Hang glider crash in Peters Township, Franklin Co?

[Dunegoon]

Anyone hear details about this? Happened on Friday around 4:00 pm.

[Danny Brotto]

Here's a link.

http://www.whptv.com/content/Archive/st ... c6t_g.cspx

Not a lot of information. Two pix... one of an open field, the other of a TRX or Predator in the air, but that may not be associated with the actual incident.

That an area around Mconnelsburg. Friday was a good soaring day but it was rather easterly from what I remember. Perhaps it was an ultralight?

Danny Brotto

[Matthew]

Other reports say it was a paraglider.

See-- http://www.abc27.com/story/17243463/man ... ider-crash

All of the PGers were flying at Bills that Friday-- winds were out of the East-SE. Don't know why anyone would be flying the Pulpit on an east forecast. Don't know how anyone would go over the back from the Pulpit on an East day either.

Matthew

[XCanytime]

I have a sneaking suspicion that whoever it was launched from the gas line clear cut that faces east on Cove Mt. The crash location, the Mountain Road and Long Lane area, is just below the gas line clear cut. Bacil

[MarkDW]

The second article says it was a 25 year old PG pilot. I trained with a guy last fall about that age who was mentioning launching from gas pipeline cuts in that area:

http://www.littlegap.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=725

Hope it wasn't him, and whoever it was is alright.


Mark

[flying_story]

I know Drew.

Judy

[Matthew]

For anyone thinking of launching from pipeline cut-outs-- it is noted that the writer of the posts from the Little Gap forum claims that the cut-outs are on public land. Not sure if this is true. I do know, however, that access roads are not necessarily on public lands. Case in point-- the road to get the cut-out at the back side of the Pulpit goes through private land that is used as a hunting preserve.

Matthew

[mingram]

I'm bummed that he wasn't flying with us a Bills that day, since he was in the area. I'm planning to post on the Little Gap forum the next time we go up to PA to see if there's any interest. I hope he's ok.

Matt

[XCanytime]

The Pleasant Gap hang gliding launch up near Hyner is located on Nittany Mountain on a gas line clear cut I believe. I wonder how they get to the launch site. Bacil

[MarkDW]

Looks like it was Drew, and he is going to be alright.

He posted the video here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He1Fa_M5 ... e=youtu.be

[Danny Brotto]

So why would a paraglider surge so far forward like that at ~6:12 in the video? Conditions didn't look too turbulent for the flight.

Danny Brotto

[tomceunen]

This is the back of the Pulpit see also this pic I took in 2011, hiked it from the west side
https://picasaweb.google.com/1113086422 ... 8345346770

The folks in the video or taking off from private ground I believe. Well I'm not 100% sure but I have been there and it was clearly marked on top private ground. Not sure if you would hike up and stay x amount of feet away from the gravel road on top and stay on the pipeline that you are not on private ground?

Why did he crash in my opinion which might be wrong? His landing approach was not good = his last turn was with way too much brake too avoid the trees. You can see that also in on the shadow of the glider in the field just before he goes negative at 6:10 even looks like collapse but that's more the right side that stalls explaining also his violent surge clockwise. Next he does not control the surge and crashes. Anyway there was little height left.
Maybe I'm dead wrong here but I do not see any turbulence issues.
This is a 100% pilot error and I have seen this before also with PG pilots from CHGPA landing. Luckily they had no broken bones.

So
- speed is key while landing , never go deep in the brakes at final approach.
- make sure you have a good approach plan so you do not have to go deep into the brakes to clear obstacles.
- if you have a sketch control your glider without over-control (go for an SIV course to understand better)

DradenV sorry I'm so direct, if you read this please feel free to comment.

Good recovery!

Tom

[Ward Odenwald]

"I do not see any turbulence issues"? Just before the "wing" pitched forward, his flytec started to scream. From my arm chair, thermal triggered turbulence was a significant factor. Ward

[eggzkitz]

Interesting.

I tend to agree with Tom. Even if it was turbulence induced, flying with no margin for error (deep in brakes, over-steering to avoid obstacles) is pilot error.

You actually can see the shadow on the ground at the point of departure.  Based on that, and the aggressive braking, it appears to have been a half-stall/spin, with a dive recovery with too little altitude.  At the point that the pilot appears to know something is wrong, he was still facing the trees.  The shadow then does a fast 180 (spin?) and then the wing dives in the opposite direction.  

I wonder if the pilot is a parachutist... Those aggressive deep brake turns remind me of parachute flying.  

Hope he makes a full recovery.

[Danny Brotto]

Ward

Forgive me if I'm looking at this wrong from a physics point of view but from what I've seen, the axis of rotation for the PG ensemble is not around the pilot but rather a point between the pilot and the paraglider (at least while the wing is still loaded.) So if the paragglider surges forward and down, the pilot will surge backwards and up? Could that vario sound you heard be that "pilot surges up" dynamic? I apologize if I'm all wrong here about the dynamic, just thinking out loud

The only indication of any real bump was at the entrance to the LZ perimeter. He stopped casually whistling and voiced "Whoa" where he appeared to hit a bump. .

Re discussion about taking off on private land, what about intentional landing on private land?

Glad he's going to be physically alright.

Danny Brotto

[tomceunen]

it went global

http://www.paraglidingforum.com/viewtop ... 70#p303670

same conclusions.

[Flying Lobster]

In general the brake transitions look sharp--meaning that it tends to start a pitch oscillation relative to the canopy above. He does quite a bit of deep braking to full release, which will aggravate the speed and degree of response of the canopy's pitch change. This is noticeable even before the landing approach sequence. It's possible that he may have been flying fast in a downwind base leg, and the retained energy of the wing may have contributed to the surge--I've seen it before with a low-airtime pilot flying a CEN A wing.

marc

[jimrooney]

Wow.
Haven't been here in a long time... what a place to start eh?

IMHO... Tom's spot on...
That dude started to spin his glider. He let it go before it went 100%, but the spin is what did him in.
He's lucky he let the glider fly before it went 100% btw.
The turbulence shook him up and he put himself in a bad bad spot because it caught him off guard... he had acres of field in front of him to land in... that last 360 was extremely unnecessary. Hindsight unfortunately is 20/20.

It wasn't the turbulence that made the glider surge at the end... that's just how gliders recover from spins.

That looked painful as hell. I'm glad he muted it. I'm going to go back and read some more... I hope he's ok... even if just relatively so.

Jim

[jimrooney]

Ok... whew... read "no broken bones" (nothing else serious mentioned, so nothing assumed).

Jim

[Flying Lobster]

Yeah--I forgot to mention a spin happened after the glider pilot did his downwind leg in the event I witnessed--the pilot spun all the way to the ground (fortunately into trees) before the canopy had a chance to right itself. The perception is that the glider needs more break in the downwind turn to get the glider to turn faster--putting the pilot at greater risk for this kind of event.

marc

[Drew]

Well, I wish I could be joining this board on a happier note, but such is life. I'm the pilot lucky enough to have endured the crash. Yes, I'm a novice pilot. Yes, I have things I need to work on. Yes, I'm going to continue flying. Apparently I just have an affinity to learning the hard way. Hindsight is 20/20.

And I wish I could have walked away from that with no broken bones... instead I'm in a brace while my back heals. My mistakes cost me a dislocated shoulder and two broken vertebrae. I'll be back in the air in June, with any luck.

In the end, I learned from the crash. While I never intended the video to have this large an audience, now it's out there. Feel free to use it as a training tool. Might as well save other P-2s the pain.

Blue skies.

[John Simon]

Hi Drew,
Thanks for coming here and being candid. I wish you well in your recovery and hope to see you airborne as soon as the healing is complete.

Best regards,

John