SAFA Skysailor Magazine

SKY SAILOR 29 March | April 2020 Moving on to AIRS #1026 This also occurred at Manilla. A HG pilot was competing in the NSW Hang Gliding titles last year, flying his Moyes RX3.5. On the third day of the comp, conditions were a 10 to 15km/h W wind, thermals to 5000ft asl and cloudbase at around 11000ft. An 83km triangle was set, with goal at Godfrey’s. I’ll let the pilot take over here: Before the last turnpoint, I climbed out to 9500ft ASL, (8000ft AGL), the last climb I needed to make goal on final glide with an expected arrival height of 3400ft AGL. With all this height, I had only a few things on my mind – to go as fast as possible and keeping the glider straight. Two other gliders were just in front and above me; like a racehorse heading for the finish line, focussed on going as fast as possible with the VG at maximum. On final glide, my airspeed was between 80km/h and 120km/h for about five minutes until my accident at 106km/h airspeed. The conditions at the time did not feel that rough. I had no wire slaps and was managing to keep the glider straight without too much trouble. After overtaking the other two, at 4000ft AGL, without any warning, I went from a high-speed glide to hanging under the basebar looking through smashed sunglasses covered in blood (I was knocked out for 3 to 5 seconds). When the basebar hit me in the face, it broke my Maui Jim sunglasses on the bridge of my nose and shattered the left glass lenses with the glass still in place. I had some small cuts on the bridge of my nose, and I was bleeding enough to make it hard to see through the blood and broken glasses, so I quickly ripped off my glasses and threw them away, to see clearly. With no glider or basebar in sight, and won- dering what was going on as I came around, I tried to reach the A-frame, but the glider was completing a loop without me. I landed on the trailing edge of the sail, with one hand on the keel and one holding the trailing edge of the sail. The glider was flying upside down relatively smoothly. I had a little time to think about my options, not that there were many to choose from. The glider looked to be okay, I thought for a moment, I could flip it back over and continue to fly? I moved around a little to feel how the glider responded and it didn’t feel stable enough to do anything else but throw my parachute. Making the decision to throw my chute was a hard one, I was still in disbelief that this was happening to me. I looked for the parachute handle and checked the clear space at the back of the glider, I pulled out the parachute and threw it out past the keel. The parachute deployed perfectly, but did not open, I pulled hard on the bridal, after three or four pulls, it opened and violently flipped my glider upright, and swung me back under the glider. I was now in an upright position. The glider was in a nose down angle, about 35º, with the parachute line running from my harness around the trailing edge. It took about a minute from being flipped upside down to throwing my parachute. According to one of the leading pilots in goal who witnessed the accident, there were some gnarly thermals on the day with quite rowdy patches. On the run into goal, he and his gaggle looked at each other and decided to back off. The variable geometry (or VG) mechanism on a topless (no kingpost) hang glider does a couple of things when pulled on: ➲ ➲ It pulls the crossbar backwards, ➲ ➲ extends the wingtips, and ➲ ➲ tightens the skin. A topless wing also has sprogs, a dive recovery mechanism. Applying VG pulls these down as well. In turn, this changes the handling behaviour of the wing with an increase in the pressure required for roll movement, and a corresponding lightening of pitch control. In this configuration, there is increased risk of an aggressive pitch-up occurring if hitting a thermal at speed. What can occur is that the control bar moves backwards, pitching the wing down, then the sprogs kick in to correct the dive, and the wing pitches up. This pitch up can be quite aggressive. The equivalent control in a PG is the speed system and the event is the HG equivalent to expe- riencing a frontal when on full speedbar. In this case, the pilot was whacked by the control bar and knocked unconscious momentarily. The altitude he had in hand and his rapid return to consciousness, combined with a successful reserve deployment, meant the pilot survived. In the lead-up to the competition, the pilot had performed a compatibility check of his reserve and checked all rubber bands which were found to be in good order. The reserve had been repacked some months prior. However, this could have turnedout very differ- ently. The pilot agrees that going hell for leather to reach goal and beat the guys in his gaggle was front and centre in his mind. Not backing off the VG and increasing the margin for error was the result. When hit by the thermal, the machine was configured to do exactly what it did. Please consider the wider consequences of your actions. Next, AIRS #875 A PG2 pilot was flying a PG4 site (Mezzanine near Bald Knob in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland) and read the conditions badly, not giving himself a Plan B, he ended up being heli- coptered out with a fractured ankle. The pilot had a base-jumping background, a reputation for risky flying and has since left the sport. As a result of this (and some other bad behav- iour by another pilot towards the landowner), the site was lost, something which is pretty much unforgiveable. Site ratings are there for a reason. Blatantly disregarding these has consequences and these can be more than the obvious risk to yourself. Procedural and regulatory violations can be viewed very dimly by landowners and councils, and jeopardise our ability to fly at all. Finally, AIRS #1208 A serial offender on the NW Coast of Tasmania has been referred to CASA for flying while not a member of the SAFA. We enjoy the privilege of being able to fly our aircraft by means of exemptions to the Civil Aviation Regulations (CARs) and Civil Aviation Safety Regulations (CASRs). These exemptions only apply when you are a financial member of the SAFA. If you are not, you are in breach of those regulations and liable to incur penalties of two (2) years gaol and/or fines up to $250,000 for each offense. And you put the site at risk. Consider the consequences of your action before, during and after you fly.

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