A Couple of Rants About Woodstock

[Matthew]

For new pilots, PG pilots and anyone with a single surface glider, here are the three rules for Woodstock--

1. Stay in front of the ridge.

2. STAY in front of the ridge.

3. STAY IN FRONT OF THE RIDGE!

There are some minor caveats to these rules-- if you are an experienced thermal pilot and it's L&V with no penetration problems, then yes, you can thermal up behind the ridge. But even then you can be playing with fire if you are not prepared to go XC. It often becomes strong at the end of the day at Woodstock. And when there are thermals, there are often big batches of sink. I've been 4000 over launch behind the ridge at Woodstock in my Ultrasport in a thermal and then hit such big sink punching forward that I got back in front of the ridge with only a couple of hundred over. Have you ever watched Gary Smith fly at Woodstock-- he's always stinkin' high and he's always way out in the valley.

Also, If you are easily getting 600 over launch in ridge lift at Woodstock, get away from the ridge and out into the valley. It's not rocket science, the stronger the wind the wider the lift ban. As you climb up in ridge lift move away from the ridge and find out just how for the lift ban extends into the valley. Then if winds pick up, you can make it out to the LZ. Or if winds back off you can carefully move back towards the ridge to stay in the lift ban. It drives me crazy when I see pilots right on top of the spine on a strong wind day, below me, when I'm out away from the ridge in obviously better lift.

Matthew

[Lostgriz]

Good Stuff!

Thanks,

Matt

[sailin]

Well said!

Jon

[Dan T]

I can't count the number of times I've seen Tom M and others push out into the valley and promptly get much higher than any of us hanging on the ridge. Unless you are willing to commit to riding a ridge released thermal over the back you are much more likely to reach cloud base by pushing out front.

Dan T

[Rod H]

Great advice Matt. Since I was blown over yesterday, that advice may be directed toward me more than others on this forum. I certainly didn't go looking for more lift over the ridge, but I think I did have opportunities to squeak my way toward the LZ early in my flight and I didn't recognize the situation I was in until my fate was sealed. that was poor judgement on my part. When I was down the ridge almost in front of the LZ, I was essentially hovering and should have aggressively applied speedbar to penetrate. Instead I crabbed back toward launch not really recognizing the situation. my wing is an EN A and flies slow, so really I should be way out front in the slightest hint of strong conditions.

anyway - I had a camera and it recorded all of my mistakes, some sloppy flying and the eventual conclusion which I will tell my Mom was a "forest landing" that sounds nice.
two more quick things:
- yes, I know I need to start wearing gloves, I just put some in my gear bag.
- I also know I really should never let go of my brakes - very bad and sloppy habit when I need a free hand to grab my radio. I need to break this before ever flying another wing and keep contact on my lines.

thanks to everyone who gave advice and showed concern and came to retrieve me. I really do appreciate it!
Rod

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FPp0ThTGbI

[Matthew]

Hi Rod,

Thanks for the write up. My rant was not directed at you or anyone in particular.

I'm really glad you are OK.

Matthew

[mingram]

Thanks for sharing Rod. I'm very glad you're ok. Video of your flight is really helpful for analysis. I wish I had prepped you better and had judged conditions to be too strong and not put you in that situation.

If you need a free hand while flying, put both brakes in one hand. This will allow you to feel the wing and more quickly respond in turbulence and give you some amount of control with the one hand on both brakes. Also, you shouldn't be grabbing/holding on to your risers, ever. You should be flying with brakes only which will allow you to feel for pressure on the wing and allow you to more quickly make smooth inputs.

When you went on speed bar you were still pulling some brake. Your hands should be up completely - you want the maximum performance possible. We also need to make sure that your speed bar is adjusted correctly. It should be pulley-to-pulley when fully engaged. All pilots should practice flying with full speedbar so you get used to it and understand what it does or doesn't do for you. It looked like you didn't fully engage it and were on and off when you needed to be full on the second you started flying backwards. Having a GPS is helpful for showing your ground speed. It also looked like you were mostly flying directly into the wind (North cross) instead of crabbing left, downwind. I realize this would have taken you away from your desired LZ, but you may have been able to penetrate better in the critical moments you needed to.

Again, very glad you're ok. Thanks for sharing.

[Dan T]

There have been several excellent suggestions about how to avoid putting a PG wing into the trees while attempting to reach an LZ out front. One alternative that hasn't been discussed is to turn and run downwind then land in one of the very big fields right behind launch in Fort Valley. While I don't recommend that this decision be taken lightly it is an alternative to making a near hopeless attempt to get out front when conditions have turned to strong to make it likely to succeed. If you are going to do it it's best to do it early while you have some altitude above the ridge. The HG community has done it upon rare occasion over the years without serious consequences.

Dan

[jmcclave]

Rod,

I took a look at your video and I wanted to pass on a few pointers below. Let me first say that I have learned the "don't get blown over the back" lesson that hard way. I flew at Dickey's Ridge one day and the wind picked up while I was flying to the point where I could not get forward penetration even on full speed bar. I saw that I was sinking and I turned and flew as fast as I could to get away from the rotor behind the ridge. I took a few small collapses. After I got out of the rotor, I started to look for a landing area and I headed toward a clearing with a vacation home in it. I almost put the wing down successfully but a thermal kicked off as I was landing which lifted one wing and pointed me towards a tree. I accepted the "tree landing" vs. cranking hard on the break and risking spinning the glider or catching the tip of the glider in the tree and falling a distance to the ground.

Here are things I observed:

1. At one point, you were flying in active air without holding either brake. The brakes in this situation are used to fly actively to keep pressure in the wing and prevent collapses. By not flying actively, you increase the risk of a collapse (symmetric or asymmetric). You are also not prepared to deal with changes in pitch, roll, or yaw in response to either entering thermals or from turbulence (rotor behind ridge). If you had a problem (cravat after a collapse) and started to spiral, you would not be able to easily grab the breaks back and get control of the wing.

2. As Matt pointed out, you should adjust your speed bar so you can go "pulley to pulley" and keep your hands up when using it. Note that I did not have my speed bar adjusted "pulley to pulley" in the Dickey's example above. If they had been, I might have been able to stay out in front.

3. Get a "push to talk" setup so you can use your radio without having to try to fly with one brake free or both brakes in one hand. I use a setup from www.glidercom.com. I hate taking my hands off the brakes in active air!

4. Run from the rotor - Once you realize you are going to get blown back, turn and get far from the ridge so you don't get caught in the rotor behind the ridge. Note that the rotor gets worse when you are behind a steep cliff-like ridge. If you had been further north, you would have experienced much more rotor. The rotor can cause you to take big collapses. Having you hands off the brakes when this happens can lead to significant accidents.

5. When you were "landing" it also looked like the right side of your wing was very close to the tall trees in your emergency landing area. If you had caught a tip of the wing you would have fallen a long way. As I describe in my Dickey's event above, a thermal kicking off can push your glider in an unintended direction. Bottom line - it may be safer to accept a tree landing than risk getting a tip caught high above the ground.

Re the hands near the risers, in the couple of SIV courses I took with Michael Nesler in Lake Garda (www.profly.org), he had us run our thumbs lightly around the risers. We did not hold the risers. This was to use the risers as a guide when correcting asymmetric collapses. His rule was your hand should not go below the carabiner as you weighted shifted to the flying side and put pressure on the collapsed side. This prevented going into a spin. This may be a good technique for you as you have gotten used to having your hands in contact with the risers.

I hope this helps and I'm happy to discuss these points when we next fly together. As my Dickey's Ridge example shows, I make mistakes all the time. I'm glad when folks point them out so I don't have to learn from them the hard way.

See you soon!
Jim

[mcelrah]

Rod - Nice job on the emergency landing. You kept calm and handled the situation well. Also, good marks for abandoning the fussy hand-held radio and just flying the glider. I'm sure the new helmet radio will be much nicer!

One thing I tell folks is to frequently test their ability to penetrate at different points along the ridge. Sometimes you can't penetrate at a particular point, but if you still have altitude/speed bar/ability to crab, you can get to another point laterally where you CAN penetrate. Also, what everyone already said about adjusting the speedbar so it two-blocks, staying outta da brakes while on speed bar - use a lot of weight-shift instead. And at least one hand holding the brakes at all times.

Matt - I take it you were Rod's observer. Thanks for taking on the leaden mantle of responsibility! That's a horrible sinking feeling when you've "let" someone launch and then the wind ramps back up! But it's better to be an observer than to just leave it to someone else and potentially deprive the Two's of valuable learning experiences - if you don't let them fly in strong-ish conditions, how will they develop independent judgment about wind speed?

This is an excellent thread - exactly what the forum is for!

- Hugh

[jmcclave]

Rod - I agree 100% that you did a great job on the emergency landing.

Jim

[Rod H]

Hi all,

I agree this is a good thread. I have seen other people post their mistakes/mishaps and generally the comments and observations help the person who had the mishap and maybe prevented others from making the same mistake.

One interesting point I would like to make is that several pieces of advice provided have nothing to do with being blown over the mountain. you guys are just seeing "rookie" flying on camera which I would have done regardless of the crash. This would be very helpful and interesting feedback even if I landed safely in the LZ. I think I mentioned above that I definitely recognize releasing a brake line in active air is a bad practice and is also a really easy thing to fix. I will break this bad habit.
My speed bar is adjusted properly. actually Karen and Ellis very graciously helped me set it up several weeks ago and were very attentive that I checked the adjustment and it snugly goes pulley to pulley. BUT I wasn't fully extending it even though Matt was telling me to do that on the radio. The Normandy, FR school that really gave me most/all of my foundational instruction was quite reserved about telling their students to use full speed bar. they seemed concerned about frontal collapses and I think this is primarily when using speed bar in turbulent conditions (please correct me if I am wrong), so they burned it into my brain to be judicious with speed bar. I have not practiced with my speed bar and I need to do that. so I am putting into my "job jar" to practice using full speed bar in nice calm conditions near an LZ - I plan to get more comfortable with this. In the end, I still believe I was too far blown over the ridge when I asked Matt for guidance on the radio and he said to use full speed bar and try to search the ridge a bit to see where the winds felt lighter, but I also wasn't using the full speed bar pulley to pulley.

hmmm, what else. ok, maybe a little more about the landing. I had an entire forest to choose my landing and plenty of time to set it up. I suppose that is a good aspect of a bad situation. initially the dirt clearing along the AT/jeep trail looked good, but as I descended, it looked quite bad due to the surrounding large trees. As Jim noted I was very close to some trees on the right just before my last turn to land. I did in fact clip some leaves on the right because I was intent on getting into the area of smallish trees and wanted as much room as possible for the last turn. I honestly did not consider what could have happened if that caused the right side to collapse. and again, for other P2s reading this, Matt Graham coached me on the radio to fully stall my wing just before getting into the trees and I really didn't do this, I glided and flared like it was a golf course. a better pilot probably would have landed shorter and gathered up their wing and not had that embarrassing "feet in the air" finish that I had! BUT after much reflection on this whole thing, I stand by my selection for landing location and would go for that same spot again if I had to do it again. from my perspective little trees are always better than big trees.

one more. Dan mentioned the decision to turn 180 degrees and try to make it to Fort Valley. I could clearly see a gap leading through there, but didn't think I had the altitude. also would have had to make that decision early since I lost a lot of altitude with my half-ass attempts with my speed bar. I kind of think I was too low, even at my highest point to make it. anybody want to throw in their opinion on this? I ordered a vario last week and it arrived yesterday (woohoo!) but I don't know my altitude over the ridge at my highest point. push-to-talk setup for my radio will be added sometime soon.

I'll be honest with you guys. this is a tough place to be a low hour pilot. Both Matts always take the time to help out and get the P2s flying and giving tips and support where necessary. the winds were very deceptive at launch. it was too light to launch for quite a while and a few HGs folded up and left, so as a P2 observer, it was quite a tricky judgement call from the ground. incidentally I had one of my smoother reverse launches! Mentoring new pilots is huge. as an inexperienced pilot, how else can I get up and fly if someone like Matt isn't taking the time to help out? this is the foundation of a strong club and safe piloting.

[mcelrah]

Rod - excellent analysis - including the part about watching out for frontals from full speed bar in turbulent conditions. Maybe EN A wings are supposed to handle that configuration better than higher rated ones? I also endorse your decision-making about landing site selection and approach - you were the pilot-in-command and had to make your best judgment. Yes, you probably were too low to make it through the gap (although there are a couple LZs just beyond it - drive up the back some time and scope them out) by the time you called for "plan B". And, once more, the Observer does his best to help the P2, but has no/no control once he's in the air. The PIC will welcome advice, but has to select his own course of action independently. What, no vario? I thought I heard one. I am always amazed that young folks buy the Go-Pro before they buy the vario! - Hugh

[XCanytime]

I am always amazed that young folks buy the Go-Pro before they buy the vario! - Hugh

An unneeded distraction when first learning to fly IMHO. The new pilot is bombarded with loads of sensory information to process that the brain is not used to processing. Takes a while to get used to. Having a noisy vario only adds to the overloaded condition. An altimeter is really all that is needed in the early days. Bacil

[mcelrah]

So turn the sound off - the vario is the only practical altimeter for foot-launched aviation that I know of. The Go-Pro is certainly useful for post-flight analysis but I STILL regard fussing with a camera as a distraction that I don't have enough brain cycles for. (If it's baby-butt smooth I will take my iPhone out for photography in a paraglider.) Witness the pilot who took off his glasses and held them in his teeth, then removed his helmet to mount the Go-Pro. - Hugh

[XCanytime]

I have been using an Avocet altimeter watch for 20 years. It is an aircraft quality and accurate altimeter with a resolution of 10 feet. The latest models have a 5 foot resolution. That is really all you need in the beginning. http://www.avocet.com. Bacil

[Lostgriz]

Sorry, but you can't make a blanket statement that the camera is a dangerous distraction. I have seen pilots distracted by everything from their helmet visor to their vario/gps. Is everyone distracted by these things? Should everyone stop flying with them? I have flown with a camera for almost every flight since my first solo. I mount it to the glider when I set up and forget about it. It has been a very powerful learning tool for me as I like to review my launches and landings. I do not fly differently because I have a camera on. A radio can be a very important safety tool to have, but if you are surrendering control of your aircraft to operate it, then it could become a dangerous distraction. It is all relative to how you use it and where you are in your progression....... and there are probably some folks that will always be distracted by these items, but that is probably another conversation.

I actually advocate buying the nicest vario you can reasonably afford if you are seriously committed to flying, but that is just my opinion. I bought the best one on the market after my first solo and have grown into using more and more features as I progress. When I first got it, I just listened to the beeps and looked at altitude occasionally. Again, that is just my personal opinion and I was focused on progressing into XC flying from day 1 of my training, so that was another consideration.

As far as this incident is concerned, there is a lot to be learned and I think some good learning is taking place. I have very vivid memories of being parked at the top of the North side at POM in turbulent conditions 20 years ago flying a paraglider and praying that I didn't go over the back. It is a bad, bad place to be and your lack of experience may have actually kept you calmer, not realizing just how badly this could have gone down. Thanks for sharing this and opening yourself up for the criticism. I have no value to add that hasn't already been said and am VERY glad this turned out so good. I am pretty confident that you will never find yourself in this situation again and thanks to your video and the discussion here, hopefully others will avoid this type of incident.

Matt

[XCanytime]

If you are addressing me Matt, I was referring to the vario as an unnecessary distraction when first starting out to fly the mountains, not the Go Pro. My sister bought me a Go Pro camera for XMAS. It is still in the box . Bacil

[mcelrah]

*I* said I personally found fussing with the camera before launch a distraction that I prefer not to have - others may manage it quite well. Bacil is in a class by himself for flying with less technology than the rest of us - and getting outstanding results. We were all amazed when he finally got a double surface hang-glider! Most of us think a vario is quite helpful - and I LIKE the noise it makes when I'm going up. I would like to have it as the ringtone on my phone, wake-up alarm, background music while I'm driving, lullaby to go to sleep... I do NOT want the fanciest vario, though - I only use the most basic functions. At the Team Challenge, Steve Kroop of Flytec gave several seminars on how to use the myriad functions on the current generation of GPS-enabled various. Sounded like work to me... - Hugh

[Lostgriz]

I am not trying to contradict anyone, just sharing my opinion. There is no doubt that some people are distracted by the camera and some even fly differently when they are recording a flight. I have also seen people distracted by their instruments. I have found both to be great tools for me and respect the opinions of others. I should qualify that I am a relative newb with probably less HG experience than anyone on here, just sharing a few of my thoughts on the subject. What has worked for me may not be the right answer for others.

Matt