landing

[<BS>]

http://www.kitestrings.org/post7538.html#p7538
Re: Wheels

Maybe it is because of we do not have flat enough grass fields, but a lot of swamps, stones and bushes.

We have a similar problem.

Narrow dry riverbeds with large rocks strewn all over the place.

[birukobu]

It was in Greifenburg (Austria) at May.
The pilot (his name is Maxim) is quite experienced guy from Moscow, just a day before he did 150 miles flight.
In the Moscow hang gliding club Albatross Maxim usually fly tandem, but all landings are on the standard wheels installed on base tube and extended keel.
That day was decided to make short flight just for fun, specially for the passenger - he is a retrieval driver. Maxim has asked me and I gave him my tandem which I've bought a week ago without wheels((
You did not seen the take-off
Both guys are ok. tandem was repaired and now is flying well))

Cheers!
Aleksey

[Tad Eareckson]

Oops. Just noticed these last couple posts as I was about to fire off off a nasty response to Joe. Lemme get it out of the way first.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=32971
Tandem face plant

smokenjoe50 - 2015/06/05 14:12:12 UTC

You should burn that glider. You have no buisness taking people tandom. Whack!

1. You should've figured out that it wasn't Aleksey flying it.

2. Assholes who make glaring spelling mistakes with over fifteen percent of the words in their posts have no business whatsoever trolling forums.

3. This guy did infinitely better with his student than Kelly Harrison - and his driver - did with Arys Moorhead. But I don't seem to heard any hints of this kind of vitriol regarding either of those to assholes and your voice has been entirely absent from the discussion.

4. Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney skipped one hook-in check too many, put himself, his glider, and his tandem thrill rider into the powerlines, then waltzed back into all the forums with his stinkless shit and continued to be regarded as God's Special Little Messenger on anything and everything aviation for years until the Kite Strings guys drove a stake through his heart in early 2013.

5. Who the fuck do you think you are to pass that kind of judgment based only on one stupid mistake? This guy did a lot better with his wheelless tandem whack than skygod Greg DeWolf did with his and I never heard about the latter catching a BB's worth of flak.

6. Wanna talk about some Jack Show douchebag having no buisness doing anything?

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

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

Wheel landings are for girls!

Suck my dick, Joe.

Jack Barth - 2015/06/05 14:16:36 UTC

landing

Appeared passenger may have interfered with landing by touching down and running prior to pilot in. Command. The wing didn't fare well. Wheels probably would have saved it.

1. If he was a passenger then he shouldn't be assigned much responsibility - should he?
2. If he was a student and precipitated the crash then he probably wasn't instructed very well - was he?
3. Bullshit.
4. Why are we discussing issues of how tandems should be foot landed?
5. And now let's discuss what we should do when we're:
- running off a ramp and notice our glider floating up a bit higher than usual
- locked out low and need to make the easy reach to our release or hook knife
- climbing hard in a near stall situation and our Rooney Link suddenly increases the safety of the towing operation

[Tad Eareckson]

150 miles - three times my farthest (although in the last few years of my career I had no interest in going XC).

That day was decided to make short flight just for fun...

And dropped his guard a bit.

You did not seen the take-off

Well, at least it wasn't one of those tow takeoffs with all that deadly complexity...

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Glad nobody got hurt and the glider's back together. I hate seeing most people and all gliders getting smashed up.

Love your new avatar. You should likewise update your Jack and Davis Shows profiles.

[Steve Davy]

http://www.flytandem.com/accident/index.htm

4-11-15 6PM. Local Intermediate HG pilot is landing in moderate 5-10 mph winds and does an aggressive flare that is a bit early (still too much airspeed to initiate the flare). The glider pops up and drops a wing which results in a moderate whack. Although the impact was not very hard as whacks go, the pilot suffered a dislocated shoulder. Prognosis is good for full recovery in a few weeks.

The aggressive flare was a new trick for this pilot. For years the pilot's technique was a running out landing with gradual flare sometime called moon walking. So in this case in trying to make the landing with slower ground speed, it became less in control than what the pilot generally has. The trick is to be very sure of airspeed for flare timing and also that wings are very level if the decision to flare more aggressively is made. Recall the article in the mag some years back entitled, the "Fearless Flawless Flareless Landing".

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=1981
Wheel Landings

Bob Kuczewski - 2015/07/07 18:29:44 UTC

There's no doubt that wheels on a hang glider contribute to increased overall safety. But just as with seat belts and air bags, there are times when they don't work as planned and can even make matters worse. I'm posting this video not to discourage pilots from using wheels, but to make pilots aware of their limitations.

This video clip was taken recently at Dockweiler of a pilot making an intentional wheel landing. The wheels used in this case were very broad and intended for landing on sand. But even in this case, the wheels happened to hit the sand in a manner that severely limited their effectiveness. Here's a frame by frame clip played at 1 second per frame:



This clip contains about 50 frames. It may take a little while to load, but once loaded it should play at 1 frame per second.
F_2420_to_2471.gif (2.41 MiB)

Wow Bob! Somebody bonking a wheel landing in the sand at Dockweiler! Who'da thunk! Real smoking gun video! Guess he learned HIS lesson. No fuckin' way he'd have bonked it going for a foot landing. Hope in a couple months after he's recovered sufficiently from his injuries he'll get serious about foot landing and flare timing.

Bob Kuczewski - 2015/07/07 20:24:17 UTC

I posted the frame by frame version because the full-speed version goes by very quickly. I had a lot of trouble uploading it, and some of the early versions (up to a few minutes ago) didn't show all the frames. So you might want to watch it again now that it's all there.

I'm somewhat convinced that the wheels stuck in the sand because of the way the pilot's body swung forward into an almost upright position just after touch down. There was little or no flare because the pilot was doing an intentional wheel landing - intending to roll the glider onto the ground. As an airplane pilot, I was trained to flare slowly holding the landing gear off the ground as long as possible until there just wasn't enough lift to keep the gear from touching. Of course that means that the wheels must be just inches (or less) from the runway or you'll get a bit of a bounce when it stalls and drops. We called that "greasing it in", and it was very smooth when done properly. In a hang glider, that can be a challenging task ... especially for someone relatively early in their training.

My post here was mostly to point out that a wheel landing can sometimes be much more challenging than a "stand up flare" or a "run it out" landing. Human legs are much more nimble and adaptable than wheels, and they have a lot more "give" when needed (up to a point of course).

How 'bout human arms and...

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...shoulders with the hands trapped on the downtubes when the flare timing is half a second late? How much "give" do they have when needed?

I don't believe in "one size fits all" approaches...

Really? Don't recall you taking much issue with a couple decades of aerotow industry mandatory "one size fits all" weak links - the kind that blow on takeoff coincidentally six times in a row in light morning conditions.

...and each technique has its advantages and limitations.

What are your different approaches for dealing with unrepentant child molesters? Any chance you can put them in writing?

It's good to know when each technique will work and when it might not.

So tell me about some of the foot landings you did during your airplane pilot training when it became that the wheel landings weren't gonna work out that great. Alaskan bush pilots? Show me some videos of tandems foot landing. How 'bout paraplegics? Guess they hafta size things up on final and go for foot every now and then.

Dockweiler is the training hill for Kagel. So should someone incapable of pulling off consistent safe wheel landings - and as far as I'm concerned this one was safe enough - be cleared to fly Kagel?

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Load o' crap.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33147
Different measures of success (landings)

Robert Kesselring - 2015/07/14 16:48:23 UTC
West Virginia

When reading flying stories on the forum...

"THE" forum? Think it's a good idea to be getting all your help from people on ONE forum? 'Specially with the kind of people that are on it on it?

...I often read that people got no-step landings, 1 step landings, or 2 step landings.

1. How often do you read about people NEEDING to have gotten no-step landings, 1 step landings, or 2 step landings?
2. Ever read about hang checkers and Aussie Methodists launching unhooked?

I get the idea that a no-step landing is considered perfect.

Kinda like a 6.16 meter pole vault. Nobody's ever done any better than that. And hardly anybody ever needs to.

This is not the way that I thought when I was practicing landings at the training hills.

Ever practice a...

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...wheel landing? Just kidding. Why would anybody practice doing anything that maximizes the safety margin and is brain dead easy and tons of fun?

I wanted to land at a comfortable walking pace with the glider landing in a balanced position on my shoulders for a seamless transition from flying, to walking my glider off the field.

No you don't. You wanna land like:

http://forum.hanggliding.org/download/file.php?id=18967

This was the most efficient from a time perspective, because there was usually someone right behind me waiting for me to clear the LZ so that they could launch...

Fuck that. I have yet to meet a REAL hang glider pilot who wouldn't rather watch a whipstall landing in hopes of seeing somebody fold a downtube and/or break an arm.

...it was also the easiest on my sore legs.

Is that all?

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The landing at the end of this flight is a good example of what I'm talking about...

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

Oh Gawd.

Clearly someone who is excellent at landing would be able to land any way they decide to...

Yeah, if somebody like that actually existed - besides Jason Boehm, of course.

...but is there any advantage to a no-step landing over what I have been doing?

For landing clinic instructors, parts dealers, orthopedic surgeons...

http://ozreport.com/pub/images/R0019247201059.jpg


...medevac chopper drivers... Yeah.

Or do they just accomplish different things for different situations.

They crash gliders and break arms and necks. They're totally fucking useless for real world emergency situations - the ones only total assholes get into in the first place.

Red Howard - 2015/07/14 17:47:09 UTC

Robert,

Walking or running out a landing is fine, when you are landing in a manicured field. The no-step landing is a required skill when landing in tall weeds or crops, or (in the USA West) sagebrush.

And when you become the first person in the history of hang gliding to have perfected that skill there'll be no fuckin' way you won't be able to pull off the no-step landing when landing in tall weeds or crops or (in the USA West) sagebrush.

Manicured fields are actually fairly rare in the HG world.

Until you start reading the accounts and looking at the videos of the places actual people - including XCers - are ACTUALLY LANDING. Then you'll find that landings in tall weeds or crops or (in the USA West) sagebrush are totally nonexistent and the ones that DO exist tend to end REALLY BADLY. (Big fuckin' surprise.)

Find a video of Jonathan landing someplace at which a no-stepper is required. It ain't all that easy to find a video of him landing anywhere at which he'd be unable to roll it in no problem.

When landing in any vegetation, you have to treat the very tops of this stuff as the real ground level.

Yeah, talk to Paul Vernon...

10-12926-800


...about just how well that works in real life. Or, if you find you're having a hard time getting in touch, ask some of his wonderful friends at Ridgely how he's doing these days. (It'll be about the same as Bob Buxton. Worse would be my guess.)

Glide in, and stop in mid-air as if to make a no-step landing (which it will be), then you just sink straight down to the ground below.

No more problem than recovering from a Rooney Link increasing the safety of the towing operation shortly after coming off the cart. Total nonevent. Inconvenience at worst.

If you need to take one or two steps instead, you could end up flat on your face (not recommended).

Possibly with your brain permanently mushed.

If the basetube touches the tops of any of the vegetation before you flare, the plants can wrap around the basetube and cause a very serious (hammer-in) wreck.

But don't worry, you're gonna be an expert pilot LONG before that happens. All of your flares will be perfectly timed. Just like Paul Voight is doing here:

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in this extremely rare footage of an actual pilot landing at a manicured field in sled conditions. And be sure to watch some of the videos of him landing in tall weeds or crops or (in the USA West)...

03-031013


...sagebrush.

Avoid that possibility, at all costs.

Yeah Robert. There's no fuckin' way you're gonna be able to avoid the possibility of landing in tall weeds or crops or (in the USA West) sagebrush. So just perfect your no step landing so you can safely land in whatever crap happens to open up below you. You'll be able to plan your flights well enough not to land in forests, oceans, lakes, rivers but it simply isn't possible to not ever land in tall weeds or crops or (in the USA West) sagebrush. Those things are hang glider magnets. Only sailplanes are capable of avoiding them.

The no-step landing is the mark of an expert pilot, from the earliest days of HG.

So make sure you become an expert pilot within the next couple of weekends 'cause until you do you're at serious risk of plants wrapping around your basetube and causing a very serious (hammer-in) wreck. Don't bother becoming an expert at not landing in tall weeds or crops or (in the USA West) sagebrush. Many have tried and all have failed. And because they expended and wasted all that time and energy in that pursuit they failed to become expert pilots with perfect no step landings and thus had plants wrapping around their basetubes and causing very serious (hammer-in) wrecks. Survival rate for that sorta thing is only about forty percent.

Practice this skill, before you need it.

Because you WILL need it.

You will need it, sooner or later.

See? Red agrees with me! And God help you if you need it sooner - before you've become an expert pilot.

Never bother doing a hook-in check just prior to launch...

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...'cause there's no fuckin' way you'll ever be standing on a ramp with your carabiner dangling after you've done your hang check. And never practice doing tight approaches...

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...'cause all the crappy fields you have available to land in are gonna be fuckin' HUGE - and most of them will have old Frisbees in their middles so you'll have spots to aim for. And don't waste any time researching safe tow equipment 'cause if there was such a thing we'd all be using it already - and we're not. Besides you wanna be an EXPERT PILOT, right?

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And the use of safe towing equipment has NEVER been the mark of an EXPERT PILOT. Quite the contrary, in fact. Expert pilots all use the crappiest bent pin pro toad shit they can get they're hands on because they all have the skills, reflexes, judgment, well trained brains to deal with anything and everything Mother Nature, other crappy equipment, fuckin' douchebag drivers can throw at them.

http://ozreport.com/pub/images/fingerlakesaccident1.jpg


http://ozreport.com/pub/images/fingerlakesaccident4.jpg

So just spend every spare minute of every other weekend for the next thirty years getting that no stepper perfected, honed, maintained so you too one day will have the mark of an expert pilot.

And make sure you totally ignore what the actual expert pilots are actually saying about actual problematic outlandings...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=25536
Whoops! Snapped another tip wand :-O

NMERider - 2012/03/14 15:17:14 UTC

Landing clinics don't help in real world XC flying. I have had the wind do 180 degree 15 mph switches during my final legs. What landing clinic have you ever attended that's going to help? I saved that one by running like a motherfukker. And BTW - It was on large rocks on an ungroomed surface.

Jim Rooney threw a big tantrum and stopped posting here.

His one-technique-fits-all attitude espoused on the Oz Report Forum has become tiresome to read. It does not work in the fucked-up world of XC landings and weary pilots.

I refuse to come in with both hands on the downtubes ever again. I have had some very powerful thermals and gusts kick off and lost control of the glider due to hands on the downtubes. I prefer both hands on the control bar all the way until trim and ground effect. I have been lifted right off the deck in the desert and carried over 150 yards.

I like what Steve Pearson does when he comes in and may adapt something like that.

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27086
Steve Pearson on landings

Steve Pearson - 2012/03/28 23:26:05 UTC

I can't control the glider in strong air with my hands at shoulder or ear height and I'd rather land on my belly with my hands on the basetube than get turned downwind.

...in actual problematic circumstances.

http://ozreport.com/8.133
The European Championships at Millau

Gerolf Heinrichs - 2004/06/24

Bad news from the Europeans in Millau - and it's not just about the weather!

This is the major hang gliding event of the season and was expected to be the highlight of the European competition flying. Due to a most competent organising team around meet director Richard Walbec everybody expected only the very best from it.

Now, one task into the meet we are all hanging our heads as we just get confirmation about the fatal accident of Croatian team pilot Ljubomir Tomaskovic. He apparently encountered some strong turbulences on his landing approach. He got pitched up and turned around from a strong gust at low altitude, then impacted tailwind into some treetops from where he fell hard onto the ground.

Don't worry, Robert. This guy obviously wasn't the expert pilot you'll undoubtedly be within the next few weekends.

Suck my dick, Red.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33147
Different measures of success (landings)

Hey Robert...

Ya know another mark of the expert pilot? He can pull multiple flawless loops. Aerobatic pilots are really good at keeping their wits about them when they get flipped upside down in the violent thermal conditions we frequently encounter in the big national and international competitions - 'specially when our Tad-O-Links don't break when they're supposed to on the way up. Smooth air is actually fairly rare in the HG world.

So you should start working on loops because sooner or later you're gonna find yourself upside down and if you don't develop the skill you need to get things sorted up before your glider wraps up around you and your parachute that no-stepper you've perfected for landing in tall weeds or crops or (in the USA West) sagebrush ain't gonna be doing you much good. Kinda the same way the best helmet and LARA parachute money can by aren't likely to do you much good after you've been whip-inconvenienced by your Rooney Link at a hundred and fifty feet.

Tell ya sumpin' else, Robert... If you DID take a halfway responsible approach to learning aerobatics and loops - you'd be way less likely to get seriously fucked up trying to perfect emergency landing no-steppers.

This bullshit...

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That's a stupid aerobatic stunt maneuver at the single most dangerous point of your flight - minus skipping the hook-in check at the top of the cliff of course. You're pitching the fuck out of your glider way the hell beyond its certified placard limitations and if you keep doing it long enough in enough circumstances there's a REAL good chance you're gonna break an arm - or much worse.

If you did that kinda shit at a hundred feet your ass would be dead several seconds later. When you do it at two feet you need everything to keep going right to avoid winding up in crumpled heap.

Brad Barkley - 2015/07/14 16:58:58 UTC

Robert,

You might be interested in reading this thread. (It's 21 pages long!)

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26379
Landings

Yeah, you might be interested in reading it, Robert. You might also be interested in knowing that the Patron Saint of Hang Gliding has never done much in the way of flying hang gliders and just about all of what he HAS done has been in the way of tandem thrill rides coming down at airports and landing using massive roll in gear with castering front wheels. That and some scooter tow instruction at the same putting greens in zilch morning and evening air.

You might be interested in hearing what Jonathan, who actually DOES fly XC (all the fuckin' time), and Christopher LeFay, a former Lockout instructor, have to say about it.

And you might note that the Patron Saint of Landing has only had one post on his seminal topic in well over two years - and that one well over one year ago. Guess he just really nailed that issue and solved all of our problems for us - just like he did getting sick and tired of arguing about the excellent track record of the Rooney Link for all those years that the Rooney Link was the focal point of our safe towing systems.

And you might wonder why - if this is such totally awesome stuff - it's gonna have information different from and/or supplemental to what you're getting from the people at Lockout you're paying to properly and safely train you.

Twenty-one pages long, Brad? This Kite Strings landing thread is on 107 pages, the posts tend to be a lot longer, and there's tons of documentation or REAL world situations. And there's NOBODY saying the kinda stuff about its validity that Jonathan and Christopher are saying about Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney's crap. And it also syncs real well with what Lockout instructor Christian Thoreson used to say, write, and teach.

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33147
Different measures of success (landings)

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


01-00000
- 01 - chronological order
- -0 - minutes
- 00 - seconds
- 00 - frame (30 fps)

Lookin' good, Robert. You undoubtedly did a hang check at the back of the ramp so no worries in that department - main, backup, carabiner locked, helmet buckled... Start focusing on the stuff that matters at this point.

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Glider trim, nothing going on with the air, no traffic... Let's do it.

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Feel that suspension load up as your wing enters the turbulent jet stream? Lets you know you've done the really important stuff right up to this point.

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Remember Christopher's five second rule. Don't be in a big rush to go to the basetube and prone out.

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OK, it's probably safe to prone out now...

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Turn onto final is not disgustingly high.

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Wouldn't be any point to landing on your wheels at this point. Fuck, you've already got your hands on the downtubes up at shoulder level where you can't control the glider. Might as well put it in on your feet.

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Now would be a good time to relinquish your grip on the controls so you can have even less control authority and more flare authority.

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Good. Now flare the crap outta it.

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There. You've got it safely stopped. I have no idea what might have happened if you hadn't been able to pull it off the way you did.

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So what did you learn from that "flight", Robert? What did you learn about handling the glider that you didn't have before? What is it you'll be able to do better?

What a waste of altitude and airtime. I was having more fun and putting my glider through more paces on my first day's dune flights than you did in the course of that entire atrocity.

Jump to top:
http://www.kitestrings.org/post8120.html#p8120

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=33147
Different measures of success (landings)

NMERider - 2015/07/14 19:37:20 UTC

Robert,

Your landing in the video looked very good to me.

How NECESSARY did it look to you? How much FUN...

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

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

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

...did it look like to you?

Please consult your instructor about your landings.

Do you KNOW his instructor? The fact that he's got an instructor's ticket and works for Matt is good enough for you? I notice you don't seem to be a whole lot more impressed by Master Instructor...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=27217
Bad Launch!

NMERider - 2012/09/25 07:01:39 UTC
Why would CSS want that when his last landing clinic resulted in a broken arm to one of his students?

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=27262
Accident Reports

NMERider - 2012/10/04 06:17:04 UTC

In fact, by your insolence you have done more to reduce safety in this sport than anyone else I can think of in recent history. Your holier than thou attitude and general condescending attitude have been a bane to this forum and this sport for as long as I have returned.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=30824
Article "Pushing Out" Feb 2014 HG mag

NMERider - 2014/02/25 06:05:06 UTC

What part of:

...his rather nonsensical and too-often phantasmagorical version of physics and aerodynamics.

wasn't clear?

Ryan is a classic example of a superbly talented athlete who is ill-equipped to write a comprehensive training manual or academically meaningful text.

...Ryan Instant-Hands-Free-Release Voight than I am.

Shopping for answers from people who do not have a personal stake in your safety is risky business.

How 'bout ace tandem instructor Kelly Harrison?

07-03019
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8737/16790136379_c1c17b2f86_o.png


Think he was wanting in the personal stake department with respect to the outcome of that training flight? Wanna list the critical items he DIDN'T fuck up to the maximum extent possible? If Arys had shown up on The Jack Show with a new Falcon 4 145 he got for his eleventh birthday and wanted some opinions on the best way to jump off a mountain with it would you have referred him to Kelly if that were your only other choice? Just how much worse off do you think he could've wound up with twenty or thirty contradictory Jack Show opinions?

How 'bout Zack Marzec and all his pro toad buddies at Quest and Kitty Hawk who tell all us muppets that we'll never really know what really went wrong?

Mark Knight? Little spin in the ol' Dragonfly before we go up on the tandem?

Top Gun instructor Trey Higgins?

This is a total crap shoot, Jonathan. Anybody I gave a flying fuck about I'd tell to learn to fly a Cessna at a real aviation flight school and then apply what he'd learned to the fuckin' hang glider. I'd shoot him out of kindness before I sent him to Lockout.

And now for my 2p worth:

As an experienced X/C pilot who often lands in places he's never seen I will share a few thoughts.

He doesn't NEED your thoughts on injun country XC landings. He NEEDS to learn how to fly a hang glider in its certified controllable configuration. There was a goddam twelve year old kid in some of my first classes Easter Weekend 1980 who was doing just fine with that. Statistically Robert's only gonna be landing in huge putting greens like Lockout and the stuff that's plastered all over all the valleys in the Chattanooga area.

Ten years from now if he's still in the sport and wants to start taking stupid chances landing in tall weeds or crops or (in the USA West) sagebrush tell him how he can safely pull it off.

I think it's very important to know how to bring your glider to a full stop in mid-air and with your feet close to the ground in nil wind and without dropping your control bar or bouncing off of your keel.

But you're perfectly OK running off a fuckin' cliff with no verification of connection to your fuckin' glider during the thirteen seconds we've seen on the video plus gawd knows what since the idiot goddam hang check at the back of the ramp.

Try this, Jonathan... Pretend you've got a time machine and you're talking to soon to be Steve Wendt / Cragin Shelton victim Bill Priday the last weekend of September 2005. Are ya gonna advise him on flare timing issues? Ya know what the word "triage" means?

That's correct. Only your feet should touch and at most your keel should only tap but never bounce or bang.

Yeah? How 'bout the fact that...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=25536
Whoops! Snapped another tip wand :-O

NMERider - 2012/03/14 15:17:14 UTC

I refuse to come in with both hands on the downtubes ever again. I have had some very powerful thermals and gusts kick off and lost control of the glider due to hands on the downtubes. I prefer both hands on the control bar all the way until trim and ground effect. I have been lifted right off the deck in the desert and carried over 150 yards.

...ON A TWELVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FOOT VERTICAL FLIGHT HE DOESN'T HAVE A SINGLE SECOND OF SAFE CONTROL OVER THE FUCKING GLIDER? You tell me the justification those Lockout motherfuckers have for doing that to him.

Instead of coaching him on how to best get away with landing in shit that he has no business landing in without bonking how 'bout telling how to stay alive where he should and ACTUALLY WILL BE landing when the shit hits the fan?

And that shit WILL be hitting the fan because the whole point of flying hang gliders is to get up in potentially dangerous thermal conditions

A bit over ten months ago Hang Four Joe Julik died because at a hundred feet over the Whitewater putting green he decided that getting set for foot landing mode was more important than controlling the fucking glider. His last view as a happy camper would've looked something like:

l-22-41425
http://farm1.staticflickr.com/386/19725109856_a3b20b8f24_o.png

This is a good skill to have but if used inappropriately or to the exclusion of all other landing techniques can send you to the hospital as it has done to many others.

But just the hospital - so don't sweat things too much.

It is NOT a superior technique by any reasonable measure.

If you're in a situation in which you need it - your safety is dependent upon it - you've already fucked up bigtime.

It is simply one of many techniques.

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=26854
Skids versus wheels

Andrew Stakhov - 2012/08/11 13:52:35 UTC

So I just came back from flying in Austria (awesome place btw). Stark difference I noticed is a large chunk of pilots choose to fly with skids instead of wheels. Conversations I had with pilots they say they actually work better in certain situations as they don't get plugged up like smaller wheels. Even larger heavier Atosses were all flying with skids. I was curious why they consistently chose to land on skids on those expensive machines and they were saying that it's just not worth the risk of a mistimed flare or wing hitting the ground... And those are all carbon frames etc.

None of which is worth a rat's ass relative to doing things right.

It is a skill that any interested pilot should be able to perform with good competence on any single surface glider and most intermediate gliders before attempting to fly X/C.

Yeah, they SHOULD. But when they most NEED TO...

http://ozreport.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27086
Steve Pearson on landings

Steve Pearson - 2012/03/28 23:26:05 UTC

I can't control the glider in strong air with my hands at shoulder or ear height and I'd rather land on my belly with my hands on the basetube than get turned downwind.

...they CAN'T.

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."

Physics thing.

But there are other skills and techniques in landings that can be safer and more useful in turbulent and gusty conditions.

The safest of which is to...

Christian Thoreson - 2004/10

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

...belly in prone with your hands on the basetube until you've stopped flying.

Talk to your local instructor and get with a mentor to learn these hands-on or see them demonstrated.

Or get Jim Keen-Intellect Rooney...

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=25536
Whoops! Snapped another tip wand :-O

NMERider - 2012/03/14 15:17:14 UTC

Landing clinics don't help in real world XC flying. I have had the wind do 180 degree 15 mph switches during my final legs. What landing clinic have you ever attended that's going to help? I saved that one by running like a motherfukker. And BTW - It was on large rocks on an ungroomed surface.

Jim Rooney threw a big tantrum and stopped posting here.

His one-technique-fits-all attitude espoused on the Oz Report Forum has become tiresome to read. It does not work in the fucked-up world of XC landings and weary pilots.

Instructor, mentor, professional pilot, Patron Saint of Landings, unhooked tandem launch expert, one of the world's greatest authorities on everything.

Nobody's online scribblings will make you a safer pilot.

Yeah?

http://www.hanggliding.org/viewtopic.php?t=31781
Another hang check lesson

Alan Deikman - 2014/09/23 19:47:06 UTC

Amazing how when this topic comes up every time you see people argue the same arguments over and over again. It has been a classic (although niche) endless Internet flame topic.

I suspect that some of the parties that have posted in threads like these before are refraining now since they have learned that it is nearly (completely?) impossible to change people's minds on the topic.

For my part I will just refer you to the classic Tad Eareckson essay which I call "the gun is always loaded" which is a bit overworked but probably all you will ever need to read regarding FTHI. A lot of people will find it gores their particular sacred Ox, but I have never seen anyone point out a flaw in his logic.

I'll put my online scribblings up against every douchebag certified instructor on the fuckin' planet.

http://vimeo.com/124963665


Do me a favor, Jonathan... Don't coach these goddam Twos landing and bonking at Lockout, Quest, Lumby, Kagel, AJX on how to prepare themselves for XC landings in narrow dry riverbeds with large rocks strewn all over the place. Save it for the people who ACTUALLY are going XC over vast expanses of injun country and might actually have a USE for some of the skills you've developed.

Or at least wait until somebody approaches you on the topic. Niki didn't lose her sole to the foot landing crowd because she was bored out of her skull with wheel landings. She lost her sole because of a perceived need to assimilate.

Cheers, Jonathan
P.S. My own landings need plenty of work and I'm working on it too.

Robert didn't get into the sport because as a kid he'd always dreamt of going XC and landing in tall weeds or crops or (in the USA West) sagebrush. Nobody in this sport has fun...

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

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

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

...working on landings. Have him work on thermalling, restricted field approaches, aerobatics if you want him to have fun and increase his long term survival outlook.