustration trying to get cleared for high. We had hundred foot training hills and dunes and thousand foot ridges and nothing in between.

If I had to do it again, I'd do just tandems until I was soloing and then head to the hills to learn to foot launch and land.

Sounds like a plan. Not even sure you'd have had to head to the hills for the foot stuff. One of the most valuable things I ever did was volunteer to take a trainer back to the shop at the end of a class. Just running into the wind across the sand I really got the feel of flying and turning the thing. I think new people could develop a lot of skills at local soccer fields.

[Zack C]

Tad,

Regarding your approach to approaches...you, sir, are a much better pilot than me. I've been moving through this sport rather slowly and I've got a long way to go before I have the confidence to try that kind of stuff.

If I do a nice "conservative" long final and I'm...high I pull in and end up going a million miles an hour very efficiently in ground effect.

Exactly what happened to me when I overshot. After that I vowed to start practicing tighter approaches...and I did. I traded my Horizon in for a Falcon when I got back into flying and practiced approaches out the wazoo, including RLFs. But one time I misjudged my altitude and turned downwind too low. I tried to throw it around back into the wind but I dragged a wingtip before I could level out. The result, fortunately, was only a broken downtube (the only aluminum I've ever broken). I suspect you're thinking that I would have been fine if I'd had plenty of reserve speed, and you'd probably be right. But that's what I mean about that sort of thing being less forgiving. (Plus, I was flying a Falcon and they have terrible energy retention.) Do you really think it's a good idea for instructors to be teaching inexperienced students this sort of thing? I expect a lot more carnage would result than is currently caused by spot landing practice. Students are often told that good landings come before accuracy (not that they'll necessarily listen), and there's no reason a spot attempt has to be any more dangerous than any other landing.

After that incident I quit the super-tight approaches.

Regarding Lauren Tjaden's 2008/12/31 incident report, did she have wheels?

(I wanna see some reversing wangs on the next video.)

I've got a ways to go. We had an overcast truck tow day Sunday so I practiced flying 8's with 45 degree banks. I don't have anywhere near the airspeed control I'd like before I start getting more radical.

I don't think we disagree as much as you do. My main thrusts are:
1. Fuck spots.

Agreed.

2. Land however is safest or, failing that, reasonably safe.

Agreed. It's been a while and I've never done it with my S2, but I've come in on wheels intentionally when I felt foot landing would be risky. But I also think foot landing is safer in many situations (depending on the site, conditions, pilot skill, and equipment).

3. You are probably more likely to break an arm practicing for not breaking an arm at Yosemite than you are to actually break an arm at Yosemite doing either a crappy foot or good wheel-less belly landing.

This one I'm not certain about, especially if you follow 2 above, but since you said 'probably' I take it you're not certain either.

So I agree that we don't disagree that much. =)

But it sure would be nice if we put a tenth of the resources we use for parachutes and hook knives into wheels and releases.

Hell yes.

Once I was getting my glider worked on at Lookout. Conditions were great and I wanted to fly so they let me fly their aerotow rental Falcon 3 195, which they've equipped with tandem-style castering wheels on the front and wheel boom on the rear. No dolly required, which was way cool, but after a wonderful flight I had to laugh at how ridiculously easy the landing was. Your body doesn't even touch the ground. I wish they'd had these when I first started soloing. I thought to myself, 'Wouldn't it be cool if it was always this easy to land a hang glider?'

'Tandem' wheels aren't practical for many reasons, but with enough effort, maybe we can come up with something almost as effective but without the disadvantages. One can dream...

You've just broken your arms. I put my Satan hat on and tell you I can back the clock up to when you were at fifty feet for a do-over but for the rest of your flying career you've gotta land on wheels. Do you take the deal?

You may not remember, but you asked me that question after I posted a write up of the incident shortly after it occurred. (Looking back at that thread, I see John Simon responded.) At the time I didn't really get your questioning because wheels had nothing to do with the incident (I had them and they made no difference), but I now realize that your point was that (as I pointed out above) I probably would have been OK had I stayed on the basetube.

So to answer your question...that incident cost me a lot (in far more ways than just financially) and cost people I care about a lot as well. Yeah, I'd take the deal, even if it meant never realizing my Ultimate Goal In Life.

But the way I see it, the accident was the result of overshooting, not my decision to flare.

So why was Lookout doing it that way then? Did Christian cave to USHGA? Matt? Or was he just not implementing his own convictions?

Dunno. I never talked to Christian about wheel landings. After I finally figured out how to launch a glider and had a number of training hill flights ending on wheels (as they have all beginning students do), he told me what to do to flare and I took a gulp and tried it on my next flight and it worked. After that it was all foot landings. (We used Ravens back then for training and they were ridiculously easy to land.)

I know Matt doesn't have a problem with wheel landings...he went with us on my first trip to Valle and landed on his wheels every time (due to a physical ailment)...and that was with the same tiny wheels I'm using on my S2.

I suspect that it's a combination of USHPA (the rating requirements specify foot landings) and the fact that pilots need a lot of coaching to get the hang of foot landing so it's best to get them proficient in it with the assistance of an instructor if they're gonna get proficient in it at all.

If you were gonna fly that same task on that same hill tomorrow is that how you'd do it?

Most definitely. Even when I go to the big hill just to practice launches and landings and don't have to fly a task I still stay on the downtubes.

NOBODY EVER did a pylon vertical.

Because they wanted better control or because they were flying so close to the ground their feet would get in the way if they were vertical? (I've never been to the Spectacular so don't know.)

Going prone is SO EASY. Nobody has a problem going prone.

I disagree. On a couple of occasions I've had trouble getting my feet in the boot of my pod. And I don't wanna mess with transitioning to prone while I'm maneuvering. When I foot launch into ridge lift I turn first and only transition when I'm stabilized along the ridge. The training hill task I described is similar in that it requires an immediate turn, but it gives you even less breathing room than flying a ridge because you have to turn again as soon as the first turn is complete.

Not in USHGA's book. It doesn't matter so much if you get killed on a landing. What matters is that you prioritized getting down on your feet all the way to the bloody end. I can name you two people killed by that mind-set in the past sixteen months.

Can you refresh my memory of whom?

Zack

[Tad Eareckson]

You may not remember...

Wow. No, I didn't remember. And I didn't know that was you. The first I really knew of your existence was a bit over thirteen months ago after John Moody contacted me (while I was still locked in combat over weak links with the paraglider idiots) and started nosing around the Houston forum.

Where to even begin?

Lemme try this 'cause it's something of a lightbulb after reading, reviewing, and rethinking all that and related material...

Your and John Simon's instructors should be shot.

And by instructors I mean the people who were working with you guys in the fields through the people who "taught" and certified them all the way up to the top of USHGA. They're the ones who did all that damage to those four arms.

On 2008/04/10 John breaks two flying into a sign at a wide open airport in calm air and Paul Tjaden (who himself has badly snapped an arm out of Ridgely with his hands on the downtubes in the middle of a soft plowed field) announces it on the local wire with a post titled "Freak accident at Highland". There was nothing either "FREAK" or "ACCIDENT" about it. A freak accident at Highland would be an escaped crocodile grabbing him from the pond by the setup area and a piano falling out of a cargo plane and on top of everybody while they're trying to pull him back. He flew into a fucking sign surrounded by zillions of acres of soft mown grass.

I don't give a rat's ass if he was an airline and carrier pilot and the Ridgely XC record holder - he couldn't land at a Hang One level and should never have received that rating. That should be covered in the ground school before a prospective student is ever allowed to touch a glider.

Always fly toward the:
- a) pond
- b) sign
- c) tree
- d) Grizzly
- e) powerlines
- f) hovering helicopter
- g) terrorist with assault rifle
- h) grass
- i) a, c, or h
- j) none of the above

I tried to make a point along those lines 'cept extremely diplomatically and gently but I start getting moronic comments from Head Trauma who's got me on his Ignore List but nevertheless spews away on what he thought I was writing and Allen Sparks whose take was:

Shit happens. There are no recipes that prevent it.

So I was forced to get a little more blunt.

John never engaged in the discussion.

Then in the 2009/01 issue of Hang Gliding - which, interestingly, would probably have been delivered to your mailbox about a week prior to your departure for your little Mexican adventure - appears this anonymous and totally moronic account of the "freak accident" which was a collaboration between John and Joe Gregor, USHGA's Accident Review Committee Chairman and a former Air Force pilot/Colonel. (See my 2011/01/19 post in this thread.) It took half a bottle of vodka and a handful of sleeping pills to get me back to something resembling normal after I read it.

So then on 2009/03/17 Wonder Boy starts the Oz Report thread based on your report. I think I just gave it a quick cut to the chase sorta skim and filed it under another needless attempt at USHGA safe landing breaks two more arms.

And then John makes that idiot post and I'm totally smoldering.

I plan to practice my approaches quite a bit more.

Yeah John, how much practice do you need to be able to not fly into a sign? At Kitty Hawk I had an eleven-year old kid I'd have trusted to totally miss the sign about halfway through his second lesson.

These guys are PILOTS - military PILOTS. Joe's got a PhD in plasma physics but flies with a brake lever on his downtube, a bent pin barrel on his shoulder, and a fuzzy loop of 130 pound Greenspot at the top of his bridle. (And on 2007/04/28 he also broke both arms at once after getting hammered on a Falcon 195 with no wheels in the Woodstock LZ and not letting go in time (a couple of months after flying Valle de Bravo - small world).)

These guys - as PILOTS - are totally incapable of anything resembling a thought process once they've received INSTRUCTION. When Adam tells them two plus two equals eight they salute and say "SIR! YES SIR!" and from that point until their bodies are pulled from the smoldering wreckage two plus two is gonna equal eight.

You were never taught how to land. You were taught how to stop a glider on your feet somewhere inside a flat mown field half the size of Nebraska. You got a lot of stuff right in your postmortem analysis. You shouldn't have had to break two arms to get those lightbulbs glowing. It was the job of those stupid bastards at Lookout to make sure you were totally hardwired on all that and several times more long before your Two card was signed.

And you're still not there. You've obviously got a lot of aptitude for flying. Frank Sauber had as little as I've ever seen. But before I signed his card I had him making superb passes and very hard turns very close to the trees off of a ninety foot training hill and was totally confident in his ability to get into a fairly tight field. The history behind your x-rays has so much in common with John's and, if you hafta pick something, "long final" is probably as good as anything.

Regarding your approach to approaches...you, sir, are a much better pilot than me.

Too bad you learned at Lookout instead of Jockey's Ridge.

I've been moving through this sport rather slowly and I've got a long way to go before I have the confidence to try that kind of stuff.

Go nuts up high, push your comfort level a bit when you're doing stuff down low where it counts.

I remember the first time I tried a wang. On a ridge in some strong boring air. I had no freakin' idea where I was during the maneuver or which direction I was pointed when I came out. It occurred to me that I had just deliberately done everything I had been trying not to all of my previous flying career on the dunes. But I was never disoriented again afterwards.

The result, fortunately, was only a broken downtube (the only aluminum I've ever broken).

You've broken one downtube and two arms - and not even at the same time. I've trashed about 56 downtubes and - aside from a cut lip from kissing the basetube on a minor stall on top of a dune and some MAJOR bruising after going into the trees - I've never done anything worth mentioning to anything above the ankles. And that ain't counting basetubes, keels, leading edges, and maybe cross spars. (I don't think I've ever done a kingpost.) Again - Jockey's Ridge. Great place to crash and learn how to.

(Plus, I was flying a Falcon and they have terrible energy retention.)

That's kind of a self correcting problem. The crappier the energy retention the easier it is to put it down where you want - assuming you've made the field.

Do you really think it's a good idea for instructors to be teaching inexperienced students this sort of thing?

I dunno. Based upon your 2009/01/13 Valle de Bravo flight how good an idea do you think it is for instructors NOT to be teaching inexperienced students this sort of thing? Hell, I once watched an inexperienced student who had been taught to stay level get a really good glide off a hundred foot training hill and fly into the side of a parked van. But that was cool 'cause he had followed one of hang gliding's sacred Primary Directives - Never turn below a hundred feet.

I expect a lot more carnage would result than is currently caused by spot landing practice.

Absolutely not. I ALWAYS pushed turns, NEVER MENTIONED spots ('cept when forced to 'cause of the rating requirements which, if I had to do over again, would ignore ("Yeah, that looks like fifty feet to me. You can get off your belly now and bring the glider back up."), and NEVER had a problem.

A pilot at that level is gonna have a reasonable feel for the glider and is gonna be a little scared. He's not gonna blow a turn and kill himself just 'cause I've told him to do something. When people tell them to hit spots they're low and level - thus not scared - and thus a whole helluva lot more likely to compromise and crash because somebody's told them to do something stupid.

And turns - especially low turns - are FUN! For the person doing them I mean. Spots are only fun for the people watching them.

And you start them gradually and just keep pushing your comfort level.

And you know how blasting straight up off the back of a truck SOUNDS really dangerous but FEELS really good? Low wangs to turn into fields are the same way.

I'm sure I'd be more comfortable with my wing if I did. 45 degree banks are about as extreme as I get.

Go with that. (The first sentence.)

Students are often told that good landings come before accuracy (not that they'll necessarily listen), and there's no reason a spot attempt has to be any more dangerous than any other landing.

In my perfect world I would NEVER MENTION accuracy with respect to where to stop the glider. "See that field? Turn there and there, come in through that low spot in the treeline, land." If you're necessarily talking to a Hang 2.75 about accuracy he shouldn't be landing there anyway.

After that incident I quit the super-tight approaches.

Sounds kinda like hang and para glider people and weak links - either under one G or nothing. Or Charles Schneider - A hook-in check gave me a false positive on my leg loops one time so I stopped doing hook-in checks (and everybody else should stop doing hook-in checks too). Don't quit them - make them a little wider, higher, faster.

Regarding Lauren Tjaden's 2008/12/31 incident report, did she have wheels?

Dunno. Doesn't necessarily matter 'cause I can tell you from personal experience that even with big Finsterwalder pneumatic wheels on a round basetube on firm flat turf you can break a faired downtube trying for a standup landing. And if you can break a faired downtube you can dislocate a shoulder.

And note that Lauren (and Paul) had the same instructors that John Simon did and have similar x-rays.

I've got a ways to go. We had an overcast truck tow day Sunday so I practiced flying 8's with 45 degree banks. I don't have anywhere near the airspeed control I'd like before I start getting more radical.

This is why God gave us winches, overcast days, and altitude. If you practice 80 degree banks up high you're gonna be really good at 45 degree banks down low. What are you afraid of? As long as you're high and rolled there's not much that can happen to you. All you've gotta worry about is being level and badly stalled.

But I also think foot landing is safer in many situations (depending on the site, conditions, pilot skill, and equipment).

How many of those situations have you actually been in and how often?

This one I'm not certain about, especially if you follow 2 above, but since you said 'probably' I take it you're not certain either.

NOTHING - outside of death and taxes - is CERTAIN. But I'll betchya I can do a hundred flights at Yosemite on my HPAT 158 minus wheels and never touching the downtubes from three seconds after launch without needing a trip to the clinic after any of them. Might need a few spares but compare/contrast your ten at Valle de Bravo.

No dolly required, which was way cool, but after a wonderful flight I had to laugh at how ridiculously easy the landing was.

Dennis Pagen - 1991/01

Landings and probably bad landings will always be with us as long as we take to the sky and insist on using our feet as landing gear.

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."

Hey Mike, ya ever stop to think just how many many people actually AREN'T flying hang gliders precisely because they're insanely difficult and dangerous to FOOT land. Some of those people have been just frustrated and/or scared off, some have been seriously injured, some crippled or paralyzed, some killed. Ever think what that IS DOING to your sales potential?

I thought to myself, 'Wouldn't it be cool if it was always this easy to land a hang glider?'

DEFINITELY. We gotta stop defining and thinking of these things as foot landable aircraft and start defining and thinking of them the way we are and/or should be using them - as cartoppable sailplanes.

'Tandem' wheels aren't practical for many reasons, but with enough effort, maybe we can come up with something almost as effective but without the disadvantages. One can dream...

1. They aren't necessary either. You need castering front wheels and the tail wheel for launch only.
2. There isn't any effort or dreaming we need to do. Paraplegic pilots have been flying - and landing - quite successfully like this for decades. All we need are good wheels and skid plates on the harness.

Looking back at that thread, I see John Simon responded.

But, conspicuously, not to me (again).

At the time I didn't really get your questioning because wheels had nothing to do with the incident...

This time you find that the damned pod zipper has jammed and - aw shit - the wheels are back home in the closet.

...I probably would have been OK had I stayed on the basetube.

Hard to imagine you coming off worse.

So to answer your question...

I realize now I practically plagiarized myself word for word.

...and cost people I care about a lot as well.

Yes. One of the points I'm trying to get across to Bob Kuczewski regarding his vision of hang gliding as a bastion of individual freedoms.

...even if it meant never realizing my Ultimate Goal In Life.

No no no no no. You are obviously very confused about your Ultimate Goal In Life so lemme help you out.
Your Ultimate Goal In Life is not to do a long sled run past some cool looking rocks and plop down into some tallish grass. Any halfwitted advanced Hang One can pull that off in his sleep.
Your Ultimate Goal In Life is to suck up as much knowledge about hang gliding as you possibly can so you can spearhead a revolution to rescue the sport from the stupid evil bastards who control it so I can let my nephew participate without having to worry about him getting a set of x-rays like yours after two hundred flights. Do I make myself clear?

But the way I see it, the accident was the result of overshooting, not my decision to flare.

Mostly, but both. And a whole lotta other shit too.

After I finally figured out how to launch a glider and had a number of training hill flights ending on wheels (as they have all beginning students do)...

When I was down there a couple of springs ago I didn't see anyone touch a basetube. But I don't know what level students I was looking at. (And I was furious looking at that video of Alan Wengren on the downtubes the whole way from the ramp to the LZ - made me wanna gag.)

I know Matt doesn't have a problem with wheel landings...

Probably doesn't have a problem with flying prone either - but he doesn't give his students that "privilege" until they've "earned" it.

...if they're gonna get proficient in it at all.

Yeah - IF. I would contend that nobody EVER gets proficient at it. I never did. Foot landing was/is a huge career long obsession of Greg DeWolf's but he eventually broke an arm doing a wheel-less tandem landing at Manquin. And as far as I'm concerned I don't care how many tens of thousands of them you've done flawlessly. ONE of those permanently knocks you out of the proficiency category - that's WAY too many.
At the end of my flying career I was concluding that it was way more irresponsible and setting a poorer example to do standup landings in an environment that didn't require them than it would have been to down a couple of beers before launch.

Even when I go to the big hill just to practice launches and landings and don't have to fly a task I still stay on the downtubes.

Around here our most heavily used mountain launches are slots and ramps. And we often deal with a lot of wind, sometimes cross, and/or thermal activity. You don't see people spending much more time than they need to on the downtubes. I've seen and experienced some pretty spectacular stuff happening while people are trying to get away and none of it gets less spectacular by delaying the transition.

Because they wanted better control or because they were flying so close to the ground their feet would get in the way if they were vertical?

Both. I used to be pretty good at that sort of flying. They'd set up traffic cones and have pylon judges stationed at them. I once flew a round in light air and I'm looking at Pylon 5 and thinking, "Buddy, my job is to make that turn, your job in to keep yourself alive." He was flat on his back while I was practically brushing his nose. The next round he was in a foxhole.

On a couple of occasions I've had trouble getting my feet in the boot of my pod.

There's nothing carved in granite that says you gotta get into the boot when you go prone. Back when cocoons were the hot new items we killed a few people who focused on getting into the boot a bit too much a bit too soon.

Can you refresh my memory of whom?

2009/11/15 - Tony Ameo - Wallaby
2010/06/26 - John Seward - Packsaddle

A few comments on:
http://vallecrash.blogspot.com/

A barbed-wire fence runs along the bottom edge of the LZ in the image.

Whenever you're flying you need to be doing threat assessment. That's your primary threat - head and shoulders.

...with the exception of a slight drop-off about midway down the field running horizontally.

Not an issue. Totally ignore it. Fly the glider until it wants to land - just before, on, or beyond it.

Given the canyon and fence on the near side and only corn stalks on the far side, coming up short is much worse than going long.

I don't know how steep the canyon is but I'm not sure your x-rays woulda looked worse if you had landed short that day - even if you had flared into the wire.

Although I'll leave others to evaluate my skills, no one has ever confronted me about any dangerous tendencies.

I'd have had a word with you about your approach the previous day.

I recall my landing accuracy being fairly consistent...

Good, but what are you aiming for?

I always aimed to land towards the end of the field...

Oh.

...for three reasons: as explained above, you don't want to come up short here;

You can have your cake and eat it too on this one.

I wanted to avoid landing on the drop-off mid-field;

Why?
- If the:
-- glider wants to land:
--- short of the drop-off you land it short of the drop-off.
--- halfway down the drop-off you land it halfway down the drop-off.
--- beyond the drop-off you land it beyond the drop-off.
-- drop-off is problematically pronounced pull in and land the glider a second or two later.
- When all else fails pull the bar back an inch, close your eyes, and let it land on the wheels.

...and I wanted to land closer to the break-down area (bad reason, I know).

And the reason Lookout didn't tattoo this on your forearm half an hour after you passed the Hang One written was because?

I never saw the corn as that threatening (corn encounters were, in fact, a source of jest within our group).

Reminds me a bit of Lauren's response to a triple release failure at altitude on a training flight...

Anyhow, the tandem can indeed perform big wingovers, as I demonstrated when I finally got separated from the tug.

You treat the corn stubble as barbed wire for the purpose of the exercise and think about what would've happened in actual combat. (And you treat two thousand feet like twenty feet, realize what just happened, and fix it - even/especially if Bo thinks everything's OK.)

I didn't get an H3 rating until July of '08 due to the spot landing requirement, as I never considered myself particularly adept at spot landing and waited until I could devote some time to developing the skill.

Instead of studying what you should and shouldn't be aiming for. (A really skilled sniper may not do you much good if he has trouble differentiating uniforms.)

The technique I finally discovered that worked for me was to come in intentionally high for a long final and stuff the bar...

1. Oh boy.
2. Let's pretend for a nanosecond or two that there's some remotely legitimate reason to have a spot landing requirement. Why is a NOVICE rated pilot having to "discover" a technique for hitting a spot? Possibly because the people who are doing the "teaching" and signing off can't actually do it themselves?

...but never felt comfortable landing the S2 and often flared late.

Maybe Sir Isaac is trying to channel something here. What hang gliding considers to be a little late all the non lunatic branches of aviation consider insanely premature.

I found I had similar problems with other smaller wings and feel I'm going to have to re-learn how to land smaller gliders.

Roll them in - you learn one you've learned them all.

This year, having gained a lot of additional experience and already being acquainted with the site, I did not feel such preparation was necessary and had not flown for a month prior to the trip.

Shouldn't have / Probably didn't matter.

I used the approach technique I learned last July...

1. From whom, if applicable?
2. Lookout didn't teach you how to approach a field like this before you got your Two? (Rhetorical question.)
3. Why the hell not?

...flying a wide approach...

Ouch.

...with a long final....

Ouch.

...starting high...

Ouch.

...and stuffing the bar to get down.

Ouch.

I landed about where I was aiming.

Ouch.

At the time, I was so fixated on the clearing...

FIXATED being the operative word here.

Upon realizing I was high, I should have initiated figure-8 or S-turns to loose altitude.

Six "o"s in that sentence - should be five.

I've never been in a position where I've needed to do this before, which probably made me less receptive to the idea.

And Lookout never trained you how to automatically react in a situation like this?

I'm not big on the idea of performing turns near the ground...

Pretty much hits the nail on the head.

...so it would have been better to avoid figure-8's in the first place.

Figure eights is a really bad idea - except in high winds which you didn't have and when they're not really figure eights anyway. They're a lot of work and require the pilot to point the glider downwind away from the field when rather low. A good pilot avoids doing that sort of thing.

I believe my landing accuracy would have improved had I flown a tighter approach.

Which is another way of saying "performing turns near the ground" 'cept never away from the field.

I'm beginning to believe that tighter approaches are always a good idea for smaller LZs, regardless of whether or not they're restricted.

1. Beginning? This is a little like "beginning" to believe that pulling in to prevent or react to a stall is always a good idea or light weak links are dangerous.
2. Spot landings are equally useless and dangerous in large and small LZs and the more people attempt and practice them the more gliders are gonna be trashed so, naturally, that's what people practice.
Tight approaches can be absolutely vital for small fields, when performed with any level of competence are not dangerous, and become way more not dangerous when practiced in coming into larger and/or unrestricted fields.
So land as if you were coming into a tight restricted field every time.

By aiming for the end of the field, I was severely restricting the effective size of the LZ.

Bull's-eye. And when you aim for the middle of the field - the way most of the assholes who teach hang gliding have people doing by putting traffic cones up dead center - you have effectively wasted half the field before you've started.

I had gotten away with this on my previous flights, but I now think it was a bad idea and the factor contributing most to the accident.

Think? Who were you flying with? Why weren't they saying anything? Were they all "trained" at Lookout too? Who was renting out the gliders and maybe running the show?

It is possible trying to apply this practice to a site I wasn't very familiar with worsened my accuracy relative to last year...

You had virtually no need whatsoever for "accuracy" in this situation.

...when I used a more conservative technique I had been refining for much longer.

Which was?

My skills in general may have been a little rusty, though I had flown the previous day.

This was a judgment thing, not a skill thing. It only started becoming a skill thing long after the judgment thing had been badly blown.

I was flying a new glider. ...could have also affected my judgment.

Not worth talking about. Dwarfed to insignificance by the decision to land at the far end of the field.

The piano is located at an altitude ... which could have affected my accuracy.

See above.

I want to master the figure-8 approach. I've only tried it a few times and never felt comfortable with it.

Nobody feels comfortable with it. That's how come you never see good pilots using it.

Although I expect to continue using the downwind-base-final method in almost all cases, experience with the figure-8 technique will make me more receptive to flying 8's if high when turning on to final, and I may find the technique better suited for certain landing scenarios.

If you're too high don't turn onto final. You're NEVER too high UNTIL you turn onto final. Stretch your base leg with a lot of speed then wang it back around and roll a ninety into the field.

Regardless of how much a factor this was in my accident, my flare technique needs improvement.

Have you ever met anyone whose flare technique DIDN'T need improvement?

I want to become proficient in no-step landings in case I am ever faced with landing in tall grass or crops or landing downwind.

And I want my very own continent populated with Ivory-Billed Woodpeckers, Carolina Parakeets, and Yangtze Dolphins. Wanna put up fifty bucks on a friendly little wager?

I was hoping (planning!) to go my entire flying career without an accident. That is no longer possible, but I can at least learn from my mistakes and ensure they don't happen again.

You shouldn't have had to LEARN this this way. You were paying Matt to teach you this and he didn't.
Comments on comments...

Brian

...the basetube hit just as I was flaring...

Wheels?

Anonymous

I blew out my shoulder on a hg landing that wasn't very spectacular.

Wheels?

We are all going to overshoot now an then.

Can you tell me what airline you fly for so I can make sure none of my family or friends ever books a flight with it?

Christian

And then I found as soon as I got into double surface gliders that a high approach was my worst enemy.

It was your worst enemy when you were flying singles - you were just using them to mask the problem.

Landing long doesn't sound bad...

How very odd - the concept scared the crap out of me before I ever touched a glider. Still does.

WE all learn it the hard way.

Yep. Thanks Matt. And, while I think of it, Mark Airey.

Anonymous

It would be hard to judge a spot landing from that far away.

And one would need to judge a spot landing because?

land in the middle is probably the safest.

Yeah, the first half of the field is probably full of rattlesnakes. And besides, do you really wanna hafta haul the glider an extra fifty yards to the breakdown area?

Andy

But here's what you can do to have your cake and eat it too as far as avoiding coming up short yet still not using up your whole LZ...

So far Andy and I seem to be on the same wavelength. (I swear I didn't plagiarize that.)

Don't pick where you want to land; pick where you want to round out.

Now we're diverging a bit - but still not bad.

That should be your focal point in the field. Over time with practice, this will allow you to come in much closer to the downwind edge of smaller fields. Fields that aren't enclosed by tall trees anyway.

Why focus on ANYTHING in the field? Why not focus ENTIRELY on the lowest thing of what's defining the downwind edge of the field? In this case it's the barbed wire fence. Or in another the least tall of the tall trees.

And again, forget trying to land long so you can land next to the vehicles. You're just asking for it by doing this.

Yeah, I think he's pretty much off the fence on this one by now.

With a single surface glider, leaving yourself some altitude so you don't undershoot and then controlling your glide angle with speed would be a good idea for this field.

Fly all gliders the same way - just less or more so.

Eventually, you'll be able to fly an approach without having to use pulling in a lot as your only means of coming into a small field.

You don't wanna (hafta) be pulling in a lot to kill altitude on final but it's hard to go wrong pulling in as you approach the ends of your legs. It's nice to have extra speed at the end of downwind to make sure you don't get blown back beyond the treeline (Linda Salamone - 2009/05/12). It's nice to have a little extra speed at the end of base for a crisp sure turn onto final. It's REALLY nice to have a lot of extra speed if you need to extend base to kill some extra altitude 'cause you're starting to head away from where you wanna be and you wanna make REAL sure you can come back.
And if you come in at a minimum altitude over the last obstruction YOU'VE GOT THE FIELD and if there's rotory and/or thermally stuff around it doesn't hurt to blast the glider down and get it too low, level, and fast to be able to get hurt much.

I whacked quite hard but simply aimed for the "Triangle Of Shame" described earlier and when the dust cleared (literally) my downtubes were still straight as an arrow and I was unscathed. The only bruise to my ego was that I was well coated with the famous Owens Valley Moon Dust.

Wheels?

If tried both of these and when it comes to reducing the shock of returning to earth, flaring just a bit late is, in my opinion, better than flaring a bit too early. I've flared just a bit early on purpose numerous times and although your landing looks pretty, you can feel the impact go right from the souls of your feet, up your legs and right through your spine.

Heed those words Zack. You don't always know when you're doing damage 'cause you may not feel the effects until a couple of decades after it's too late to do anything about it.

Down the road, your crash will be sort of a badge of honor because it will make you a far better and safer pilot in the long run.

Way too high a price. Way better ways to learn.

I'd say that if you could have done just one thing differently, it would have been knowing when to let go. When to ball up.

How 'bout instead we just bring him in fast fifteen feet over the barbed wire and let him roll in on the wheels?
---
2022/02/25 14:00:00 UTC

Valle de Bravo sites coordinates:

19°03'42.27" N 100°05'25.43" W - El Peñón launch
19°02'34.24" N 100°06'16.04" W - Piano LZ

19°11'04.36" N 100°06'49.05" W - La Torre launch
19°11'00.65" N 100°07'39.98" W - Lakeside LZ

Crime scene photos (from Zack's report):



Piano LZ
http://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51889413259_304dca25ae_o.png

19°02'34.24" N 100°06'16.04" W - 07451 feet

(Zack's shot above has north down.)

[Tad Eareckson]

I had been to Valle for a week the previous year (January '08), so I was somewhat familiar with the site, having had around eight flights there. Not being keen on XC, all but one ended at the Piano. I recall my landing accuracy being fairly consistent, with one exception when I stopped close to the corn on the far end. I always aimed to land towards the end of the field for three reasons: as explained above, you don't want to come up short here; I wanted to avoid landing on the drop-off mid-field; and I wanted to land closer to the break-down area (bad reason, I know). I never saw the corn as that threatening (corn encounters were, in fact, a source of jest within our group).

I didn't get an H3 rating until July of '08 due to the spot landing requirement, as I never considered myself particularly adept at spot landing and waited until I could devote some time to developing the skill. I succeeded in meeting the three-in-a-row requirement after eight attempts in one day.

The more you think about this stuff...
- Everybody flying this site has to be rated at least Hang Two or equivalent.
- All the gringos are supposed to be able at least to be able to get within a hundred feet of a spot, regardless of which option they used for the rating.
- Most of the gringos are probably Threes and were probably forced to demonstrate the "skill" of being able to hit a fifty foot spot "consistently".
- The rating requirement just states that you gotta hit three in a row. This is like letting an archer shoot at a target all day long and qualifying him for combat after a very short sequence of uninterrupted luck.
- A pilot towing up at an airport in a steady ten mile per hour breeze with an Observer at his disposal is gonna cruise through this one a lot easier than someone flying off a mountain with no or turbulent air.
- So knowing that a pilot has this alleged "qualification" is pretty freakin' useless.
- This field sounds like a no-brainer - "several hundred feet in length" with virtually nothing around it.
- Zack's seen action at this field probably eight days max prior to the disaster.
- And yet "corn encounters (PLURAL) were, in fact, a source of jest within our group". And I'm guessing these were all overshoots.
- So it sounds like what could be serious or fatal crashes at real fields are pretty routine events here.
- Seems to be pretty good evidence supporting my theory that the more you emphasize hitting spots in training the less likely you're gonna end up with pilots who can hit fields.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=21088
What you wish you'd known then?

Glenn Zapien - 2011/03/03 01:18:38 UTC
Ceres, California

I remember the most common thing I used to see H1's do, I mean the straight beginners, DON'T TRY TO EXTEND YOUR FLIGHT while on the training hill. Too many times I have seen newbies excited about actually getting off the ground, and not by much because they are on the training hill. But I mean I watch them run, get off the ground and start to fly, but when the flight is all about done, I then see the student start to push out to try and get a bit more air when they should be pulling in to prepare for a landing and hopefully an attempted flair. trying to extend the flight pushed out, they touch down running, but still too fast to stop the glider, then ground loop, or belly skid, or even worse, ground loop take out a DT keep hanging on to the broken tube, then face plant with arms behind them skidding to a stop on their face. All just because they wanted to be in the air just a bit longer. When you begin to descend, and the ground is coming up, time for landing mode.

1. New hang glider pilots are excited about actual flying and wanna be in the air longer?!?!? Whoa! Who'da thunk! We gotta start doing our jobs and beating that attitude out of them from Day One. After all, this sport has never been about about flying and airtime - it's all about no step landings.

2. Maybe they have the right instincts and maybe we should think about letting them land like every other aircraft on the planet does. They could have their cake and eat it too.

[Tad Eareckson]

I disagree. On a couple of occasions I've had trouble getting my feet in the boot of my pod. And I don't wanna mess with transitioning to prone while I'm maneuvering. When I foot launch into ridge lift I turn first and only transition when I'm stabilized along the ridge. The training hill task I described is similar in that it requires an immediate turn, but it gives you even less breathing room than flying a ridge because you have to turn again as soon as the first turn is complete.

Regarding:

Koch foot launch
http://vimeo.com/21138966

password - red

- You're cutting off one of the most interesting parts of the sequence. How do I know he knows he's not about to pull a Martin?

- Are you, the launch assistant, and the driver sure he's not about to pull a Martin?

- Both his hands are on the basetube within a second of the last time a foot hits the ground and he's pretty much finished kicking into his boot a couple of seconds after that.

- While he's kicking into his boot he's making a pretty substantial roll correction.

[Zack C]

They're the ones who did all that damage to those four arms.

I doubt you'd blame every acc...incident on poor instruction, so where do you draw the line? There's only so much an instructor can do...given enough students even the best instructors will have some get hurt.

I'd never blame anyone but me for my crash, but that said, no, I don't think I was taught approaches properly.

Here's how approaches at Lookout are taught. You box the center of the field (using specific markers defining the box corners) until you estimate you're three times the height of the pine trees on one side of the field. Then you turn downwind, staying within the confines of the field, until you're twice the height of the trees on the other side of the field, or you near the downwind end of the field. Then you turn onto base and final.

It seems obvious now, but what I didn't realize even after my crash when I wrote the analysis (but came to realize after flying a number of new sites subsequently) is that this method is highly site-specific. When a Lookout student goes to a new site, they naturally want to do something similar but they don't have pine trees (or the same ones) as measuring sticks so they have to guess at altitude. My approaches were just fine at places I was familiar with, but my accuracy took a hit at new sites.

The instructors at Lookout never mentioned the concept of judging angles to me. A local pilot clued me in to this technique, which is described very algorithmically in Pagen's Hang Gliding Training Manual. It makes a lot more sense than judging altitude, which involves (if only subconsciously) comparing the size of objects from the air to their size on the ground. Every site will have a different set of objects.

Lookout also never mentioned anything about what to do when you fly a new site. But in their defense, before our first trip to Valle we were told by a Lookout instructor who had been to Valle to practice restricted landing field approaches (although what they call an RLF is bigger than specified for the rating in USHPA's regs). For this they teach flying circles in the center of the field until just high enough for a short downwind leg. I practiced the technique a little at Lookout, but I couldn't do it at my home site (Columbus). Once I got to Valle and saw that the field wasn't actually restricted, I didn't understand why the instructor emphasized that type of approach and felt it was safer to use more room.

Since I wrote the blog I've made an effort to shift towards judging angles and flying tighter approaches and my approaches at new sites have improved significantly. I've also realized (as previously discussed) that my earlier emphasis on nailing accuracy was misguided. I do think I have plenty of room for improvement, however (I don't feel comfortable flying approaches at new sites with anything other than huge LZs), and in light of this discussion I think I'll start gradually tightening up my approaches.

Another thing I've since realized is that no-step landings aren't that great of a thing. In no wind they could hurt you and in wind they could cause you to get flipped after you touch down.

I wanted to avoid landing on the drop-off mid-field;

Why?

It's pretty steep...I'm not sure what would happen if I landed on the slope but I didn't want to find out. It also deflects wind upwards...not something I want to hit as I'm flaring.

I used the approach technique I learned last July...

From whom, if applicable?

Myself. That was the aforementioned spot landing technique I 'discovered'.

Who were you flying with? Why weren't they saying anything? Were they all "trained" at Lookout too?

Our group was mostly Lookout pilots with one Lookout instructor. They mostly landed in the same area as me, probably for the same reasons.

...when I used a more conservative technique I had been refining for much longer.

Which was?

Flying shorter and slower finals.

And yet "corn encounters (PLURAL) were, in fact, a source of jest within our group". And I'm guessing these were all overshoots.

We had at least one guy barely squeak into the field (diagonally, so not coming over the fence), landing on his wheels after brushing the corn. Though it wasn't a corn encounter, we also had two guys land just short of the fence (there's so little area between the fence and the canyon I'm not sure how this happened twice). A couple came close to overshooting and we had one PG that did, but I think I was the only HG pilot to actually overshoot into the corn.

Seems to be pretty good evidence supporting my theory that the more you emphasize hitting spots in training the less likely you're gonna end up with pilots who can hit fields.

Yes...completely the wrong emphasis. Although they didn't really emphasize spots in training...pilots generally don't worry about it until they start thinking about getting an H3.

Figure eights is a really bad idea - except in high winds which you didn't have and when they're not really figure eights anyway.

I also think they're good if you arrive low at the downwind end of an LZ. This became clear to me at Pack...being a 400' ridge with the LZ at its base, you often scratch until you're too low to fly out and turn downwind, so you just keep strafing the ridge until you're low enough to go on final.

Nobody feels comfortable with it [the figure-8 approach]. That's how come you never see good pilots using it.

I dunno...a lot of pilots, including some very skilled ones, were trained to do figure 8s and vouch for them. Perhaps most notably, Malcolm Jones is a big advocate of the technique (he says the DBF approach was designed for aircraft that can control their glide with engines/flaps/spoilers/rudders)...say what you will about him, but there's no denying his skill (and unlike with tow equipment, skill is relevant here).

But I also think foot landing is safer in many situations (depending on the site, conditions, pilot skill, and equipment).

How many of those situations have you actually been in and how often?

For me I think these situations are common. Take Hearne (one of the places I fly the most) with foot-high grass. I've got tiny wheels on my S2, and after something like 150 foot landings last year I've gotten pretty decent at them. So for me I think foot landing in that situation is a safer choice.

If you practice 80 degree banks up high you're gonna be really good at 45 degree banks down low. What are you afraid of?

This, for starters:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rijJS5cDqQU

Bad wingover
IBinADrochnFljiga - 2010/09/12

Of which Ryan Voight said:

This is why we need to MASTER each thing, before moving on... even small mistakes can have devastating consequences...

(I know he's not your favorite person, but like Malcolm, there's no denying his skill.)

I've always believed that we learn best by mastering the basics and gradually building on them. If you move up too fast you may never master the basics.

Your Ultimate Goal In Life is to suck up as much knowledge about hang gliding as you possibly can so you can spearhead a revolution to rescue the sport from the stupid evil bastards who control it so I can let my nephew participate without having to worry about him getting a set of x-rays like yours after two hundred flights.

Not now, but once I fly Yosemite I expect I'll need a new Ultimate Goal In Life...

You seemed to do alright despite the stupid evil bastards. About the only thing they could do to endanger you is give you the rope or have a tug weak link break prematurely, right? Why don't you train your nephew yourself and pour all of your knowledge into him? He won't be any worse off than you were.

I don't have time to spearhead a revolution so if you're waiting on me you'll be waiting a long time. But I'll contribute to the cause.

When I was down there a couple of springs ago I didn't see anyone touch a basetube.

Yes, students stay on the downtubes, even when wheel landing.

What matters is that you prioritized getting down on your feet all the way to the bloody end. I can name you two people killed by that mind-set in the past sixteen months.
...
2009/11/15 - Tony Ameo - Wallaby
2010/06/26 - John Seward - Packsaddle

John may have been killed as a result of insufficient basetube flying experience, but I still don't think that inexperience was the result of an emphasis on foot landing. I don't think we're going to come to an agreement on this, but until we ask Jeff why he trains students to fly from the downtubes we're just speculating.

Did you ask anyone at Lookout why they didn't train students to fly from the basetube?

As for Tony, I never heard much about that incident...only that he hit a tree. What did that have to do with foot landing?

- You're cutting off one of the most interesting parts of the sequence. How do I know he knows he's not about to pull a Martin?
- Are you, the launch assistant, and the driver sure he's not about to pull a Martin?

The launch assistant helped him perform a hang check 'just prior' to launch. Despite filming I had my eyes on his carabiner when the signal was given. I doubt the driver had any confirmation he was hooked in. I don't know if the pilot did anything beyond a hang check.

I'm not going to force lift-and-tug on anyone, but I've been trying to emphasize the importance of launch assistants only giving a 'go' signal with their eyes on the pilot's carabiner.

Zack

[Tad Eareckson]

...so where do you draw the line?

When you sign a Two card you're pretty much authorizing a person to - with very minimal supervision - go out and play out on the field with all the big kids. That's an environment in which it's REAL easy to get killed REAL quick.

I can't think of a lot of serious crashes in which I have much too much trouble drawing a line.

Blown aerobatics, pushing XC out of range of a safe field, thermalling just a little bit too close to the slope, general testosterone stuff is almost always well clear on the far side of the line and usually committed by advanced pilots who know what the score is.

Unhooked launches, missed primaries, arms broken in the middles of good fields, release failures, weak link crashes I'm gonna credit to the instruction all or damn near all the time.

If the crashee has been responsibly trained and signed off yet knowingly chooses to violate the training and push his luck then the instructor's off the hook - but I'm thinking we're talking distinct minority here.

I'd never blame anyone but me for my crash, but that said, no, I don't think I was taught approaches properly.

Pilots ALWAYS blame themselves for the crash - and they're almost always gonna be at least a little bit right.

Holly and Steve blame Holly one hundred percent for the crash. I blame Holly about one to five and Steve gets the rest.

Bill Priday was NEVER ONCE taught or required to do a hook-in check JUST PRIOR TO LAUNCH before getting cleared to run off ramps at McConnellsburg and Whitwell. Steve and the instructional system get a hundred percent for that one.

Martin gets something near zero for his first one. He's more than welcome to the whole thing for his next.

On yours... You don't think you were taught approaches properly, you weren't taught approaches properly, you got mangled pretty badly 'cause you didn't do an approach properly, I'm pretty happy handing all of that one to Matt.

...this method is highly site-specific.

In other words, highly useless.

...but my accuracy took a hit at new sites.

Accuracy's not the issue - as you say later.

A local pilot clued me in to this technique, which is described very algorithmically in Pagen's Hang Gliding Training Manual.

I used to hear all the Ridgely students talking about judging angles. One day I told Sunny that I doubted I'd be able to pass their Hang Two test 'cause I had no clue what they were talking about and didn't think I'd be able to execute one of their approaches if I did - I just freestyled it until I got to a point in position and low enough to go on downwind - or, what the hell - final. I think his response was something along the lines of me not needing to worry about the kind of thing they were teaching. (I think John Simon shortly thereafter drove that point in pretty solidly.)

Every site will have a different set of objects.

But every site - outside of Nebraska - will have SOMETHING at the downwind end of the field that you need to clear. That's universal, all I ever really worry about, and all I teach people I'm working with to really worry about.

Lookout also never mentioned anything about what to do when you fly a new site.

Yeah. Maybe they should've issued special "Lookout Only" rating cards.

For this they teach flying circles in the center of the field until just high enough for a short downwind leg.

This I like.

...but I couldn't do it at my home site (Columbus).

You can't do it over the runway but you can over a point near where you wanna start your downwind.

...I think I'll start gradually tightening up my approaches.

Carry a little extra speed and push your comfort level a little each time.

Another thing I've since realized is that no-step landings aren't that great of a thing.

They're dangerous stunts.

It's pretty steep...I'm not sure what would happen if I landed on the slope but I didn't want to find out. It also deflects wind upwards...not something I want to hit as I'm flaring.

Self correcting problem. If the glider wants to keep flying then keep flying it. If it doesn't, land it. And they can only revoke your Hang Three for not flaring in the US - USHGA has no extradition treaty with Mexico.

I also think they're good if you arrive low at the downwind end of an LZ.

That's fine. But if you're so high that you need to do more than one over and back you can more easily pull in a bit, extend your glide to intersect a good downwind path...

Though it wasn't a corn encounter, we also had two guys land just short of the fence (there's so little area between the fence and the canyon I'm not sure how this happened TWICE).

That's ridiculous. That's long finals. REALLY bad idea to go downwind of your obstruction - whatever the hell it is - on the ASSUMPTION you're gonna make it back.

Although they didn't really emphasize spots in training...pilots generally don't worry about it until they start thinking about getting an H3.

Right. Instead of just flying, naturally progressing, and enjoying they start WORRYING about dangerously compromising their landings to fulfill some dangerous useless USHGA requirement.

This became clear to me at Pack...

That's dune flying.

I dunno...a lot of pilots, including some very skilled ones, were trained to do figure 8s and vouch for them.

Yeah, lotsa highly skilled pilots will fight to the death for hang checks, spot no-steppers, 130 pound Greenspot, and bent pin releases.

...Malcolm Jones...

Wallaby, right? Where Tony Ameo was killed on approach a little while back?

...say what you will about him, but there's no denying his skill (and unlike with tow equipment, skill is relevant here).

ALL of these guys are HIGHLY SKILLED. When I was teaching and free flying on the dunes seven days a week *I* was HIGHLY SKILLED. Highly skilled pilots can do no wind no-steppers on bubblegum wrappers all day long. We need to gear hang gliding to keep from mangling and killing the 99.5 percent of the pilots who AREN'T highly skilled.

The reason I'm pushing what I'm pushing is because it takes LESS skill - and has more margin of error and redundancy built into it - than angles, spots, and figure eights. It DOES require you to have a full, competent feel for the glider at crisp speeds and high bank angles but you really oughta have that by or before Hang Two level anyway.

We all used to be taught figure eights in the early Eighties. But by that time the gliders were getting shorter, wider, heavier, tighter, cleaner, faster, and harder to turn and people tended to creep up the field a lot more. And the only way to keep from creeping up the field is to turn downwind and away from the field. And I don't like doing that or telling people to do that.

So for me I think foot landing in that situation is a safer choice.

OK. There's a tradeoff (performance) involved in sticking big wheels on a glider. And as a bird person I can't quite bring myself to suggest spending half a man hour per month of the flying season mowing a strip. So maybe it's a safer choice. But it's also probably not so black and white so's to say fer sure that I'd be significantly less safe rolling every landing in on my pneumatic wheels. And if it is significantly less safe for me to do that it's probably not safe for anyone to bonk a landing. And if it's not safe enough for people to bonk a half a dozen landings per Saturday it's not safe enough for a fair crowd to land in on a regular basis.

This, for starters...

That is so incredibly freakin' NOT relevant to what I'm pushing. I'm tellin' ya to do hard rolls. Name Withheld at no time in that video is making the slightest effort to do the tiniest TRACE of a roll. He stuffs the bar for about five minutes and then goes for a loop, doesn't bring it over quickly enough, and falls back into the wing. You're too scared, he's not scared enough.

If you blow it and stall while you're:
- level you can be majorly screwed - you can fall back into the wing like NW or - with something initially less dramatic - tumble.
- rolled you fall exactly where you want to anyway to fix the problem and the problem fixes itself.

...even small mistakes can have devastating consequences...

I think I'll use a bullshit on that one - especially in this context. This is NOT *A* *SMALL* mistake by any stretch of the imagination. This is someone who has ELECTED to take his glider 120 and 180 degrees outside of the roll and pitch placard limitations and doesn't come anywhere close to maintaining the speed to pull it off. And even then the consequences don't turn out to be so devastating that he (and possibly even his glider too) doesn't come out smelling like a rose.

Gawd I hate to think what kind of shape I'd be in if small mistakes tended to have devastating consequences. We usually hafta make about three fairly huge ones at the same time for it to really matter.

You don't run off a cliff without your glider by making a small mistake. Failing to do a hook-in check JUST PRIOR TO LAUNCH - ONCE - is a HUGE mistake (one that I myself have NEVER made). And you've usually gotta make that huge mistake a few hundred or thousand times before you finally get bit. And you've still gotta combine it with at least one other substantial mistake (not preflighting) for it to kick in. (But nobody even regards failing to do a hook-in check as any kind of mistake whatsoever.)

I know he's not your favorite person, but like Malcolm, there's no denying his skill.

Phenomenally skilled flyers are a dime a dozen. I've seen zillions of them come and go - sometimes feet first - over the decades, not one of them has a dust particle's worth of the skill of a Barn Swallow, and I don't see them as having much in the way of a positive lasting impact on the sport. Gimme an extra IQ point or two any day of the week.

Seven months ago Mike and I agreed that Ryan was sounding halfway intelligent for a change but that ain't good enough in a sport in which a hundred percent just gets you a D plus.

I've always believed that we learn best by mastering the basics and gradually building on them. If you move up too fast you may never master the basics.

1. There's some stuff that's a lot scarier than it is dangerous. Starting a rappel by leaning back at the top of a cliff, bungee jumping, and hopping out of a Cessna on static line come to mind. Pulling a reasonably hard wang at altitude for the first time is also a pretty good example.

2. Moving up too slowly can also be a permanent barrier to mastery of the basics. I'd say those x-rays of yours are pretty good supporting evidence.

Satan hat, time machine, 2009/01/13, Valle de Bravo. I beam you back to just after launch with your brain still wired with what's about to happen. The ONLY way you're allowed to stop those x-rays from becoming a reality is to start from a hundred feet over the middle of the field, dive to the barbed wire fence down to fifteen feet, then wang it around 180 degrees with a seventy degree bank angle. After that you're on your own. And, don't forget, you can practice a couple on the way down. Take it?

You seemed to do alright despite the stupid evil bastards.

Since then I've realized (largely due to this discussion) that while I can certainly consider the advice of others, I can't trust anyone in this sport but myself (and maybe the people at Wills Wing).

That's kinda what I was starting to go through in the fall of 1980. Working at Kitty Hawk I had a lot of opportunity to learn stuff trial and error in an environment in which it was pretty hard to get hurt. But nobody should hafta do it that way.

About the only thing they could do to endanger you is give you the rope or have a tug weak link break prematurely, right?

Right. Either one of which could be more than enough to kill me. After about ten years of having my heart in my throat EVERY launch I finally got tired of it.

Why don't you train your nephew yourself and pour all of your knowledge into him?

1. On a public forum I wanna protect his identity 'cause if he did ever go into hang gliding having an uncle named Tad Eareckson might not make him real popular - but he ain't real close by.

2. I COULD get him up to Three level easily enough but I couldn't rate him so he'd be ineligible to fly lotsa places and totally out of aerotowing.

3. If I turn him over to USHGA he could get an arm or neck broken or be killed trying to fulfill some of their stupid useless requirements. And those are NOT unreasonable abstract fears - I've personally known some examples.

He won't be any worse off than you were.

I've been in a degree of constant physical pain for almost nineteen years as a consequence of blowing a launch and breaking a foot. And you coulda lost use of both arms. Both of those incidents were nothing little ground loop affairs. Gotta do a lot better than that.

I don't have time to spearhead a revolution so if you're waiting on me you'll be waiting a long time. But I'll contribute to the cause.

Tradeoffs. Say too much you get blacklisted and don't fly. Pull a punch and a life can get destroyed.

In the beginning of June 1989 I was getting recertified as an instructor by Dennis Pagen along with fourteen others. Within a bit over seven years three of those folk would be responsible for three dead students - one mountain, two tow - and all three of the instructors were out of the sport as well, one cause he died alongside his student.

I don't think we're going to come to an agreement on this, but until we ask Jeff why he trains students to fly from the downtubes we're just speculating.

1. Most of the time we never get everything we like on these.

2. We gotta go with the best we can get.

3. If the best we can get is speculation then we speculate - despite the fact that in hang gliding speculation is as taboo as wheel landings and straight pin releases.

4. I'm guessing we've heard as much as we're going to about this from Jeff which is - correct me if I'm wrong - NOTHING.

5. I'm guessing Jeff's got a real good reason for saying nothing.

6. The best evidence is that there was nothing wrong with the glider, nothing significant was going on with the air, and John just flew and stalled back into the slope - PRONE.

7. Shane says that "John was still very new to flying in the prone position", nobody's contradicted that, it seems pretty obvious that he totally sucked at flying in the prone position, and my best call is that damn near everything else in his training - particularly stand up and spot landings - shoulda been put on hold until he didn't suck at flying in the prone position. And I guarantee you that - assuming there's nothing too challenging about the LZ - I'd have been OK on that flight after my first ten on the dunes.

Time machine. We get to go back to the Saturday before he's killed and spend it with him, his Falcon, and a good pair of wheels on a hundred foot training hill with a steady ten coming straight in but we can't stop the 2010/06/26 launch or tell him what's gonna happen.

I'm gonna spend it working on passes. He's gonna go prone ASAP after launch, land prone on his wheels, and feel it through the electrodes taped to his scrotum if he even thinks about touching a downtube beyond two seconds after launch. What are you gonna do with it?

Did you ask anyone at Lookout why they didn't train students to fly from the basetube?

Nope. I didn't say anything at the training hills - or the launch ramp - and just watched what I shortly thereafter told Matt was his "hook in failure factory". I wasn't real happy about the upright crap and wasn't aware of the obscenity of upright being forced on advancing students from ramp to LZ.

As for Tony, I never heard much about that incident...only that he hit a tree. What did that have to do with foot landing?

The Ledger - 2009/11/17

A friend said Ameo began hang gliding about three years ago and was practicing for his intermediate rating. He had passed a written test and was practicing for his flying test, which would measure his ability to set up a proper approach and flare the glider at the appropriate time to land on his feet.

"The transition (from flaring the glider to landing) takes a lot of eye-to-hand coordination," said Eugene Pettinato, Ameo's friend and flying partner. "That was his weakest area, I think."

What's he focused on and worrying about - not flying into a tree or shifting his hands, rotating his body, timing his flare, and hitting a goddam traffic cone? His weakest area was thinking that any of that other USHGA bullshit actually mattered.

I'm not going to force lift-and-tug on anyone, but I've been trying to emphasize the importance of launch assistants only giving a 'go' signal with their eyes on the pilot's carabiner.

And I'm not gonna force you to be as obnoxious as I am but (as you've heard before)...

- The single most dangerous thing a person can do with a hang glider is assume that he's hooked into it after performing a hang check "just prior" to launch.

- Anybody not doing a hook-in check - of some kind - JUST PRIOR (without the quotation marks) TO LAUNCH is operating in an extremely dangerous and irresponsible manner and in flagrant violation of the conditions of his rating - no matter what the asshole who gave it to him said.

- You're watching this and not doing anything about it and we're supposed to be a self regulated branch of aviation.

I'd be WAY less concerned watching some Hang Two down two or three beers, lifting and tugging, and running off the ramp than some stone cold sober Hang Five hotshot doing a hang check at the back of the ramp and launching thirty seconds later.

Getting launch assistants to lock eyes on the carabiners is better than nothing but it's a patch that isn't addressing the problem - it's actually enabling the behavior we're trying to kill.

Pilot, driver, launch assistant. Pilot In Command, copilot, air traffic controller. That order of importance and responsibility. It's the goddam PIC's job to make that check 'cause it's his plane and his ass. Next comes the copilot 'cause it's his hand on the throttle and he can use or not use it to save or kill. Air traffic controller - great to have as a backup but you shouldn't be relying on him.

Suggestion... Lead/educate by example.

Let's assume that we can't tweak your suspension such that lift and tug gives you any useful feedback whatsoever. So you do whatever works best to confirm leg loops and connection as close to go as possible.

You're the fucking Pilot In COMMAND. You TELL the driver and launch assistant that nothing happens till IMMEDIATELY AFTER a double lift. At that point and only that point the two other people involved can confirm and launch or either can override and leave you safe and standing.

You can't do a lift and tug - which would be ideal - but you CAN at least simulate it and that's almost certain to get all three of you thinking about the connection status and at least the launch assistant thinking about AND verifying it.

You can't POSSIBLY be as universally hated as I've always been and even I was able to exert considerable influence on a lot of the brighter pilots in the area (which was a big reason why Ridgely saw me as a threat and eliminated me from the equation). Get one or two other pilots in on that procedure. I truly believe that there's a strong possibility for evolution to kick around and actually start moving forward for a change on this one.