What happened to JD?
NMERider - 2014/02/27 19:01:23 UTC
Ultimately the accident was caused by my failure to pay attention to my descent rate during my base leg turn. By the time I even noticed the ground rushing up on me it was already too late to fully level out and flare.
The accident was in fact a consequence of a long string of poor decisions and not merely one or two single decisions. But the compounding effect of making one poor decision after another collectively increased my probability of a disaster.
Ultimately all of the poor decisions placed me in a predicament in which I was physically and mentally fatigued yet all wound up at the same time. This means stress and stress causes strain. So the strain on my central nervous system made me extremely prone to the 'deer in headlights' phenomenon where I became fixated on a single course of action with no cognitive awareness of an escape route.
In point of fact I had several escape routes during my base leg turn. Here's why:
1) My large drag chute yields a 3:1 glide at 32 mph and greatly reduces the length of ground skim.
2) The wind was near nil.
3) I could have leveled out from my base leg turn at any point over a 45 degree arc and landed in any direction that did not endanger the hang glider in the middle of the LZ.
Unfortunately, due to the stresses and strains I placed upon myself through the series of poor decisions I was mentally spent. I had mental tunnel vision and became blind to all my remaining options. I wasn't in a state of panic but was overly focused on one single course of action and the strain on my system left me unaware of my options.
As I recall from past reading, this type of behavior is very well documented and studied by the Air Force and Navy for combat pilots. It's also been studied by many of armed forces and private sector organizations and agencies. There are always a small percentage of candidates tested who seem highly resistant to this phenomenon and they often become the elite fighting force or special ops candidates in military and the most effective litigators in trial law, etc.
I'm just not one of those folks who can tolerate very much stress at all. And by failing to cut myself enough slack to avoid turning into a deer in headlights I crashed, plain and simple.
Now let's take another incident. Let's look at the seven mile glide I did down a series of ravines only to clear the last hurdle by fifty feet. And even then I had no proper bailout field, yet I kept my cool and glided out low over a housing development until I spotted a nice dirt field and nailed an excellent landing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNYWlVQj2eU
The Long, Low Glide Out
Glide On - 2013/12/10
dead
And now here's the rub: There are many days in which I have kept it together and never got tunnel vision and always had options in the forefront of my mind and I did not crash and in fact often ended up in style. The trouble with this is that I'm only functioning at this level part of the time but the risks incurred in these past events became a habit. For many pilots this becomes a fatal habit while in my case it has resulted in a fractured ankle followed sixteen months later by my current neck injuries.
I hope this protracted explanation was helpful.
http://www.ushpa.aero/media/FOCUSED_LOGO_COLOR2.jpg
