Report of a Stupid Landing
Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:41 pm
Here's a story about a screwed up landing that I had recently in my Litespeed S4. After sinking out, I headed for the landing zone with about enough height to do one normal pattern and land. The wind was probably 60° cross from the East, but it was light. On my upwind pass over the LZ, I hit some light lift but I opted not to work it because it would probably just take me over the houses.
I went on downwind and wasn't loosing any altitude, so I delayed the turns to base and final. I didn’t mean to, but I busted the no fly zone rather blatantly. Even so, I ended up on final, projecting a landing right at the base of the runaway glider ramp. Okay, I thought, embarrassing, crappy approach, but at least I won't end up missing the LZ.
Then I got turned to the left. The edge of the plateau slid by quickly. I decided I was too low to perform the maneuvers required to get back on track and opted to land straight ahead in the shitty part of the wash. The reasonable part of the wash was out of reach.
I knew I needed a good, on-time flair. Fortunately, that’s what I got. The glider came to a complete stop in the air and I basically plopped down on my butt on the edge of a small berm, luckily, without damage.
Joe Greblo ran over and pointed out that my VG was most of the way on. I had no clue. Actually there were plenty of clues, the slowed descent, the sluggish turns, the really nice flair. I just hadn't put it together. I have 360 hours and 185 landings on that glider (I still log that stuff), but my recent airtime has been somewhat sparse.
So what about the left turn? Joe, who saw the whole thing, thought that it either resulted from my hand change, or that the hand change impaired my ability to correct the turn. I don't remember the hand change and there's no video that I'm aware of (sorry if you missed it), but I would have been moving my right hand (the left was already on the upright), which might result in a left turn. However, I don't think that a hand change would have been enough of an input to make a Litespeed, with its VG on, turn. I make hand changes all the time without turns. Still, a hand change is a bad time to get hit with something. In any event, I probably gave it the VG-off turn correction, which wouldn't have been effective with the VG on.
I’ve accidentally landed with the VG on a few times before, without incident, but this one has me thinking I need a better way of preventing that. I’m also rethinking the hand change issue, but no conclusions on that yet.
Greg
I went on downwind and wasn't loosing any altitude, so I delayed the turns to base and final. I didn’t mean to, but I busted the no fly zone rather blatantly. Even so, I ended up on final, projecting a landing right at the base of the runaway glider ramp. Okay, I thought, embarrassing, crappy approach, but at least I won't end up missing the LZ.
Then I got turned to the left. The edge of the plateau slid by quickly. I decided I was too low to perform the maneuvers required to get back on track and opted to land straight ahead in the shitty part of the wash. The reasonable part of the wash was out of reach.
I knew I needed a good, on-time flair. Fortunately, that’s what I got. The glider came to a complete stop in the air and I basically plopped down on my butt on the edge of a small berm, luckily, without damage.
Joe Greblo ran over and pointed out that my VG was most of the way on. I had no clue. Actually there were plenty of clues, the slowed descent, the sluggish turns, the really nice flair. I just hadn't put it together. I have 360 hours and 185 landings on that glider (I still log that stuff), but my recent airtime has been somewhat sparse.
So what about the left turn? Joe, who saw the whole thing, thought that it either resulted from my hand change, or that the hand change impaired my ability to correct the turn. I don't remember the hand change and there's no video that I'm aware of (sorry if you missed it), but I would have been moving my right hand (the left was already on the upright), which might result in a left turn. However, I don't think that a hand change would have been enough of an input to make a Litespeed, with its VG on, turn. I make hand changes all the time without turns. Still, a hand change is a bad time to get hit with something. In any event, I probably gave it the VG-off turn correction, which wouldn't have been effective with the VG on.
I’ve accidentally landed with the VG on a few times before, without incident, but this one has me thinking I need a better way of preventing that. I’m also rethinking the hand change issue, but no conclusions on that yet.
Greg