landing

[Tad Eareckson]

http://vimeo.com/39102874
Pearson whacks Greblo
Steven Pearson - 2012/03/24 10:51
dead

Both hands are on the basetube until less than two seconds from contact with the ground (and Joe Greblo).

14-2014

[miguel]

http://ozreport.com/pub/images/P20901072012.jpg


http://ozreport.com/1332938275
2012/03/28 12:37:55 UTC

And the Bud Lite girls will drive out in the retrieval golf cart and tow you back to the bar

[Tad Eareckson]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaTu5Y4WBdY

18-3704

7:15
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72SJu09S-Y0

8-71716-c
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7369/13962618245_163eb65caa_o.png


http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2920/13939515566_f9b68a2595_o.png
9-72800-c

[miguel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaTu5Y4WBdY

Another McClure landing.
Hind sight is 20/20. Who is to say that he would not have hit the trees if prone?

Flying too slowly in the slot with a crosswind, usually results in a stalled wingtip and turn whether prone or upright. He would have had a perfect landing in the upper lz. The wind is straight in there.

[Zack C]

And the Bud Lite girls will drive out in the retrieval golf cart and tow you back to the bar

We do have a golf cart, but the Bud Lite girls are outside our budget. But hey, where else can you tow behind a tug with a 600 lb weak link?

I test flew Gregg's wheel configuration when he was developing it. Worked great, though it makes ground handling a pain in high wind. Some vid (password = 'red'):
http://vimeo.com/37468810

(Yeah, I land like someone not used to landing on wheels...) I'm glad some of our new guys are interested in these...I'm hoping it will help remove some of the stigma that seems to be associated with wheel landing.

I landed on my S2's miniscule wheels for the first time last Saturday (at Hearne). I was pleased by how well they did, especially considering it's a little overgrown as we've been getting a fair amount of rain lately (not nearly as high as I've seen it get but not a putting green either). Of course, I wasn't trying to land on my wheels. That's another story, but since this is a landing thread...

I was practicing tight approaches onto a 200' runway marked by cones. When I set the cones up the east side of our staging area had too many cars and gliders so I put the cones on the west side near the (north-south) runway. As I approached the landing area and was about to start circling to lose altitude I noticed a plane coming in so I turned away from it and lost altitude on the other (east) side of the airport. I came out of my circles realizing I'd have a long base leg to fly to reach the 'runway' so I slanted my downwind leg towards it. When I reached the downwind end I realized I was pushing it and normally would have just turned onto final while I still had energy. However, that would have put me dangerously close to a truck and glider so I stuck to the original plan and kept going to get around them. Scraped a wingtip but I think I probably could have avoided that by letting out more as I still had speed. I was able to level the wings and landed uneventfully on the wheels. Still, not my finest moment... Password = 'red'.
http://vimeo.com/39386185

I put the second landing in just for my ego. =)

Most of us do not have putting greens available for training or in the lz.

(From here.) Conventional hang gliding wisdom says that you need to develop good foot landing skills because otherwise you'd be severely restricting the places at which you could fly (and XC would be out of the question). Tad has gotten me to question much of hang gliding's conventional wisdom. So far in my hang gliding career, I've landed in 27 LZs. Two were at lakes where I landed on floats...the rest were all places I foot landed. Sixteen were at mountain/hill sites. Three were at the end of XC flights (i.e., not predesignated). Locations ranged from SoCal to Florida, Mexico to Utah. I would not hesitate to land in ANY of them with 8" pneumatic tires. In fact, after last weekend I wouldn't hesitate to land in the vast majority of them with my minuscule plastic wheels. Even tall grass may not be an issue...I think you could do a hard push out and belly flop just fine in tall grass without any wheels. So far, the warnings I've been hearing throughout my career appear to be unfounded.

Then there's B, who intentionally belly flops all his landings but flies XC every chance he gets. Mark 'Gibbo' Gibson told me he used to frown on wheels but then had a knee injury many years ago (not from hang gliding) and landed on wheels for an entire season (this was flying lots of XC out in the mountains out west). That changed his tune pretty quickly. Another local ace, Robin Hamilton, flies a Swift XC and lands it on wheels all the time. And then there's Chris Starbuck.

We did have someone break a wrist at Hearne after hitting an anthill on a tandem wheel landing, but he was a trainee. I think with a little experience a pilot would see that coming and let go of the bar (or at least lighten his grip). And that kind of thing could easily cause carnage on a foot landing as well.

Like Tad said...it's tough to find a video of someone landing in a place that isn't wheel landable.

Zack

[Tad Eareckson]

Hind sight is 20/20.

Bullshit.

http://www.chgpa.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3167
Freak accident at Highland

Tad Eareckson - 2008/04/13 23:47:22 UTC

This is the second forum incident reported from a span of eighteen days in which taking a hand off the basetube resulted in a loss of control. The first situation was just potentially dangerous, the second was life altering. Both of those actions were elective.

http://www.ushawks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=992
Continuing Saga of Weak Link and Release Mechanism Failures

Warren Narron - 2012/03/06 02:26:04 UTC

There is a good chance that from now on, for every incident and fatality caused by insufficient weaklinks or substandard release mechanisms, a hyperlink trail will lead back to Tadtriedtowarnyou.com ... where all the evidence can be found.

Whenever somebody crashes a glider I've written why it happened a long time before - repeatedly.

Who is to say that he would not have hit the trees if prone?

Anybody with an IQ in the high single digit range or better.

Flying too slowly in the slot with a crosswind, usually results in a stalled wingtip and turn whether prone or upright.

1. He didn't stall a tip - or anything else.

2. His main problem was direction - not speed.

3. The reason he lost directional control was 'cause he took his hands off the CONTROL frame (big surprise) and couldn't get the right one adequately reengaged in time to do anything particularly useful.

4. If you need speed you don't get it by rocking up and moving your hands from the basetube to the downtubes.

5. The only reason he rocked up and moved his hands from the basetube to the downtubes was to facilitate a standup landing.

6. Because he rocked up and moved his hands from the basetube to the downtubes he was unable to pull off anything remotely resembling a standup - or any other kind of - landing.

He would have had a perfect landing in the upper lz. The wind is straight in there.

Right. There's NO WAY he'd have hooked that tail wire with his right hand and lost directional control of the glider in the UPPER LZ with the wind straight in.

[miguel]

The Great and Powerful Tad has spoken:



Tad: Do point out the frame where Andy 'hooks his hand on the rear wire'.

Zack: Good take off and landing. Very good design on the landing gear.

[Tad Eareckson]

Do point out the frame where Andy 'hooks his hand on the rear wire'.

We discussed that issue already starting at:

http://www.kitestrings.org/post1210.html#p1210

Very good design on the landing gear.

And if he'd put a tiny fraction of the work he did on the landing gear into a release system...

Zack,

At least get him to swap out that piece of junk for one of Joe's releases.

[miguel]

Oh Great and Powerful Tad:

I went through the video frame by frame. I did not see any grab of the rear wires. I saw a pilot way behind on control of the glider. Crosswind technique demands that you bias your body toward the upwind side and bias your up hand to the upwind side. Andy is on the downwind side of the control bar and his up hand is on the downwind side. He is biased to go downwind which is what he did.

Go to google maps and look at the layout of the lz. There is an upper lz that parallels the old highway. It is perpendicular to the slot lz and the wind blows straight in. Multiple approaches and easy to land. The beer and party are always in the slot. It is a long walk to the beer from the upper lz.

I really strained those 7.5 IQ points on that one.

You are still welcome to point out the frame with the rear wire grab.

[Tad Eareckson]

I went through the video frame by frame. I did not see any grab of the rear wires.

Then you need to KEEP going through the video frame by frame 'cause once it's been pointed out that that's what happened it's BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS.

I saw a pilot...

I didn't see a pilot. I saw a guy with a shit sense of priorities along for a very unrewarding and very expensive ride.

...way behind on control of the glider.

Goddam right he was. And the reason he was was 'cause he was prioritizing stopping on his feet...

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

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

I wouldn't presume to teach others how to land but for me the challenge is having precise control of the glider before flare. The flare window is really long on a T2, maybe two seconds or fifty feet, but I can't initiate pitch unless the wings are level and the glider isn't yawed (you can see the result in the landing video, I start thinking about avoiding Joe, the glider yaws almost imperceptibly and I drop a wing). Landing straight is easy in smooth or dead air but sometimes requires every bit of control authority that I can manage if the LZ is breaking off or if I have to maneuver late on approach. I always have plenty of pitch authority and don't grip the downtubes because it only takes a light push to get the nose up. 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.

My other comment is that I like to make a long low final. I can flare more aggressively from close to the ground, I don't have to worry about mushing through a gradient and I'm only arresting forward motion.

...over controlling his glider down into ground effect.

Crosswind technique demands that you bias your body toward the upwind side and bias your up hand to the upwind side.

1. Crosswind - and pretty much any other - technique demands that you keep your speed up and keep the fuckin' glider level. And Andy wasn't doing either of those prior to the situation going to hell.

2. NOBODY coming into that LZ ever NEEDS to have EITHER hand up at ANY time.

Andy is on the downwind side of the control bar and his up hand is on the downwind side.

1. I have a solid Hang 1.5.

2. I'm gonna put him on Andy's Combat with Bob Grant's pair of Cloud 9 wheels and duct tape his hands to the basetube.

3. I'm gonna remind him to keep his speed up, point him towards the McClure landing strip on glide path at a hundred feet in identical conditions and cut him loose.

4. He's gonna be fine.

He is biased to go downwind which is what he did.

0:30
- "No, he's got it.
- Rolled to port.
- Left hand to downtube.

0:32
- "Looks good."
- Wallows to starboard.

0:34
- "Oh damn!"
- "Oh!"
- Wallows to port.

0:35
- "Oh!"
- Right hand comes off basetube and goes up.

0:36
- Situation irretrievable.
- "Oh!"
- Right hand engages downtube high with arm hooked around tail wire.
- Glider rolling hard to port.

0:37
- "Oh!"
- Right hand drops off of downtube to behind starboard control frame corner.

0:38
- Right hand back up and grabbing high on downtube.
- "C'mon Andy!"

0:39
- "Oh shit!"
- Crunch.

0:35 is CRITICAL. He's in trouble, he needs to prone out, stuff the bar - especially the right end of the bar, and get the fuckin' glider back under the kind of control he had before he started rocking up and moving his hands to the downtubes.

And what's he do instead?

His idiot fuckin' instructor got him so hardwired to idiot fuckin' standup landings in all situations at all costs that he can't even conceive of the concept of taking a chance of bellying in prone.

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

...AND I'D RATHER LAND ON MY BELLY WITH MY HANDS ON THE BASETUBE THAN GET TURNED DOWNWIND.

It is a long walk to the beer from the upper lz.

There wasn't a goddam thing going on with the air in the lower LZ that couldn't have been handled perfectly fine by a goddam Hang 1.5 proned out with both hands on the basetube.

There wasn't even a goddam thing going on with the air in the lower LZ that couldn't have been handled adequately by a goddam Hang 1.5 bolt upright with his hands on the downtubes.

But if you voluntarily take a hand off from wherever you have it on the control frame at the worst possible moment on the way down you can expect to be screwed over about a quarter as badly as the idiot who tows with a release that requires that he take a hand off the control frame at the worst possible moment on the way up.