Session #21

Date: May 10, 2019

Cummulative flights to date: 30

Site: Dog Mtn

Vertical to LZ: 1500 ft

Conditions: 7:00PM launch, 5-8 NNW (not consistent) 70F

Harness configuration: shoulder lifters, chest chute and step.

Assistance: none

Launch: Launched from North side

The flights: 1

Video/Photos: Two videos from other pilots from the LZ of my base, final and crash

Landing: After diving down with some rudder brake I popped up then dropped down and did not flare or slow down. Hit the nose hard then right wing last.

Narrative: The launch felt very controlled. Felt I could have soared but noticed fairly soon into the flight I was hanging by my arm pits and was getting tired. I did not feel comfortable engaging the hammock so just toughed it out. Tried to adjust my position to achieve a slower airspeed but couldn’t really get below 25 on my Dwyer. Noticed later that Brian’s position in those old videos had his feet inside the cage leading edge, not stuck out over the leading edge. I think I did one 360 and then started to set up my approach. I deliberately set up high so as not to run out of altitude like last fall. As soon as I realized I was going to overshoot at about 300 ft I shifted forward adding rudder brake to descend. I dropped at about what felt like 3:1 and over corrected at about 6ft popping back up to maybe 15 ft and then gliding right into the ground with no flare.

Take aways: I believe what happened was that my reflex reverted to my Rogallo technique and I held pressure on the twist grips (well forward of cg) and just pushed forward thinking I needed to push out. The glider responded as predicted by continuing it’s ground skim with a slight descent which caused me to nose in since I did not attempt to run it on (going too fast anyway). Throwing my legs forward in anticipation of the impending crash just exaggerated the problem. It is apparent I need to learn how to flare before attempting landings in no wind.

Post-flight note:

I noticed no detectable change to the wing joiner alignment when I set up the next day and the negative wire attach tension seemed unchanged as well. The only thing I could see was the right wing joiner top gusset was bent a bit more than before. Set it up again on Monday to create the ballistic chute template and had the same observations about potential damage. Bottom line is I plan to fly it as is especially since I need to learn how to flare and stop in calm conditions, if I am smart I will do this at the beach site where the ground is a bit less hard.