HGFA Skysailor Magazine

40 SKY SAILOR July | August 2019 I learnt to fly in 2005 while living in Turkey, 30 minutes from Ölüdeniz. My instructor was a highly skilled and respected pilot, but as my Turkish language skills were non-existent, I missed out on vital theory lessons. As I was a yacht captain and an aviation fan, this wasn’t viewed as a major problem since I had a sound understanding of flight theory and meteorological concepts. Move forward to May 2006 I have my gear, a Gin Zulu wing and a Gin Genie 3 harness with a Gin reserve, and I’m going for my 32nd solo flight. I was up on the 1700m SW facing launch on Babadag. The ridge line of the mountain runs in a WNW-ESE direction, and on this day, we had a north-westerly blowing through. My local mates gave me the advice that we could expect some rotor off the knoll to the right of launch. Bearing this in mind, I set up my gear and joined the pack waiting for launchable cycles to come up the face. My turn came, and I felt a nice doable bit of breeze, called out I was launching and went into a forward launch run. As the wing came overhead, I was suddenly as plucked off the ground two or three metres, the wing was shaken around and I was dumped on the deck, landing on and twisting my left ankle. Friends and other pilots rushed over to help me, and then I found out what had happened. What I thought was a cycle was, in fact, the leading edge of a small dust devil. The pilot behind me had his wing picked up off the ground and thrashed about a bit. I managed to drive home to Göcek in my buggy, but then had to go back to Fethiye to a hospital, where I learnt I had broken my left ankle. What can we learn from this? Listen closely to the locals, especially if you are not a native speaker of the local language. If unsure, ask simple direct questions to tease out nuance and details. And when on the 1700 m launch of Babadag, with a prevailing north-westerly on a thermic day, beware of dust devils! Jump forward to February 2007 While doing a forward launch from Kozagac (a 860m asl launch at the foot of Babadag), I felt a loss of pressure in the wing. I aborted the launch run, but in trying to stop my run lost my footing on the gravel, put out my left hand to stop the fall and pinged it back. It felt like a sprain, but after a week it was still not good (learnt that when I was launching and realised that I was going to have fun flaring on landing). It was actually broken. The lessons? You can break your wrist when you fall over. And make sure you have a decent bit of breeze to endure positive inflation of your wing. Around about that time I decided it would be a really good idea to learn how to reverse launch. Once I got that technique under my belt, my confidence on launch lifted considerably. Forward again to 7 June 2008 The Big Kahuna crash: This one was life changing and unpleasant. Strap in and read on if you dare… Like any accident, there was a clear sequence leading up to it. A mate from Belgium was down and a big north-westerly was blowing. The tandem pilots were still flying from 1700m in the morning, but Walter and I decided a truck to Kozagac was the better option. We had a nice flight, scratching along the 800 m high south facing cliff, then grabbed lunch and headed back up to Kozagac. By this time all the tandem operators had moved down to join us for the afternoon. This placed a lot of pressure on us at launch – these guys get paid per flight, so they want to get down and head back up. If you are on the small launch surface and have a problem, you get shunted out of the way quick smart. Walter got away pretty quickly, but I kept getting my lines snagged from protruding roots. After two hours, I was finally ready to launch, but now I was on my own. As I was setting up, ready to go, I dropped a brake handle. I picked it up, lofted the wing, it looked okay, I turned and launched. As soon as I was in the air, the wing went into a lazy right- hand turn. I applied left brake, but there was an immense amount of friction through the control and no response. By this time, I was headed for a tree, my panic level was rising, and I became a fixated passenger. I missed the tree, but the turn continued and carried me across a gully, heading towards a boulder field. I went in feet first at trim speed. I won’t bore you with the rest, other than to say when they set my leg you probably heard the My Turkish Misadventures With any sort of luck, you would have received an Operational Bulletin recently where I outlined our obligations with respect to reporting accidents, and the aims of AIRS reports to educate. So, time for me to put my money where my mouth is. by Iain Clarke, HGFA Safety Management Officer Left: The Buggy – road registered, 150cc fun machine ˇ ˇ ˇ ˇ ˇ ˇ