Nomination for Best Supporting Actor on Launch

[CraginS]

http://ozreport.com/1297180055

Lake Elsinore High-Wind Launch video (don't do this at home, Kids!)

"...and Dan Tuck on my right."

Oh, and listen to the narrative during approach and landing. Remember the recent discussion on S-turns for approach in strong winds?

[Danny Brotto]

This is the guy that recently posted a video of his launching with the lines to his cocoon all twisted up. He rejected a hang check before launch and went off with his left suspension lines under his leg. Glider was controllable but he climbed up to altitude, got part way out of his harness, and then got back into it. Scared me just watching the vid. Hmm... I think I would have gone out to land rather than climb out of my harness!

Notice the guy on wire crew left wing side with his open palm handling of the side wire. You should always have your hands clasped around the wire. The reason is that if the wing becomes unloaded down, the wire person will then loose it. Note the the side wire guy is watching the pilot so he wouldn't even recognize that he lost the wire! Keep your hand clasped around the wire as it provides tactile sensation to what's going on with the wire and helps assure that you won't loose the wire in bouncy conditions!

Landing in strong condition, get stable, and unhook! Being hooked in exposes the pilot to being dragged away if the wind gusts up dragging the glider away. MNE stays hooked in while walking to the edge of the field; bad practice IMHO.

Danny Brotto

[mcelrah]

Not disagreeing with Danny, who has a lot more time in, just thinking about what he's saying:

(1) I got picked up once and turned back into launch at a nasty rocky place in Mexico (La Salina) when a wirecrewman was one-handing it and couldn't hold on. Make 'em use both hands (when it's windy, or there's even a chance of a thermal gust), preferably with gloves! Ya gotta hold a short crew briefing if there is even one new crewman.

(2) I'm still thinking about the "don't hook in/unhook" idea. My observation has been of a pilot having to stand on launch hooked in and stepped through the control frame to hold the nose wires when self-launching in windy conditions at a big open launch out west (Utah). He had to wait 15-20 minutes that way till he got a launchable lull... Key here is holding a zero/negative angle-of-attack to keep the wing grounded. If one wing comes up, you must instantly pivot the glider toward it while lowering the nose yet further. Admittedly, this is an advanced technique, not without risk...

My own experience was of landing just before a gust front hit and having to step through and hold the nose wires until someone came and helped me undo the nose wires and lay the glider flat. We pulled battens etc from there. My feeling was that staying hooked in gave me better control of the glider (not that I was in a position to unhook unassisted). 'Course, it woulda been bad to get picked up with the glider, but at least you might be able to fly it back down... It has happened to me and others that a thermal comes through on an otherwise benign day and picks up gliders. One unhooked pilot was barely able to control it with help. The other, unassisted, lost control of it.

I generally have preferred to walk with the glider while hooked in - walk from set-up area to launch, from landing to breakdown area... On the launch end, this is the "Australian method" whereby the glider is set up with harness hooked in and the pilot climbs into the harness that way - prevents launching unhooked, in theory. It does mean you may need/want assistance getting into launch position on windy days. Dennis Pagen has some good articles in the USHGA mag about ground-handling unassisted...

I am confronting a related issue with PG. My new glider tends to want to take off uncommanded. I am trying to develop a set-up protocol that keeps the glider bunched up until I have completed line clearing, riser attachment, donning harness, flight deck attachment, jacking-in radio headset, and donning gloves. Probably start using a strap... They say never turn your back on a PG that is laid out when you are hooked in... Ya need to be able to get to the C's immediately to kill the wing if it lifts off prematurely.

- Hugh

[theflyingdude]

To each his own; however, I always have the side-wire crew use cupped, but open, downward-facing palms to avoid them not letting go when I yell "Clear!" and I always try to unhook from the glider as soon as I land and stabilize the glider, especially in strong and/or gusty conditions. My last "Near-Death" experience occurred when I landed in a 40 - 50 mph gust front at the Arco, ID airport after flying from King Mtn (that might have been the same day Hugh was talking about). I was very lucky to have gotten on the ground safely, but then I was pinned there for 15 - 20 minutes unable to move the glider or unhook due to the real threat of being tumbled across the desert like a rag-doll. As soon as the wind began to back down, I unhooked and life was good, again.

JR

[mcelrah]

Ya, JR, that was where it happened. You may have landed nearer launch (in the LZ?) whilst three of us ran down the ridge 10 miles ("stupid gringo, you theenk you can outrun the bullet/gust front?") to land in what smelled like a dried up sewage settlement pond north of the airport. If it's a survival situation, I certainly agree with unhooking if possible even if that may increase the likelihood of sacrificing the glider. I also ask wirecrew to have an overhand grip on the wire - mostly because it's less likely to get ripped out of their grasp - and make sure they understand to LET GO when I yell "clear". - Hugh

[mcelrah]

On that occasion at King (2006?), I was having a ball thermaling with a couple others above launch to ~10k+ (launch is at 7100) when Sparky radioed up that he and Bruce Engen had landed because of the gust front and advising us to run down the ridge (he was right, the "stupid gringo" remark was just for fun). Ashley Groves led the way to the dried shit LZ, where he landed in light east wind. By the time I got rid of 4000 feet of altitude - in a hurry, took me maybe 4 minutes, it was 15 gusting to 25 - from the west!; the third guy landed in 25 gusting to 35 and broke a downtube (lucky that was all). - Hugh
P.S. For pedagogical completeness, I believe received wisdom is that if you are in the air and able to completely avoid the gust front - say jump over the ridge into another valley - and land after it is well past, that is another alternative survival strategy.

[theflyingdude]

I was over the LZ trying to get down, but the gust front had arrived there already so I ran south down the mountain range and then made it out front to the Arco airport just before the gust front caught up to me. I was auguring down to land beside the runway when the gust front hit. I was about 500' agl with only desert/lava flows downwind for several miles and even with full VG and the control bar stuffed, my T2 154 was flying backwards until I descended to about 150' and then it began creeping forward ever so slowly. At 75', the glider got rolled right and I found myself heading downwind at mach-speed. I just got it turned back into the wind and landed sliding sideways on the grass next to the runway. No damage to glider or pilot, unless you count soiled underwear as damage.

JR

[cthornberger]

Is it just me, or does this kind of not-so-conventional wisdom deserve to be put in some kind of hang gliding survival guide?
...Gust fronts, over-development, getting flushed, surprise wave encounters, hyperactive LZs w/ dust devils, etc.
There is a lot of experience out there with this sort of business. Preparing ahead makes encountering these things much more endurable (er, survivable).

[RichH]

My first thought if conditions are this strong at launch (25 mph or higher) Obviously I would suggest to wait it out until conditions calm down to a more secure velocity . With that being said I would agree that in higher wind conditions I would prefer to have the launch crew holding onto the wires.vs cupping or curling their hands around the wires..especially on launches that have suck occuring at the ramp or edge of a cliff (ex:High Rock)..There is nothing more unpleasant than in strong conditions to have a wire man release early..As for the landing approach I think Jonathan does a good job of explaining his decisions for his final approach. In winds of this velocity he uses a series of s-turns to get to the right altitude before pulling in on his final appears to be a good choice (I would caution however,that I've experienced considerable wind gradient at times in high wind landings and minimizing turns close to the ground would be wise). I also feel that in most cases in normal wind speeds a Downwind, baseleg and final are preferred methods of landing especially in our area where narrow tree lined landing fields exsist..Once down I think if the conditions are still strong and gusty to try to move forward and pull down on my front cables while having a foot on my basebar until I can get some help moving my wing or the velocity decreases to where I can safely unhook. If no help is forth coming I have used the above method waiting for the velocity to die down a bit so I can safely unhook and then rotated my glider slightly crosswind while keeping my upwind wing low until I have the wind quartering from behind and set my keel at that time on the ground. Again, I prefer to unhook as soon as possible..but there have been times when I have landed in a exposed field and the wind velocity was strong enough that I had to wait a bit until the velocity or wind gusts dies down...With all this discussion on launches and landings in high winds my first thought is don't..but occassionally stuff happens we launch in what appears to be perfectly reasonable conditions only to see things change while we were in the air...and in those situations is where I see to true value to this discussion and Jonathans video...Rich Hiegel

[deveil]

...sparked some information that beginner pilots may not have known about, and definitely need to know about early in their flying career... Bacil

questions, and... conversation. That's what makes a forum's content meaningful.
MarkC

...this kind of not-so-conventional wisdom...There is a lot of experience out there...

'got pulled away and there have been lot of posts since from when i started this, but what the hell i'll throw it in anyways and try not to feel too irrelevant:

'was actually doing something else when this thought floated into consciousness: back in my day ( ) when there was a larger pilot population and much less weather information, it was most likely the case that a larger group of pilots spent a greater amount of time sitting around atop a mountain hang waiting and hang talking. much discussion of and debating about all things hang gliding took place at those time (and the burden placed on family, friends and strangers was much reduced).
beyond flaming, sniping, snarking, and the other entertainment functions, the forum reestablishes those possibly reduced opportunities, and in the comfort of your office or living room even. though, personally, i find the ambiance of a mountaintop very appealing.
so, yeah, talk is good and i think that people, newbies as well as oldies, should not be reticent or self conscious about tossing things in, around and about.
and if someone were to "jump on your post", i'm pretty sure that someone else would help them reconsider their approach - i think most times people always mean well in the end (if not the beginning )

or put another less sappy way - what they said.

gary

[Danny Brotto]

Yah to clarify, unhook after the glider is stable and only of it's safe to unhook. Good points about being pinned where trying to unhook could put you in a worse situation. My comment was more directed at the specific situation that NMERider found himself in. It was not blowing stink in the LZ, he moved his glider around with plenty of safe avenues to unhook.

I know that some pilots like to stay hooked in with the thinking that if the glider lifts off, then they can control it back down. Maybe you can, and maybe you can't but if the wind is so unpredictable to actually lift you off... it would be luck if it allowed you to control yourself back down!

And if you are hooked into the glider by all means you must have your helmet on! (Different thread maybe.)

In all honesty, I don't always follow my unhooking right after landing best-practices habit. If I need to get out of the way of another pilot landing behind me, then the extra time required to unhook might be better spend getting out of that 2nd pilot's way. Also after a nice landing in benign conditions, I know it looks Joe-Slick cooler to just walk over to the breakdown area w/o bothering to unhook. Still if there is breeze and no one behind be landing, I think it's wise to unhook.

Smithburg is looking nice for Saturday. Might be a bit muddy?

Danny Brotto

[RichH]

One thing I forgot to mention is to maintain an extra dose of speed especially the last 200' feet or so..I've been suprised at how significant a wind shadow can exisit during high wind situations from buildings, tree lines, and even slight hills in the landing area..RH