Making Sure You're Both Hooked-In and Buckled-In

[Eric]

Greetings,

A little bit ago (being vague to protect the innocent) I saw someone forget to hook-in. Fortunately they were just doing a run on flat ground. Needless to say seeing that got me paranoid, so now I verbally go through the entire check every time I pick-up my glider, even if I've already hooked-in and checked and I'm just standing waiting for a decent cycle for a couple minutes. I'm still on the training hill, but I'm really trying to develop excellent habits.

The pilot in the link below did a hook-in check, and he zipped up his harness; however, he forgot to buckle-in and get into his leg loops. He launched like that. I've never heard of this happening before, so I wanted to share. He survived by choosing to stand in the boot.

He adopted what looks to me to be a good idea in the form of a hanging checklist that dangles in front of his face and that he tucks under his nose cone after performing his check. He talks about the checklist and shows it at the end of the video.

http://youtu.be/B3UbztgTtsc

Eric

[Ward Odenwald]

Eric thanks for posting about a pre-flight danger that stalks all of us. The anticipation and excitement of flying often overcomes common sense and leads one to focus on the enjoyment of flying rather than the multiple pre-flight steps required to enhance its safety, as evident from Greg Porter’s video. For me, the danger of skipping a pre-flight safety step is greatest when I’m comfortable with the flying site and launch conditions. My wakeup call came during the early/mid 80s at High Rock on a day when the flying conditions were excellent albeit strong with a forecasted thermal lapse rate that suggested over the back XC miles. I was flying a Sensor 510 using a cocoon harness and had many hours with this combination. Before carrying the glider up to the platform, I put on my harness making sure that the cocoon’s multiple lines were not wrapped around my arms and/or my neck and did so without first stepping through the leg straps! I had missed the very first step in putting on this harness correctly – stepping through the leg loops! Once settled on the launch platform, I hooked in, confirmed that my parachute pins were in and then stepped into the harness boot to rotate down for a preflight harness check. The harness lines were not tangled and everything else felt and looked normal so we (a three man wire crew) moved the glider into position. It was clear that it was going to be an “elevator” launch as everyone was indicating strong up pressure on the flying wires and pilots who launched before me went straight up. After positioning the harness boot out in front of the control bar (SOP for cocoon harnesses), I raised the glider up but not high enough to tension the hang loop or put pressure on my leg straps and yelled clear. The first thing I remembered while rocketing up (which is now burned into my memory) was that the control bar was even with my neck instead of being at waist level and just about all of the harness was still out in front of the control bar instead of automatically flapping back over and behind it. When the acceleration diminished, my first attempts to reach forward and pull the harness back over the control bar failed in part from the pressure of the harness lines on my armpits. Only after hooking my left elbow over the control bar did I muster enough leverage to pull the harness back over the control bar and push it down so I could step into the harness boot and rotate into flying position. My first guess was that I had only missed one leg loop and it wasn’t until several minutes later that I reached back to discover that I had neglected to step into both. At this point I began to appreciate just how serious the pre-flight mistake was and started to mentally rip myself apart for ignoring basic safety (even after 30 years it still stands out as the very best example of my potential for screwing up). After several passes along the ridge (to calm-down), I landed on my wheels with out stepping out of the harness. Since then, when I go through my harness pre-flight I use a memorized checklist (that I go over in the car before arriving) and make a point of employing all of my senses during the actual process by touching what I’m checking while I talking out-loud about the item being checked and listening to my comments and watching what I’m checking. Having a written pre-flight checklist attached to the glider, as suggested by Greg, is also a good idea. Ward

[markc]

Below is a link to an article from some years ago which provides advice and techniques (still valid IMO) to help with the hang-check/hook-in problem.

It was written at a time when PG flight in this area had barely started, so apologies for the solely-HG focus. If anyone can contribute content that's PG-specific it would be most welcome!

MarkC

http://www.chgpa.org/Education/hookin.tips.html

[brianvh]

Wow, Ward, I never heard that story! That's chilling.

Eric,the best defense is building an ingrained habit of a prelaunch checklist. Those hanging checklists become ignored as easily as you ignore commercials on TV. There's also advocacy for doing some maneuver right before you launch that guarantee's everything is attached: with a hang glider this would be lifting the glider until you feel tension. After almost 2 decades I'm trying to train myself to this additional safety habit. For HG many people advocate attaching the harness to the glider before you get in it (Aussie style), but without a checklist you can still miss the leg loops, or buckles, etc.

But it's all habit. You have to train yourself to be very uneasy until you've gone through the preflight and prelaunch checklist. And yes, I always go through it out loud even if I'm the only one around: it's part of the habit. I'm the first to admit that once you get on launch and realize you have forgotten to do one or the other there is a lot of internal pressure to just launch without admitting your error and hope it turns out for the best. I remember doing it three times to my everlasting shame, which is why I remember it. The most impressive thing I've seen is watching Danny Brotto back off launch because he was going over his glider preflight in his head and didn't remember checking one thing. Not that he didn't do a preflight: he didn't remember doing one part of it. That's how serious we have to take this stuff.

[markc]

And here is the follow-up story for that Hook-In article that I mentioned, which happened only 5 months later:

http://www.chgpa.org/Education/hookin.accident.html

MarkC